Keep Orion, orchestrate around it.
Or replace it for $1B+ multi-FO.
Orion is the dominant portfolio management system for RIAs, and for many advisors it's the sensible default. But once a firm starts running multiple custodians, breaking away into a $1B+ shared family office, or stitching Orion to a CRM, planning tool, billing platform, and document store, the wealth-tech stack becomes the operational tax. Inevi Solutions doesn't replace Orion in most cases — we orchestrate the stack around it (or replace it entirely for multi-family offices Orion can't serve), built fixed-price under your firm's brand and operated by us after launch.
At a glance
| Orion | Inevi Solutions | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Portfolio management system (PMS) — reporting, billing, rebalancing, planning add-ons | Technology-as-a-service firm — designs, builds, and operates custom systems |
| Best for | RIAs running a standard custodial book who want a reporting + billing + rebalancing platform off the shelf | $1B+ multi-FO and breakaway RIAs hitting Orion's ceiling, or any RIA needing the rest of the stack to actually connect |
| Delivery model | SaaS subscription | Fixed-price project, then ongoing managed retainer (we run what we build) |
| Pricing model | Per-account / tier-based subscription. Buyers report it gets expensive at scale relative to reporting depth delivered | Proposal-based after free assessment. 4-16 week delivery. ROI typically 4-12 months |
| Reporting | Multi-custodian reporting, billing, rebalancing — broad surface | Custom reporting tied to your data model — built once, owned by you |
| Multi-custodian | Yes, but advisors report it adds operational tax | Yes — we build the connective layer that makes multi-custodian look like one workflow |
| Single-/multi-FO setups ($1B+ books) | Buyers report it doesn't fit "for additional sophistication multi- or single-family office type setups" (A24) | Designed for it — financial operations platform + central intelligence + unified portal across entities |
| AI / agentic workflows | Bolt-on AI features in roadmap | Native — AI employees created by your detailed SOPs, agentic workflows, RAG grounded in your knowledge |
| Support | "Submit a case, wait days" model per buyer reports (A4, A2) | Direct line to the team that built it. Fully managed hosting, security, backups, optimization |
| Implementation | DIY on Orion's tooling, or hire an Orion consultant | We design, ship, and operate. Fixed scope, fixed timeline |
| Brand surface | Orion-branded software | White-label or co-delivery — your firm's brand, your client relationship |
How to read this page
If you're an RIA in the 1-50 advisor range running a single-custodian book and you mostly need clean performance reporting, billing, and rebalancing, Orion is probably the right answer. Skip ahead to "Who Orion is best for" and stay where you are. If you're a $1B+ multi-FO, a breakaway team forming a shared family office, or an RIA whose tech stack has become its own operational department, the rest of this page is for you. Inevi enters one of two ways.
Keep Orion, orchestrate around it
Keep Orion (or Addepar, or Tamarac) as the system of record. We build the connective tissue — workflows, reconciliations, AI employees, unified operating portal — that makes the existing stack run as one workflow. Fixed-price, fully managed.
Full replacement for $1B+ multi-FO
For $1B+ multi-FO and SFO buyers whose reporting, governance, and entity complexity Orion buyers themselves say it doesn't handle, we design and operate the bespoke stack instead. Fixed-price, fully managed.
Features
Orion
Orion is broad. Performance reporting, billing, rebalancing, trading, planning (via Redtail / Wealthbox / Right Capital integrations), client portal, and a long list of integrations across the wealth-tech category. For a standard advisor running a standard book, it's a credible one-stop PMS — that's why it's the market leader.
Where buyers say it stalls: reporting depth and visual polish ("their reporting is straight garbage and wildly complicated. Not to mention visually unappealing." — A2). Multi-FO and SFO complexity ("It works for simple brokerage type relationships but for additional sophistication multi- or single-family office type setups it doesn't do the trick." — A24). Training and ramp ("extremely clunky and they do not have a good training program." — A3).
Inevi
We don't ship a portfolio management product. We build the operating architecture around it — or instead of it, when a firm has outgrown what an off-the-shelf PMS can do. Capabilities most relevant in this comparison:
- Financial operations platform — multi-entity bookkeeping, billing, period-close, commissions, reporting dashboards on top of (or in place of) the PMS.
- Central intelligence and signal monitoring — pulls across custodians, regulatory filings, market data, and proprietary databases into one structured intelligence layer.
- Agentic workflows — multi-agent systems that reason through the long-tail ops work between Orion, the CRM, the planning tool, and the custodian. Autonomous decisioning, not data-on-rails.
- AI employees created by your detailed SOPs — your back-office, ops, or research analyst's playbook, encoded as a system that runs the role end-to-end.
- Unified operating portal — single interface for advisors, clients, or LPs that pulls from every connected source and logs every interaction back.
- Protected data extraction — for custodian portals, regulatory filings, and authenticated environments without API access.
Bottom line
Choose Orion if you want a feature-broad PMS that solves 70-80% of a standard advisory operation off the shelf. Choose Inevi if your stack has hit the integration ceiling, your reporting needs to model entities Orion can't, or you've decided ops is your real product and you want it custom-built and operated for you.
Service & support
Orion
Buyers describe support as the single most-repeated complaint in public reviews: "Their support is atrocious. You have to fight them for everything if you can even get ahold of them. We have a dedicated 'Orion Specialist' at our RIA that is equally useless." (A4) "Service, even more garbage. Good luck getting to anyone with half a clue." (A2) This is consistent with the broader pattern of large PMS vendors — submit a case, wait days, hope. Orion's user community is large enough that peer help fills some of the gap.
Inevi
We don't operate a tier-1 support queue. The team that builds your system runs it. Hosting, maintenance, security, backups, monitoring, and ongoing optimization are part of the engagement. When something needs changing, you talk to the engineers who built it. Trade-off: we're not 24/7 with a 1,000-person CSM org. We're a small senior team that operates a finite number of client systems with serious depth.
Bottom line
If you want vendor support that scales the way enterprise SaaS scales (queues, tiers, knowledge bases), Orion is built for that. If "submit a case and wait days" is exactly the pattern you're trying to escape, the managed-engagement model is the counter-position.
Implementation
Orion
Self-serve onboarding for smaller firms; for larger or hybrid setups, buyers report needing a dedicated internal Orion specialist or external Orion consultant. One $400M-AUM hybrid RIA describes "10 years on Orion + a $2mm custom build-out" (A4 surrounding context) — i.e., the platform is the floor, not the ceiling, and complex firms end up paying twice (Orion subscription + custom dev on top).
Inevi
Free assessment first. Fixed-scope, fixed-price proposal next. 4-16 week delivery depending on scope. We design, ship, and operate. No hidden ramp, no "you'll need a full-time admin to keep this running." When the build wraps, the system is in production and we run it — you don't get handed a product to staff up against.
Bottom line
Orion's implementation cost is variable and often hidden in advisor-side admin time + consultant fees. Inevi's is the proposal you sign up front.
Pricing model framing
Orion
Buyers in our research describe Orion as "expensive for our needs" for smaller advisor setups (A23) and reasonable-but-aging-out for larger firms once you stack the rest of the wealth-tech bill on top. Specific reported figures from public buyer reviews (cited as buyer reports, not Orion's official pricing): one RIA described paying ~15% of revenue to an outsourced platform that ran Orion on their behalf (A22, "it's now an insane amount of money and it's not even that good"); a $550M / 325-family RIA on Black Diamond reported paying ~$6,500/month with no dedicated rep (A17, comparable PMS category benchmark, not Orion's pricing). Real Orion price will vary by tier and account count — verify directly with Orion sales for your firm.
Inevi
Inevi's pricing isn't published — engagements are scoped and proposed after a free assessment, with delivery in 4-16 weeks and ROI typically landing inside 4-12 months. We don't put pricing on the website because the right number depends on the scope, the entities involved, and what the firm is replacing or orchestrating.
Bottom line
An RIA running Orion + Redtail/Wealthbox + eMoney/RightCapital + a billing layer + a custodian portal is paying for at least 4-5 separate contracts plus the operational time to keep them stitched. The Inevi pitch isn't 'we're cheaper than Orion.' It's 'we collapse the integration layer so the bill stops compounding into staff hours.'
Ease of use
Orion
Established UI, broad feature surface, big help-doc library, wide integration directory. The learning curve is real — buyers describe it as "extremely clunky" (A3) — but advisors who've put years into it have built workflows that work for their book.
Inevi
Custom UI tailored to your operations, not a configured-down version of someone else's product. Because we're building the interface and the workflow together, the friction points an off-the-shelf product accumulates aren't there. Trade-off: there's no preexisting community of 10,000 users debugging your edge cases publicly.
Bottom line
If you've already paid the Orion learning tax and your team is fluent, ripping it out for ease-of-use alone isn't a reason. If you're a new RIA staring at the Kitces tech rabbit hole feeling like you 'need to spend $1,000/month to cover everything and got overwhelmed' (A7) — the off-the-shelf cobble of Orion + 6 other tools has its own UX cost.
Integrations
Orion
Strong integration directory across the wealth-tech category — CRMs, planning tools, custodians, document stores. The catch buyers describe industry-wide: integrations are mostly read-only or light, products "are closed-end and don't integrate, creating data silos" (A5), and "the advisor becomes the human integration layer" (A14, A18 pattern).
Inevi
Integrations are part of the build, not a directory. We work in your custodians (Schwab, Fidelity, Pershing, Altruist), your CRM (Redtail, Wealthbox, Salesforce FSC), your planning tool, your document store, and any authenticated portal that doesn't expose an API (we extract from those too). The deliverable is one workflow, not seven.
Bottom line
If your stack is standard and the existing Orion integration directory covers your needs, that's a meaningful Orion advantage. If you've been the human integration layer for the past 18 months copy-pasting between five systems, the orchestration layer is the unlock.
What buyers in this segment told us
Inevi has no named RIA or family-office customer to point to yet — we don't fabricate testimonials. Instead, here's what RIA, breakaway, and family-office operators have said publicly about their current stack.
"Orion sucks. Their reporting is straight garbage and wildly complicated. Not to mention visually unappealing. Service, even more garbage. Good luck getting to anyone with half a clue."
"As someone who has used Orion across two different companies… its ROUGH. I dont know what the alternative softwares look like, but its extremely clunky and they do not have a good training program."
"Their support is atrocious. You have to fight them for everything if you can even get ahold of them. We have a dedicated 'Orion Specialist' at our RIA that is equally useless."
"It works for simple brokerage type relationships but for additional sophistication multi- or single-family office type setups it doesn't do the trick."
"Orion is expensive for our needs and the financial planning tool is fine at best."
"We have been paying a platform 15% of our revenues to handle back office, deal with fidelity, do paperwork, Orion, CRM, Email, Billing, File Sharing etc... It was a good deal when we started but its now an insane amount of money and it's not even that good… we're fatigued from all the transitions we've been through."
"There is too much operational friction in the current wealth tech stack. Too many single-use products. Products are closed-end and don't integrate, creating data silos. Products are built for the wrong end user, the client, not the advisor."
We'll publish named case studies as our first FS engagements wrap. Until then, we'd rather tell you what the segment is actually saying than invent a quote.
Who Orion is best for
Be honest: a lot of RIAs should stay on Orion. Specifically:
- Single-custodian RIAs in the 1-50 advisor range running a standard book, where reporting + billing + rebalancing is the dominant ops workload.
- Firms whose team is already fluent in Orion and whose workflows are tuned. Don't tear out a working system on principle.
- RIAs that prefer SaaS economics — predictable subscription, vendor-managed product roadmap, large peer community — over fixed-price custom builds.
- Buyers who don't want a managed-engagement vendor relationship and would rather submit cases and wait, with control over their own admin team.
If three or four of those describe your firm, Orion is a credible answer. The rest of this page won't change your mind, and we don't think it should.
Who Inevi is best for
Inevi is built for RIA and family-office operators who:
- Run a $1B+ shared family office or multi-entity setup that Orion buyers themselves say doesn't handle the sophistication ("for additional sophistication multi- or single-family office type setups it doesn't do the trick" — A24).
- Are mid-breakaway from a BD or wirehouse and want to design the stack right the first time, instead of cobbling 7 single-use products together and then spending year two unwiring it.
- Are already paying for a stack that's become an operational tax ("paying a platform 15% of our revenues to handle back office… it's now an insane amount of money and it's not even that good" — A22) and want one team running one stack under one contract.
- Have a methodology — a research process, an investment committee SOP, an LP reporting cadence — that should be encoded as software instead of staffed against.
- Are forming an SFO at $200M+ NW and want to operate like a $1B family office without paying $1-2M/year to do it.
- Need governance, audit logs, scoped connectors, and human-in-the-loop AI before any of this gets near client data.
Ideal Inevi customer: a managing partner, ops principal, or breakaway founder who has already concluded "we're not a tech firm, but the tech is now our problem" — and who wants the build, the operation, and the accountability under one fixed-price engagement.
What changes if you switch (or orchestrate)
The decision isn't binary. Here's how each path actually works.
Keep Orion, orchestrate around it
What stays: Orion remains your system of record for performance reporting, billing, and rebalancing. Your custodian relationships, advisor logins, and historical data don't move.
- A unified operating portal that pulls Orion + CRM + planning tool + document store + custodian feeds into one interface, with role-scoped access.
- AI employees that run the back-office SOPs you've been staffing against — billing reconciliation, AO follow-up, multi-custodian forms management, paraplanning prep.
- Agentic workflows for the long-tail ops Orion's automation doesn't reach (e.g., the multi-step process that today lives across Outlook + Excel + 3 tabs of NetX360).
- Governance layer: audit logs, scoped connectors, per-tool permissions, human-in-the-loop on anything client-facing.
What needs reconfiguration: mostly the workflows your team has built around the gaps. We map the current state, design the future state, and run the cutover in 4-16 weeks.
Who this fits: RIAs who've decided Orion is fine but the rest of the stack is the problem.
Replace the PMS for $1B+ multi-FO setups
What stays: custodian relationships, regulatory and tax workflows, your CPA/attorney/IC structure.
What we replace: the Orion-as-PMS layer. We build a custom reporting and operations platform modeled on your entity structure — multi-generational households, irrevocable trusts, low-basis equity baskets, K-1 friendly investments, operating-business cash flows — that an off-the-shelf PMS doesn't model natively.
What needs reconfiguration: historical performance migration, custodian feed reconnection, billing logic re-implementation under your firm's actual fee structure (fee-for-service, hybrid, or AUM).
Who this fits: $1B+ shared family offices, breakaway teams designing for SFO-scale from day one, firms who've concluded the PMS market doesn't model their actual book.
Migration support
- Free initial assessment — we map the current stack, confirm fit, and tell you honestly if you should stay on Orion (we will).
- Fixed-price proposal — scope, deliverables, timeline, all priced in writing before a contract is signed.
- 4-16 week delivery with weekly check-ins, deployment milestones, and a defined go-live.
- Fully managed post-launch — hosting, monitoring, security, backups, ongoing optimization included in the retainer.
- No lock-in trap — system source, data model, and infrastructure are documented and yours. We've seen the Salesforce-style "make migration painful" anti-pattern and we don't run it.
FAQ
Is Inevi an Orion alternative?
For most RIAs, no — Orion is a PMS and we don't sell a PMS. We're an alternative to the integration tax of running Orion plus 6 other tools, and we're a full replacement for the small subset of $1B+ multi-FO setups whose reporting and entity complexity Orion buyers themselves say it doesn't model.
Can Inevi replace Orion for a standard RIA?
Usually we'd advise against it. If Orion is solving 70-80% of your operation cleanly, you should orchestrate around it, not rip it out. We'll tell you that in the free assessment.
What does Inevi cost compared to Orion?
Orion is a per-account subscription with implementation costs that vary by firm size. Inevi is a fixed-price project plus a managed-operation retainer, scoped after a free assessment. The honest comparison isn't sticker-to-sticker — it's the all-in cost of Orion plus the 4-6 contracts and admin hours running alongside it, vs. one team running the full operation under one engagement.
How long does an Inevi engagement take?
4-16 weeks from signed proposal to production, depending on scope. ROI typically lands inside 4-12 months.
What about governance, audit logs, and AI safety on client data?
Lead-with-an-answer: scoped connectors, per-tool permissions, full audit logs, human-in-the-loop on anything client-facing. Operators told us governance is the blocker, not the feature, and we agree.
Is Inevi white-label?
Yes when that's the right call. We work white-label, co-delivery, or direct under your firm's recommendation. The client relationship stays yours.
Who shouldn't hire Inevi?
Single-custodian RIAs in the 1-50 advisor range happy on Orion; firms shopping for the cheapest possible vendor; pre-revenue founders who need an MVP, not a production platform; firms that want offshore-dev pricing (we're not that).
The next engagement asks
who builds it. Have an answer.
Thirty minutes. No deck. No pitch. A real conversation about the engagement you're running, the gap you're feeling, and whether we can close it. If we can't, we'll say so.
team@inevisolutions.com