Duck Creek Alternatives for Small MGAs in 2027: 7 Picks

Duck Creek is built for carriers, so start with MGA-first platforms

Choosing a Duck Creek alternative is a core-system decision, so the first question is category, not features. A policy administration system (PAS) is the system of record that quotes, issues, endorses, renews and bills policies. Duck Creek's product page lists Policy, Rating, Billing, Claims and Send Underwriting, says "Leading global carriers trust Duck Creek," and names no MGA-specific product. A small MGA should therefore compare MGA-first platforms on whether they can run the MGA's own workflows, not on how many modules they list.

The MGA segment that these platforms serve is large. MGA direct premium: $108.7 billion in 2025 according to Risk & Insurance (2025 data), up 17.8% from 2024. The same article reports that nearly 800 unique MGAs met the NAIC reporting threshold in 2025, according to Risk & Insurance (2025 data), and AM Best says that count likely understates the market because smaller relationships fall below the disclosure threshold. Conning's broader estimate is about $128 billion for 2025, according to Insurance Business (2025), because it includes Lloyd's business and premium that statutory filings do not capture.

TL;DR: shortlist platforms that publish their scope and plan limits, ask each vendor for a written cost that includes implementation and migration, and confirm export or API access before you sign. Of the seven vendors profiled here, only Pallis publishes tier prices on the pages I read.

Key Takeaways

• Duck Creek's own product page targets carriers and names no MGA-specific product, so the realistic shortlist is MGA-first platforms.

• Of the seven vendors profiled, only Pallis publishes tier prices on the pages I read, and its Starter plan costs $399 a month on monthly billing.

• Pallis's Starter plan caps a book at 500 policies a year and 5 lines of business, so a growing MGA may need to move up a tier.

• Six of the seven vendors state pricing as quote-based, so ask each for a written cost that includes implementation, migration and seats.

• Majesco's "months to weeks" implementation claim has no published baseline, so ask for a reference that writes your lines.

• An orchestration layer runs above the core and does not replace one, so plan export or API access before you choose.

How we evaluated these options

We weighted six criteria for a small MGA buyer, covering the things that decide whether a platform can run the business and whether the cost is knowable. The weights are our analysis, not market statistics. Every vendor fact in this guide comes from a page opened for this research, and where a vendor publishes nothing we say so.

We excluded two names that came up in research. Socotra's site targets insurers and lists insurer clients without mentioning MGAs. Bold Penguin's site describes submission ingestion, market access and coverage tools for brokers and carriers, and it does not describe MGA policy administration, claims or billing. Both may suit other needs.

The weights sum to 100%. Scope carries the most weight because a core that cannot issue and renew policies fails whatever its price.

Feature matrix: what each vendor publishes

"Stated" means the vendor page I opened describes the function. "Not itemized" means I could not find it on the pages opened, which does not prove the function is missing.

The most useful row for a small buyer is the API column. Pallis lists read-only API access on Scale and full API access on Enterprise, so a Starter buyer should plan on exports rather than APIs.

Pricing and cost math

Pricing checked November 13, 2026. Six of the seven vendors publish no figures and quote scope instead, as Table 3 shows. The exception is Pallis, which prices by tier and by gross written premium.

Pallis's monthly and annual figures are according to Pallis (undated vendor page). That page is hosted on a pages.dev address, so confirm the vendor's domain before you rely on it.

Starter tier, under $10M GWP: $399 per month according to Pallis (undated vendor page). Pallis states that it "is priced on gross written premium," and the platform fee scales with the book. Its Starter tier includes policy and claims management, bordereaux with four carrier templates, a carrier submission pipeline, renewal intelligence, an audit log and migration through Pallis Connect. It excludes the insured portal and Intelligence Pro.

Table 4 shows the limits that drive tier changes. The policy caps, seat counts and extra-seat prices come from the same Pallis pricing page. Extra seats cost $29 a month on Starter and Growth and $25 a month on Scale.

The worked example below is illustrative, not a customer result. An MGA with three carriers writes 1,800 policy transactions a month and checks each carrier's bordereau by hand at 4 minutes per transaction, which is 7,200 minutes, or 120 hours of staff time. If a core export lets a proposed workflow flag only the 3% of rows that do not match, 54 rows remain for review at 4 minutes each, or 3.6 hours, so about 116.4 hours a month return to staff. The 4 minutes and the 3% are assumptions to replace with your own log data. The flagged rows link to renewal deals in HubSpot, where the owner is set through hubspot_owner_id on the deal record, so the reviewer sees who acts on each exception.

Vendor profiles: best fit, limits and rollout evidence

Each profile separates what the vendor states from what I could not verify. Vendor claims are labelled as claims.

OneShield

OneShield offers two platforms for MGAs, MGUs and program administrators. Market Solutions is a managed-service system with pre-loaded insurance content, and Pre-built content: 60+ lines of business according to OneShield (undated vendor page). OneShield Enterprise is positioned for large MGAs and delegated programs. Best fit: an MGA that wants pre-built content and a managed implementation. The limits are that the page gives no MGA size thresholds and no fee amounts, so you must confirm that your lines sit inside the pre-built set. OneShield says it "leads all implementations directly," and that new programs are set up through configuration, not custom code, according to OneShield's MGA page. Red flag: you need custom rating code.

Insurity Pro Suite

Insurity Pro Suite was previously called Sure MGA, and trade coverage dated September 5, 2025 reports the rename, according to fintech.global (2025). Insurity describes it as "modular core software for growing carriers & MGAs," with self-service configuration for new products and lines, configurable rules that process or decline simple submissions, and support for managing capacity-provider relationships. Best fit: an MGA that launches products often and wants staff to configure rather than code, or that works with capacity providers. Limitations: the pages I opened do not itemize policy, billing or claims modules, and the claim that Pro Suite costs "a fraction of the cost of other core platforms" is unverified marketing. Pricing is quote-based, and no implementation timeline is published.

Majesco P&C CoreConnect

Majesco positions CoreConnect for MGAs and MGUs, with quoting, rating, binding, policy issuance, endorsements and renewals in one workflow. The policy page says it can run as a stand-alone product that integrates with portals and services. Best fit: an MGA or MGU that wants a pre-configured MGA setup. Limitations: the policy page does not mention commissions, and I did not find documentation of carrier-payable commission runs, so ask for a live walkthrough. Majesco's MGA Model Office, announced October 23, 2025, claims it is "reducing implementation timelines from months to weeks," according to Majesco (2025). That is a vendor claim with no baseline or customer example. Majesco also closed its acquisition of Vitech on January 8, 2026, according to Majesco (2026). The release describes Vitech as pension and benefits administration and states no change to P&C MGA products.

VRC Verity

VRC describes Verity as a "performance-based agency management system for MGAs and wholesale brokers." Its feature list covers quoting and policy issuance, claims administration, billing and accounting, surplus lines and carrier reporting, and bordereaux uploads. Best fit: MGAs and wholesale brokers that want quoting, issuance, claims and accounting in one system. VRC joined the AAIS Partner Program on September 22, 2025, according to AAIS (2025), which gives VRC access to AAIS filed rates and forms for admitted lines. Limitations: the Verity page names "API Connect" but describes no API, lists no hosting options and publishes no prices. Ask for API documentation before you choose.

BriteCore

BriteCore's MGA page calls its product a "cloud-native policy administration system," with reporting dashboards, configurable rating rules, and training and ongoing support. Best fit: an MGA that wants a cloud policy system with configurable reporting and a vendor-supported launch. Limitations: the MGA page gives no commission detail and only a link headline for billing, and its one testimonial comes from a P&C provider rather than an MGA. A dedicated Duck Creek replacement page on BriteCore's site did not load during research, so treat any migration claim as unverified. Pricing is quote-based, and the only call to action on the page is a request for a demonstration.

Insly

Insly's own stack guide, which is vendor content, says its platform "covers product building, distribution, policy admin, bordereaux, claims, and AI in a single system," as set out in Insly's stack guide. Best fit: an MGA that wants product launches, distribution, claims and reporting from one vendor. Its pricing page describes an MGA plan with a monthly base fee plus modules, unlimited users, and implementation at a "fixed fee or PAYG depending on size and scope." Limitations: the pricing page lists both plans as "Starting from" with no amount, the guide does not describe policy admin or billing in detail, and it names no integrations or API documentation. Red flag: you need detailed commission and billing documentation before you sign.

Pallis

Pallis prices by gross written premium, and its tiers are set out above. Best fit: an MGA under $10M GWP with a small book that wants published prices. Starter caps the book at 500 policies a year and 5 lines of business, so a book that outgrows those limits needs Growth, which adds the insured portal and multi-carrier parallel submit. Scale adds read-only API access, and Enterprise adds full API access, SSO and multi-entity support. Limitations: the Starter cap, a founding-cohort discount that the page describes as time-boxed, and a premium finance commission of 1–1.5% on financed volume that applies only on Scale and Enterprise. The pricing page is hosted on a pages.dev address, so request references and confirm the contract entity before you sign.

Where an orchestration layer fits above the core

US Tech Automations is an orchestration layer. It does not replace any policy system in this guide. It sits above the core you choose and runs the cross-system steps the core does not handle, such as assembling carrier reports and creating renewal tasks. For the workflow-tools side of this decision, see our guide to workflow tools for wholesalers and MGAs.

The first proposed, configurable workflow is bordereau drafting. The trigger is the month-end close date set in the core. The action pulls the month's policy transactions through the core's export file or API, maps them to each carrier's template, and totals each carrier's premium against the core. The output is a draft bordereau per carrier with mismatches listed. Prerequisites are an export or API the core exposes, each carrier's template specification and a named owner per carrier. The human review point is an ops lead who approves each draft before it goes to a carrier. This is a design, not a deployed workflow or a measured result.

The second proposed, configurable workflow is renewal tasks. The trigger is a policy reaching a renewal window set in the core. The action creates a deal record in HubSpot, assigns the owner and drafts a broker email from an approved template. The output is a task queue and draft emails. Prerequisites are HubSpot API access and the core's renewal list export. The human review point is an underwriter who approves terms, and nothing is sent without that approval.

The realistic alternative for many small MGAs is stitching these steps together in Zapier, Make or n8n, or building them in-house. Those tools can support run histories, retries, error branches and audit evidence when they are configured. Make's error-handler help page lists Skip, Retry, Resume, Commit and Rollback as built-in error routes. The buyer must still design and own observability, idempotency, escalation, access controls and maintenance. A proposed US Tech Automations design could configure one run log per month-end, an approval gate before any carrier submission, and escalation to a named owner, but each of those needs API or export access and a person who signs off.

When NOT to use US Tech Automations: skip the layer if you have no system of record yet, because the PAS choice comes first. Skip it if one or two steps run reliably in a Zapier or Make scenario that you maintain. Skip it if your carriers accept only portal uploads with no export, since the workflow has no data to start from.

Who this is for, a checklist, and common mistakes

Who this is for: owners and operations leads at small MGAs who are close to choosing a core and need to confirm scope, cost and data access before they sign. It fits a firm that writes through carriers and wants to replace a carrier-scale core. Red flags: you expect a fixed monthly price with no written quote, your book requires custom rating code, or your annual policy count already exceeds the plan cap you are considering.

Decision checklist:

• Confirm that your policy count and lines of business fit the tier you are quoted.

• Ask for a written cost that covers licence, implementation, migration and seats.

• Get export or API access confirmed in writing for the tier you will buy.

• Ask for one reference from a firm with your lines and a similar carrier count.

• Ask for a live walkthrough of commissions and carrier payables.

Common mistakes:

• Treating "months to weeks" as a measured timeline.

• Comparing module counts instead of the workflows you run each month.

• Buying a PAS without planning the export your bordereau or renewal work will need.

• Assuming a Starter plan includes API access.

Questions buyers ask

Is Duck Creek the right core for a small MGA?

Usually not as a first choice, because Duck Creek's own product page targets carriers and names no MGA-specific product. Start with MGA-first platforms and bring Duck Creek back only if your scale and carrier relationships justify a carrier-grade core.

Which alternative publishes prices?

Pallis is the only one of the seven vendors that publishes tier prices on the pages I read. Pallis's Starter plan costs $399 a month on monthly billing, or $339 a month on annual billing.

Can a small MGA go live in weeks?

Vendors claim it, but none of the alternatives here publishes a measured baseline. Majesco's "months to weeks" is a press-release claim, and Insly's pricing page ties implementation to scope and size. Ask for a reference that matches your lines before you trust a timeline.

Do I need a workflow layer if I pick a core?

Often yes, for cross-system steps such as carrier reports and renewal tasks. It works only after the core exposes data through an export or an API.

Why were Socotra and Bold Penguin left out?

Socotra's site targets insurers and does not describe MGA use. Bold Penguin's site covers broker submission and market access rather than MGA policy administration.

Shortlist two, then ask for written numbers

For most small MGAs, shortlist two platforms whose scope matches your lines, then request written quotes that include implementation, migration and seats. Confirm export or API access in writing before you sign. To see how the workflow layer above the core would be configured, see how US Tech Automations configures this.