If you're a Newforma Project Center user, you've probably been approached with Newforma's new offering, Konekt.
What you'll discover when you evaluate the move is that Konekt pricing reflects the same enterprise-platform cost structure you've always paid. And if your firm, like most AEC practices, uses Newforma primarily for email management and project filing, you're about to pay platform prices for a specialist problem.
The gap between what you'll pay for Konekt and what a purpose-built email solution costs is significant. But it's not arbitrary. It reflects a fundamental architectural choice: platforms maintain dozens of features and modules simultaneously. Specialist tools maintain one thing exceptionally well. And if email and project filing are your actual bottleneck, that architecture difference matters more than you might think.
The platform vs. specialist cost gap
Project management platforms like Newforma are built to do everything: documents, financials, project scheduling, resource management, compliance tracking, email — the full suite. That comprehensiveness costs money. Because Newforma pays engineers to maintain and improve all of those modules simultaneously, whether customers use them or not.
Specialist email and search tools are built to do one thing exceptionally well: file emails to projects and make them findable. They're not maintaining financial dashboards, scheduling modules, or resource planning features. The cost structure is completely different.
If your actual problem is email and project filing — which, for most AEC firms, it is — then you're paying platform prices for a specialist problem.
What actually gets used
Here's what we consistently hear from firms in your situation: "We're primarily using Newforma for email management and project filing. The scheduling modules, financial tracking, resource planning dashboards - they don't get touched, or barely do."
One AEC firm put it plainly:
"It worked for a while, but we were paying for many features when we only used the email management ones."
When you're a team of 200 paying $110,000 annually for a platform, and you're actively using a fraction of what it offers, that cost-to-utility ratio becomes impossible to ignore. Especially when someone shows you a quote for a tool that does the thing you actually need for a fraction of the price.
And when your team evaluates which features they rely on daily, email and project filing typically top the list. The ability to file correspondence to projects consistently, find old emails in seconds, and ensure that knowledge doesn't walk out the door when staff leave — that's what actually drives your workflow.
Why the migration moment matters
Konekt is a forced moment of evaluation. You can't just stay on Project Center indefinitely. You either migrate and pay an immense number annually, or you take a step back and ask: given what we actually use, what should we be paying?
This isn't about Newforma forcing you to choose. It's about the reality of platform migrations: they force you to consciously decide whether the cost is justified by actual usage. And for a lot of firms, the answer is no.
When you look at alternatives — tools purpose-built for email filing, search and project correspondence — you realize how much of that Newforma cost was going to features you never needed. Scheduling, financials, resource planning, integrations into other systems: valuable if you use them. Expensive if you don't.
How to know if a platform is wrong for you
Ask yourself these four questions:
- Are most of your teams using email and project filing as their primary workflow? If yes, the platform's other modules aren't driving value.
- Do your financial, scheduling and resource planning functions happen in different systems anyway? If you're already using separate tools for those, you're duplicating functionality.
- When your team searches for old project emails, do they struggle because Outlook search doesn't cut it? This is the problem that actually matters. A platform's email module won't solve it — a specialist tool will.
- Have you sat down and calculated what percentage of your annual spend goes to modules your firm doesn't actively deploy? Most firms haven't. When they do, the number is usually a shock.
If your answers suggest email is your bottleneck and the platform features aren't essential, then you don't need to evaluate. You need to move.
The real cost comparison
This isn't a choice between two similar products at different prices. It's a choice between two different approaches to solving the same problem.
If email management and project filing are your primary use case — and they are for most AEC firms — then a platform designed to do everything costs more than a tool designed to do email exceptionally well. That's not because of marketing or positioning. That's because of what sits behind each price tag.
With a platform, you pay for comprehensive infrastructure — scheduling modules, financial tracking, resource planning, integrations, ongoing maintenance of feature sets you don't actively use. Email management is one module among many.
With a purpose-built tool, you pay only for what you actually need: email filing that works seamlessly from Outlook, search that finds anything in seconds, data governance that meets AEC compliance standards. Nothing else.
The specialist tool isn't cheaper because it's cutting corners. It's cheaper because you're not subsidizing features your firm doesn't deploy. And critically: it will outperform a platform at the one job you actually depend on — managing project correspondence reliably and retrieving it instantly.
If that's your problem, the specialist tool isn't an alternative. It's the right solution.
Making the decision
The Konekt migration forces a moment of clarity. You're going to renew your platform costs anyway, so this is the moment to ask: is a platform the right tool for what I actually do?
If your team relies on email management and project filing above all else — if the other modules are nice to have but not essential — then a platform isn't the right answer. You're paying for complexity you don't need and getting a second-rate solution to your primary problem.
Ideagen Mail Manager is purpose-built for AEC project teams. It will solve the problem better, cost less and integrate seamlessly with the systems you already use.
The migration moment is your opportunity to move to a solution that actually matches how you work.
