Benefitfocus vs Ease 2026: What Brokers Do as Ease Retires

Benefitfocus vs Ease: the category decision changed in June 2026

A benefits enrollment platform is the system where employees choose coverage, where a broker tracks every client group, and where eligibility and election data flow out to carriers and payroll.

TL;DR: Ease is being retired, so for a broker who is still choosing, the real comparison is Benefitfocus against Employee Navigator, the product Ease is folding into. Benefitfocus is the stable, carrier-and-employer-oriented option with quote-based pricing. Ease is only a sensible choice for the groups you already have on it, and only until the migration deadline.

Here are the ownership facts, because they decide everything else. Benefitfocus belongs to Voya Financial, which completed the acquisition on Voya completed the Benefitfocus acquisition: January 24, 2023 according to Voya (2023). Ease belongs to Employee Navigator, which bought it in April 2023 and announced on June 3, 2026 that it will retire the product. Ease becomes read-only: July 1, 2027 according to Employee Navigator (2026), and the same announcement says new companies can no longer be added to Ease from January 1, 2027, while integrations and customer support are discontinued after the read-only date.

That makes this a very different search than the one you typed. A broker comparing the two today is not choosing between two equal long-term options. One has a published end date and the other is still shipping new capability, including Individual Off-Exchange tools that Benefitfocus announced on May 28, 2026, according to Benefitfocus (2026).

Everything below separates two kinds of content. Statements with a citation are facts from pages opened on October 12, 2026. Paragraphs labeled "Analysis" are our reading of those facts, built from public information only. We did not run either product, and nothing here describes a hands-on test.

Key Takeaways

• Ease is being sunset by its owner: Add Company is disabled on January 1, 2027, and the product is read-only from July 1, 2027, so it is not a safe new purchase.

• Benefitfocus is owned by Voya, is quote-based on price, and shows stronger publicly evidenced coverage on 11 of the 17 capabilities where it differs from Ease, including carrier billing and 834 feeds.

• Ease still has the stronger evidenced broker toolkit (multi-client tools, quoting and proposals, e-signatures), which is why many brokers will want the same toolkit in Employee Navigator.

• Neither Benefitfocus nor Ease publishes a base subscription price; the only published Ease dollar figures are add-ons, and Employee Navigator publishes only an 834 EDI rate.

• The expensive part of a switch is usually not the license. It is the group-by-group migration, payroll and carrier retesting, and employee communication around open enrollment.

• Build a migration tracker with named human approvals before you commit, whether you use a spreadsheet, a no-code tool or a configured workflow.

Who this is for

This guide is for a benefits broker or agency that manages enrollment for several employer groups and has to decide where those groups live next year. It also suits an operations lead at an agency who has inherited the Ease migration and wants to compare the alternatives before choosing a destination.

It is less useful for a single employer buying benefits software for its own staff, because the broker-facing tools (multi-client views, quoting, proposals) carry a lot of the weight in the analysis below.

Red flags: you plan to onboard new client groups onto Ease after January 1, 2027; you need an ERP or HCM connector such as SAP or Workday and are looking at a product with none listed; you cannot get a written migration and cutover plan from a vendor before signing.

How we evaluated these platforms

We weighted six criteria for a broker who is close to a decision. The weights are our analysis, not vendor data, and you should change them to match how your book of business actually runs. The rank column shows which criterion we would settle first.

Evidence for each criterion comes from vendor pages, the vendors' own announcements, and two independent write-ups. One is a capability-by-capability comparison from ERP Research. The other is a broker-side migration guide from Relational Advisors. A caveat on the first: it defines "not evidenced" as no public documentation found, so a missing row means a question for the vendor, not a proven gap.

Normalized feature matrix

The matrix below normalizes what the public record shows for each product as of the research date. Where a cell says "Not evidenced," ERP Research found no public documentation, which is different from "not offered."

The lead counts come from the comparison page at ERP Research, which reports that Benefitfocus has Benefitfocus leads on 11 of 17 differing capabilities according to ERP Research (2026), and that the two products grade identically on the other 36 of the 53 capabilities in its taxonomy. The same table shows why you cannot treat any single comparison site as final: the 834 row is a clear case where the independent write-up and the vendor's pricing page do not line up.

Analysis: the matrix splits cleanly. Benefitfocus is stronger where data moves between systems (billing, carriers, life events, enterprise integrations). Ease is stronger where a broker works with many small clients (multi-client tools, quoting, proposals, signatures). If your daily pain is the second list, you are probably shopping for Employee Navigator, not for Benefitfocus.

Pricing and total cost of ownership

Neither product publishes a base subscription price, so the honest answer for the head-to-head is "Quote-based" on both. The table lists everything that is public, including the Employee Navigator figures because Employee Navigator is where Ease customers are being sent.

Pricing checked October 12, 2026. PEPM means per employee per month.

Ease's pricing page states that each of its tiers is priced by employee count and agency users and sends buyers to schedule a demo, and its published add-on rate is Broker rate for the Modernize add-on: $1 PEPM according to Ease (2026). For Employee Navigator, the only per-employee figure on its pricing page is Employee Navigator 834 EDI fee: $0.45 PEPM according to Employee Navigator (2026), and that applies only to two plans, with the Enhanced plan not including 834 EDI at all. The Benefitfocus listing at ERP Research says cost depends on employee count, the modules you pick, and the complexity of carrier and payroll integrations, and that no free trial is offered, which matches the absence of any price on Benefitfocus's own pages.

The following table puts the dates that drive cost into one place, because a deadline is a cost.

The two migration windows come from Relational Advisors, which advises moving either about two months before open enrollment so plans, integrations and the enrollment period can all run in the new system, or about two months after open enrollment so the old system finishes the cycle first, according to Relational Advisors (2026).

Analysis: total cost for a broker has four parts, and only the first is a license line. You pay for the platform, you pay for carrier and payroll connectivity, you pay in staff hours to move and retest each group, and you pay for employee support during the first cycle on a new login. Ask both vendors for the all-in first-year figure at your actual employee count, with every integration listed, in writing.

A worked example of the migration math

Here is an illustrative scenario with assumptions you should replace with your own numbers. A broker has 40 groups on Ease averaging 50 employees each, which is 2,000 employees. At the published broker rate for the Modernize add-on of $1 PEPM, that is 2,000 × $1 × 12 = $24,000 a year, a figure worth comparing against any quote. If the destination plan charges the published 834 EDI rate of $0.45 PEPM, the carrier feed alone adds 2,000 × $0.45 × 12 = $10,800 a year. On the labor side, assume three coordination touches per group (kickoff, data-audit reminder, go-live confirmation) at 15 minutes each by hand, which is 40 × 3 × 15 = 1,800 minutes, or 30 hours. If a proposed workflow drafts those messages from the group's record and a coordinator only reviews them at 5 minutes each, the effort is 40 × 3 × 5 = 600 minutes, or 10 hours, saving 20 hours; at an assumed loaded cost of $40 an hour that is $800 per migration wave. The workflow would write each group's stage to the HR contact's hs_lead_status property in HubSpot, a documented contact property, so the stage is visible in the CRM the agency already uses. The savings are small next to license lines, which is the point: the money is in the vendor quote, and the automation only makes the schedule reliable.

Benefitfocus profile

Best fit: a broker whose clients include larger employers or health plans, or who needs enterprise connectivity into SAP or Workday. Benefitfocus's own broker page frames the product around four areas: employee experience, benefits administration (system integration, billing and compliance services), analytics and benchmarking tools built for brokers, and a Benefit Catalog for adding voluntary products, according to Benefitfocus (2026).

Strengths: ERP Research evidences carrier connectivity in all six of the carrier and payroll items it tracks for Benefitfocus, plus consolidated billing and reconciliation. In total, Benefitfocus capabilities evidenced: 18 of 53 according to ERP Research (2026), with two more rated partial. It lists a bi-directional SAP connector and a Workday connector for open enrollment, onboarding, termination and life-event data.

Limitations: the same ERP Research listing shows zero evidenced items under broker and advisory services, plan design and configuration, and consumer-directed accounts, which is a documentation finding rather than proof of absence, but it is a reason to demand a live walkthrough of broker views, quoting and proposal flows. Benefitfocus's broker page does not describe quoting or implementation steps, and no commission, pricing or performance figures appear there.

Implementation: Benefitfocus publishes no implementation timeline on the pages opened for this guide. Ask for a written plan that names the carrier feeds, payroll connections and cutover dates for your groups, and ask who owns each step.

Disqualifiers: if your book is mostly small groups and your team lives in quoting, proposals and multi-client dashboards, you will want to see those workflows working before you sign. If you need a published price to take to a client, you will not get one.

Ease profile

Best fit: an existing Ease broker who is keeping current groups stable for a bounded period while planning a move. Ease was built for small business and mid-market clients, per ERP Research, and its public strengths are broker multi-client tools, quoting and proposals, e-signatures and enrollment confirmations.

Limitations: the end date is the limitation. Employee Navigator's announcement says Add Company is disabled on January 1, 2027, existing companies are unaffected until the read-only date, and integrations and customer support are discontinued after July 1, 2027. The company also says 95% of Ease companies can upgrade to Employee Navigator without losing functionality, with a target of 98.5% by the end of June 2026, which is a vendor claim and worth testing against your own groups.

Implementation: moving off Ease is a group-by-group process, and brokers choose the pace using a migration tool. Relational Advisors lists the pitfalls to plan for: Employee Navigator requires Social Security numbers at setup where Ease allowed them later, workflows for terminations and required fields differ, saving is manual rather than automatic, payroll pay schedules must be correct to avoid wrong deductions, and employees face a changed login during open enrollment.

Disqualifiers: do not choose Ease for any group you would add after January 1, 2027, and do not choose it where the carrier or payroll integration you rely on is not guaranteed past July 1, 2027.

Employee Navigator, the third option the query leaves out

Employee Navigator is not the product you searched for, but it is the product that Ease customers are being moved to, so a broker choosing today should price it alongside Benefitfocus. Its pricing page lists four plans (Enhanced, Enhanced Plus, Elite and Platinum) with no published base price, and it markets more than 600 integrations on its site navigation. Employee Navigator's own communications also say Ease fees have stayed unchanged for three years and that Ease brokers will be re-contracted starting in the second quarter of 2026.

Analysis: Employee Navigator inherits the broker-tool strengths that Ease is publicly credited with, but the evidence on carrier billing and enterprise connectors sits with Benefitfocus. The cleanest way to decide is to build a one-page scorecard from the six criteria above, run the same ten sample groups through each vendor's demo, and compare the output against your carriers' file requirements.

Where migration work piles up, and what a proposed workflow could do

The pain in this decision is not choosing a vendor. It is the weeks after, when forty groups each need data cleaned, plans rebuilt, carrier feeds retested and employees warned about a new login. Employee Navigator's 834 guidance makes the same point: the 834 is the standard enrollment format for carriers, requirements vary by carrier and sometimes by carrier division, and teams should confirm each carrier's specifications and bring in an EDI analyst when needed.

A proposed workflow from US Tech Automations could handle the coordination layer. The trigger would be a group's status changing in your migration tracker or CRM. The action would be to assemble a draft message for that group's HR contact, listing the specific data gaps found in an export of the employee file (for example, missing Social Security numbers or inconsistent pay schedules) and the next date on the cutover calendar. The output would be a drafted email and a task for the account manager, with the stage written back to the CRM. The prerequisites are real: a CSV or API export of the group's employee and plan data from the source platform, API access to the CRM, and an agreed list of required fields for the destination platform. A coordinator reviews and approves each message before it goes to a client, and a named person signs off on every carrier-feed test, because the workflow would not validate an 834 file against a carrier's specification.

A second configurable step would handle the reminders around open enrollment. When a group's cutover date is within a set number of days and its data audit is still incomplete, the workflow could draft an escalation to the account manager rather than to the client, include the open items, and log the escalation. Prerequisites are a reliable cutover date field and a defined threshold for what counts as late. Human review points are the escalation decision and any client-facing wording. This is a design, not a deployment, and nothing in it implies a live customer or a measured result.

How this compares to stitching it together yourself

Many agencies will reach for Zapier, Make or n8n, or ask an in-house developer to build the tracker. That is a legitimate choice. Configured well, those tools support run histories, retries and error branches, and they can produce audit evidence. The catch is ownership: your team has to design and maintain observability, idempotency (so a retry does not send a client the same message twice), escalation paths, access controls and the ongoing maintenance when a vendor changes a field. A proposed design from US Tech Automations would configure the same pieces differently: a single run log per group, a human approval gate before any client-facing send, and a documented fallback when an export is missing. Its prerequisites are the same as the DIY route (exports or API access, a field map, named reviewers), and the review points stay with your staff.

When NOT to use US Tech Automations

If you have fewer than a handful of groups to move, a shared spreadsheet and calendar reminders will do the job and cost nothing. If the entire migration is handled by the vendor's own concierge team and your clients never touch a spreadsheet, there is no coordination gap to fill. And if your only need is a payroll or carrier connector, use the vendor's built-in integration instead of an outside workflow, since the native connection will be supported by the platform.

Decision checklist

Use this before you sign with either vendor.

• Confirm in writing whether the product you are signing will still receive updates two years from now.

• Ask for the all-in first-year price at your employee count, with every carrier and payroll integration listed.

• Get each carrier's 834 requirements and ask who builds and tests each feed.

• Run ten real groups, not demo data, through the quoting, enrollment and cutover steps.

• Check that ERP or HCM connectors you need are listed and supported (Benefitfocus names SAP and Workday; Ease lists none).

• Plan the cutover around open enrollment using one of the two roughly two-month windows.

• Name a human approver for every client-facing message and every carrier-feed test.

Common mistakes

• Treating a comparison site as a verdict. "Not evidenced" is a documentation gap, and the 834 row above shows the sources can disagree.

• Starting a new client on Ease because the license is familiar, then paying for a second migration within a year.

• Skipping the data audit. Missing Social Security numbers and wrong pay schedules are the first things that stall onboarding in a new system.

• Migrating in the middle of open enrollment, when a login change confuses employees the most.

• Assuming the first quote includes integrations. Ask for them as line items.

For related background on how group structures change compliance obligations, see our guide to employer association health plans and insurance compliance. Agencies that run enrollment for in-house plans may also find the dental membership platform comparison useful, and agencies drafting open-enrollment communications can review AI writing tools for agencies.

FAQ

Is Ease being discontinued?

Yes, Employee Navigator announced on June 3, 2026 that Ease will move to read-only on July 1, 2027, and that new companies can no longer be added from January 1, 2027.

Which is cheaper, Benefitfocus or Ease?

Neither publishes a base subscription price, so both are quote-based, and the only public Ease dollar figures are add-ons such as $1 PEPM for brokers on the Modernize add-on.

Should a new broker start on Ease in 2026?

No, because new companies cannot be added after January 1, 2027 and the product goes read-only on July 1, 2027, so any new group would need a second migration.

Is Benefitfocus a fit for small groups?

It may be, but the pages opened for this guide list no company-size band for Benefitfocus, so ask for a demonstration with your smallest and largest groups before committing.

How long does it take to move a book off Ease?

There is no single published duration, but all groups must be off Ease before July 1, 2027 and Relational Advisors suggests planning each cutover around two months before or after open enrollment.

Can Zapier, Make or n8n run the migration tracking instead?

Yes, if your team designs and maintains the run logging, retries, duplicate-send protection, access controls and escalation rules, since those tools can support them when configured.

Which platform should you pick

If you already run Ease, treat the choice as Employee Navigator versus Benefitfocus and decide using the six weighted criteria and the checklist above. If you are choosing fresh, skip Ease. Pick Benefitfocus where carrier billing, 834 connectivity and enterprise connectors lead your needs, and pick Employee Navigator where the broker toolkit that Ease is credited with leads your needs.

Whichever you choose, the schedule is the risk, not the license. If you want to see how a migration tracker with human approval gates could be configured for your book, see how US Tech Automations configures this.