QAD: erp software platform

QAD publishes no price. Checked 16 October 2026, qad.com has no pricing page, the pricing and plans URLs return HTTP 404, and buyers are routed to a demo booking. Buy it if you are a manufacturer who wants finance, shop floor and global trade in one vendor's platform. Skip it if finance is your only scope.

Rajat GuptaEditorial LeadReviewed 16 October 2026Pricing checked 16 October 2026 against the QAD website

QAD in brief

QAD publishes no price.

Price: None, quote only · Custom quote, after a demo booking
Best for: Manufacturers and distributors needing traceability, quality and global trade in one platform
Watch out for: You give up any pre-sales budgeting.

The short answer

Buy QAD if you make or distribute physical goods and the gap you are trying to close sits between the plant and the ledger. Adaptive ERP carries Financials, Purchasing, Sales, Manufacturing, Production Execution, Inventory and Traceability and Quality Management in one product, and QAD now sells Redzone Connected Workforce, a Supply Chain line and a set of role-based AI agents called ChampionAI alongside it. If traceability, quality and global trade compliance are audit obligations rather than nice-to-haves, this is a credible shortlist entry.

Skip it if your requirement is a finance system and nothing else, because you would be buying into a manufacturing platform and paying for breadth you will not use. Skip it if you want a price before a demo, since the site has no pricing page and the pricing URLs are not live. And skip it if you need to know today exactly what the AI agents cost, because QAD publishes no licensing basis for them at all and that is the part of the quote most likely to move.

Where QAD fits

QAD sells four things that it presents as one. The site names Adaptive ERP, Redzone Connected Workforce, Supply Chain and ChampionAI as four solutions that work as one system, and qad.com now reads as a combined QAD and Redzone manufacturing platform rather than an ERP site with extras attached. For a finance buyer that framing is useful and slightly dangerous: useful because the shop floor data that makes cost accounting honest comes from the same vendor, dangerous because each of the four is a separate buying decision and the platform story makes it easy to buy all four.

Adaptive ERP is the part a finance team lives in, and it is itself modular. The published module list covers Financials, Purchasing, Sales, Manufacturing, Production Execution, Inventory and Traceability, Quality Management, Enterprise Asset Management, Field Service Management, Supplier Management, EDI, Data Collection and Label Printing, Internationalization and an Integration Platform. Financials is the entry point. Everything else is an addition that carries its own cost, so the module list is the shape of your quote.

The Internationalization and Integration Platform modules are worth more attention than their names suggest. If you run entities in several countries, localisation is the thing that decides whether statutory reporting is a configuration exercise or a custom build, and it is listed as a module rather than assumed. Same with EDI: for a manufacturer whose customers are large retailers or automotive OEMs, EDI is not optional and it is a separate line item. Ask which of these are inside the figure you are shown.

ChampionAI is the newest part of the story and the least priced. QAD describes role-based AI agents that execute inside workflows, and names an Accounts Payable Champion, a Procurement Champion, a Sourcing Champion, a Sales Champion, a Trade Compliance Champion and a Lynx Champion. An agent that works an AP queue is directly interesting to a finance team. What is not published anywhere is whether agents are licensed individually, per user or against transaction volume, or whether any are bundled with Adaptive ERP. That is the first question to ask and the answer belongs in writing.

Where QAD stops making sense is outside manufacturing and distribution. The industry list is Automotive, Industrial Manufacturing, Consumer Products, Life Sciences, Food and Beverage, Distribution and Logistics and High Tech Manufacturing, and the whole platform is built around that. A services business or a software company evaluating this against general-purpose cloud ERP will find the manufacturing depth irrelevant and the finance depth unremarkable by comparison. Look at the broader ERP software field instead.

QAD pricing

QAD publishes no price. qad.com was read on 16 October 2026 and has no pricing page: the pricing and plans URLs both returned HTTP 404, the sitemap was readable and listed no pricing page, and the site routes buyers to a demo booking instead. Nothing below is an estimate, because an estimate here would be invention. What the structure of the product does tell you is where the number comes from, which is more useful than a guess.

Four things set a QAD figure, and the first one is the mistake most buyers make.

Which of the four product lines you are actually buying. Adaptive ERP, Redzone Connected Workforce, Supply Chain and ChampionAI are presented as one platform and sold as four decisions. Ask for a price per line and for the price of the combination, because the site gives no indication of how bundling changes the number and the only way to see the bundle premium or discount is to have both figures.
Which Adaptive ERP modules are in scope. For a finance team, Financials, Purchasing and Inventory and Traceability cover most of the work. Quality Management, Enterprise Asset Management, Field Service Management, Supplier Management, EDI and Internationalization are each separate. Get the module list written out with each one marked in or out of the initial term, and the price of adding one in year two.
How the AI agents are licensed. ChampionAI is sold as role-based agents and the site names six of them. Ask whether agents are licensed individually, per user or per transaction volume, and whether any are included with Adaptive ERP. This is new enough that the commercial model may be negotiable, which is a reason to ask early rather than at renewal.
Whether Redzone belongs in your quote at all. Redzone Connected Workforce is priced against the shop floor rather than the back office, so plants, lines and frontline user counts drive it. If you are buying for finance, ask explicitly to have it excluded so your comparison against a general-purpose ERP stays honest, then price it separately if the frontline case stands on its own.

What costs extra

QAD names services separately from software: Effective Onboarding, Advisory Services and Extended Solutions Services. No price is published for any of them.
Global Trade Compliance, Multi-Carrier Parcel Shipping and Supply Chain Planning sit under the Supply Chain line and are priced in the quote rather than published.
Implementation is its own cost. QAD lists an onboarding service and runs a partner directory, so ask whether QAD or a partner delivers the project and get that work scoped and priced on its own.

Implementation and commercial terms

The rows below are what could be confirmed on 16 October 2026 from QAD's own site.

Published price: None. qad.com has no pricing page.
Pricing page status: The pricing and plans URLs returned HTTP 404, and the sitemap listed no pricing page.
How it is sold: Quoted after a demo booking, through QAD sales and its partner network.
Product lines: Adaptive ERP, Redzone Connected Workforce, Supply Chain, ChampionAI.
Implementation fee: None published. QAD lists Effective Onboarding, Advisory Services and Extended Solutions Services separately.
Free trial: None listed. The site offers a demo booking, customer stories and digital learning material.

Budget this as four quotes rather than one, then decide which of the four you are buying this year. The honest internal case is usually Adaptive ERP with a named module list, Supply Chain only if global trade or parcel shipping is a real obligation, and ChampionAI and Redzone evaluated on their own merits rather than carried in on a platform narrative. Ask for each line priced individually, services quoted separately, and the year two and year three figures in writing. For an outside anchor, Microsoft Dynamics 365 publishes per-user list prices for its ERP applications, which gives you a real number to model your headcount against before you ask QAD to beat a three-year total.

Source: the QAD website, checked 16 October 2026. Confirm current prices with the vendor before you budget.

What QAD gives up

You give up any pre-sales budgeting. There is no rate card, no plan page, and no starting figure anywhere on the site, and the sitemap confirms there is no pricing page to find. So you cannot build a defensible business case before you spend finance and IT time in a sales process, and every number you eventually see arrives shaped by what the sales team has learned about you. Set your own ceiling first and hold it, because nothing published will help you argue.

You give up a trial. No free trial is listed, and the route in is a demo booking supported by customer stories and digital learning material. That means the only version of the product you see before signing is the one someone else configured. Insist the demo runs against your own bill of materials, your own cost accounting method and your real month-end, because a manufacturing ERP demoed on a sample company is a presentation rather than a test.

You give up clarity on what AI costs. The ChampionAI agents are the most prominent thing on the site and the least defined commercially. Nothing published says whether an Accounts Payable Champion is bundled with Adaptive ERP, licensed per user or metered against volume. If agents end up carrying your AP coding and matching, that licensing basis is the difference between a predictable line and one that grows with your invoice count, so get it fixed in the contract rather than described on a call.

You give up a quiet roadmap. qad.com now presents QAD and Redzone together as one manufacturing platform, with the ERP material sitting alongside frontline workforce content. Consolidation like that usually reshuffles investment priorities, and the modules a finance team depends on are rarely the loudest ones. Ask for written support and roadmap commitments for the specific modules in your quote, including Financials and whichever of EDI, Internationalization and the Integration Platform you depend on.

You give up breadth outside manufacturing. The product, the industry pages and the entire platform story are built for companies that make, move and sell physical goods. If your organisation has a services arm, a subscription revenue stream or a professional services business attached to the manufacturing operation, test those processes specifically rather than assuming the ERP covers them at the same depth. That is the gap where a general-purpose cloud ERP will beat this one.

How QAD compares

Industry ERP is where published pricing has all but vanished, so the first axis of comparison is what you can verify at all. Microsoft publishes per-user list prices for its ERP applications. QAD, Infor and SYSPRO publish nothing and route buyers to a demo request. Epicor's site would not serve any page to an automated request on 16 October 2026. Every cell below comes from that vendor's own pricing source, checked on 16 October 2026, and anything unpublished is recorded as unpublished rather than estimated.

Tool	Best for	Price	Where it breaks
QAD	Manufacturers wanting ERP, shop floor, global trade and AI agents from one vendor	Not published, quote only	Four product lines sold as one platform, and no published licensing basis for the AI agents
SYSPRO	Mid-sized manufacturers and distributors wanting a focused ERP footprint	Not published, quote only	Licensing is moving to a named-user subscription, so older cost assumptions no longer hold
Infor CloudSuite	Companies wanting one industry suite with micro-vertical configuration out of the box	Not published, quote only	No pricing page at all, and changing industry suite later is a new contract
Epicor	Manufacturing, distribution, retail and building supply businesses wanting industry depth	Could not be accessed on 16 October 2026	Several distinct ERP lines, so a quote means nothing until product and edition are named
Microsoft Dynamics 365	Buyers who want a published list price and already run the Microsoft stack	Business Central $80.00 to $110.00 per user/month, paid yearly	Manufacturing depth comes from partners rather than the base product

What to test in a QAD demo

No free trial is listed, so the evaluation is a demo plus a commercial interrogation. Push hard on the two things the website leaves open: which product lines you are being sold, and how the AI agents are licensed.

Run your own cost accounting through it. Bring a real bill of materials, a real work order and the way you absorb overhead, then follow the entries into Financials. Ask to see a variance you recognise appear in the ledger. A manufacturing ERP that demos well on a sample company tells you nothing about whether your costing method survives the transition.
Make them price the four lines separately in the same session. Adaptive ERP, Supply Chain, ChampionAI and Redzone Connected Workforce, each with a figure, plus the combination. Then ask to have Redzone removed and see what changes, because that is how you find out whether the platform story is a discount or a bundle you did not need.
Test the Accounts Payable Champion against your real invoice mix. Give it your awkward cases: partial deliveries, three-way match failures, a vendor who bills in a different currency from the purchase order. Then ask, in the same meeting, whether that agent is included, licensed per user or metered, and get the answer written down.
Prove the modules you will not notice until go-live. EDI against a real trading partner specification, Internationalization against your statutory reporting obligations, and the Integration Platform against whichever system you are keeping. These are listed as separate modules, which means they are separate costs and separate configuration risks.
Interrogate the services line on its own. Ask whether QAD or a partner implements, what Effective Onboarding, Advisory Services and Extended Solutions Services cover, and get data migration, training and integration scoped as individual items. Then ask for two references in your industry at your scale and talk to them about timeline slippage rather than satisfaction.

Frequently asked questions about QAD

How much does QAD cost?

QAD publishes no price. Checked on 16 October 2026, qad.com has no pricing page and the pricing and plans URLs returned HTTP 404. Cost is quoted after a demo and depends on which of the four product lines you buy and which Adaptive ERP modules sit inside the figure.

Why can I not find QAD pricing online?

Because there is none to find. The sitemap was readable on 16 October 2026 and listed no pricing page, and the site routes buyers to a demo booking instead. Figures circulating on reseller and review sites are other companies' negotiated quotes rather than list prices, so treat them as anecdotes.

Is QAD an ERP system?

Yes, and more than one thing. Adaptive ERP is the ERP product, covering Financials, Purchasing, Sales, Manufacturing, Production Execution, Inventory and Traceability, Quality Management and more. QAD also sells a Supply Chain line, Redzone Connected Workforce for the shop floor and a set of AI agents called ChampionAI.

Who owns QAD?

QAD is owned by the private equity firm Thoma Bravo, and the product record lists it as QAD (Thoma Bravo). That matters commercially rather than technically: ask for written support and roadmap commitments for the specific modules in your quote, because ownership changes tend to reshuffle investment priorities.

Is QAD still in business?

Yes. qad.com was live on 16 October 2026, carries a 2026 copyright for QAD Inc. and a Miami head office address, and the site now presents QAD and Redzone together as a single manufacturing platform with four product lines sold alongside each other.

What is included in QAD Adaptive ERP?

The published module list covers Financials, Purchasing, Sales, Manufacturing, Production Execution, Inventory and Traceability, Quality Management, Enterprise Asset Management, Field Service Management, Supplier Management, EDI, Data Collection and Label Printing, Internationalization and an Integration Platform. Which of those are in your subscription is decided in the quote, not by the product.

What is ChampionAI and is it included in the ERP?

ChampionAI is QAD's set of role-based AI agents, and the site names an Accounts Payable Champion, Procurement, Sourcing, Sales and Trade Compliance Champions, plus a Lynx Champion. Nothing published says whether they are bundled with Adaptive ERP, licensed per user or metered by volume, so get that in writing.

Do I have to buy Redzone Connected Workforce with QAD ERP?

No. It is one of four separately sold lines and it is priced against the shop floor, so plants, lines and frontline user counts drive it. If you are buying for finance, ask explicitly to have it excluded from the quote, then evaluate it on its own merits if the frontline case stands up.

QAD or SAP: how do they compare?

They aim at different buyers. QAD is a manufacturing and distribution platform with traceability, quality and global trade built around those industries. SAP's ERP lines reach from small businesses up to the largest enterprises. Neither published a verifiable price on 16 October 2026, so decide on industry fit and three-year total cost.

What should a QAD quote include?

Five things: each of the four product lines priced separately plus the combination; the Adaptive ERP module list with each item marked in or out of the initial term; the licensing basis for any ChampionAI agents; services scoped individually; and the year two and year three figures with any uplift stated.