Gateway — Standard
$1,000
Flat · first 8 hours
- Stock Inductive Automation modules
- Full gateway backup review
- Ranked findings with evidence
- Executable remediation plan
- Diagrams and quick wins
Pricing
Every number we charge, published.
If a rate is not on this page, we do not bill it. No discovery fee, no negotiation required to find out what this costs, and no bundle pricing to work through — you pay for the items you have.
Third-party modules
Gateway — Advanced
$2,000
Flat · first 16 hours
- Everything in Standard
- Sepasoft, Cirrus Link, or custom modules
- Module acquisition and restore handling
- Explicit note on anything not inspectable
- Tier confirmed from your backup before you pay
PLC or Database
$1,000
Each · flat
- Rockwell PLC program — $1,000 per PLC
- MySQL / MSSQL — $1,000 per connection
- L5K or L5X exports only
- Up to 100 tables per connection
- Same packet, same walkthrough call
One thousand dollars per item. That is the whole calculation. Per gateway, per PLC, per database connection — counted separately, added up. No bundle discounts, no minimum to work around, no quote to wait for.
A gateway with two PLCs and one database connection is $1,000 + $2,000 + $1,000 = $4,000. You get the itemized total in writing before you pay anything, and it does not move afterward.
Consultation
Ignition license selection — one hour
Work out which Inductive Automation license actually fits what you are building, before you commit budget to the wrong one. Which edition, which modules, Perspective versus Vision, what redundancy and Edge would cost, and which modules you are being sold that you will not use.
No analysis engagement required. We do not resell licenses and earn nothing from what you choose. Written summary afterward so you can forward it to whoever approves it.
How payment works
Card up front. Full refund if it is not what we described.
We are a small shop, and chasing invoices is time better spent on analysis. So payment is simple, and the risk of paying first is carried by us, not by you.
You approve the scope
After the free scoping message we send the itemized total — tier, PLC count, connection count — and a payment link. No deposit schedule, no surprise line items later.
Pay by card, work starts
One card payment through a standard secure checkout. We never see your card details. Work begins the same day the payment clears and the files arrive.
Not what we described? Refunded.
If the packet does not contain what this site says it contains, tell us within 14 days of delivery and we refund the engagement in full. No argument, no restocking fee.
Need a PO and net-30 instead? Plenty of plants cannot pay by card, and that is fine — say so in your first message and we will invoice on delivery with standard net-30 terms. We complete vendor onboarding forms, W-9, and certificate of insurance requests like any other supplier.
Everything else
The rest of the rate card
Most engagements never touch a single line below. They are published anyway, because finding out about a rate after the fact is the thing everyone hates about consultants.
| Item | Rate | When it applies |
|---|---|---|
| Scoping conversation | $0 | Fifteen minutes to work out whether this is worth doing, and to give you the itemized total. If it is not worth doing, we say so and you have spent nothing. |
| Backup walkthrough on Teams or Meet | $0 | Help taking a gateway backup, sanitizing it, or exporting an L5K from Studio 5000. Before any money changes hands. |
| Database connection over 100 tables | Re-quoted | Re-quoted before work starts, never after. A 400-table connection is a different job from a 40-table one and we will not pretend otherwise. Rockwell PLC exports are bounded in size, so PLC pricing is genuinely flat — no asterisk. |
| Hours beyond the included block | $125 / hr | Only with your written approval, given before we start those hours. Once we see the size of your files we either confirm the flat rate covers it or quote the difference. |
| Re-analysis after your team does the work | 50% | Half the original engagement price, same scope, run again within 12 months to confirm the fixes landed and catch what has drifted. |
| Additional walkthrough calls | $125 / hr | The first hour is included per engagement, and so are thirty days of email questions after delivery. Most customers never buy a second call. |
| Rush turnaround — 48 hours | + $400 | Subject to availability. We will tell you honestly if we cannot hit it rather than take the money and miss. |
| Onsite work | By quote | Onsite means flights or mileage, lodging, per diem, and paid transit time, and those costs land on your invoice before a single hour of analysis is done. The same work done remotely costs a fraction of that and is usually finished sooner. We will suggest remote first, and tell you when onsite is not worth what it costs you. |
Why it costs this
Narrow scope, published rates. That is the whole model.
We only do what we are good at
Ignition, Rockwell, MySQL and MSSQL. Refusing everything else is what lets us quote a flat number instead of an open-ended estimate with a discovery phase attached.
The work is genuinely faster now
What used to be two weeks of an engineer reading configuration files is now a few days. We priced this at what it costs to deliver today, not at what the work used to cost by hand.
The rate is the same for everyone
We publish it because you should be able to judge whether this is worth your time without booking a call. It also keeps us honest: the number does not move based on how large your company looks.
Questions
What people ask before buying
Can I see what the report actually looks like first?
Yes, and you do not have to give us an email address to do it. A complete sample packet for a fictional plant is published at sample report — the full structure, ten worked findings with evidence, the phased plan, and the limitations page.
How do I know whether I need standard or advanced?
We tell you during scoping, before you pay. The installed-module list is readable straight from the gateway backup header, so if Sepasoft, Cirrus Link, or a custom module is present we see it immediately. You are quoted once and never upgraded mid-engagement.
What if you cannot get hold of one of my modules?
Then we tell you, and that portion of the system is documented as unverified rather than silently skipped. If it turns out a module makes a meaningful part of the analysis impossible, we will say so before taking payment — or refund it if we only discover it afterward.
I have 30 PLCs. Do I have to buy all of them?
No, and you should not. Start with the gateway analysis plus the two or three PLCs that actually worry you — the ones nobody wants to touch, or the line that keeps stopping. The findings from those usually tell you whether the rest are worth doing at all, because trouble in a plant is rarely evenly distributed.
We would rather sell you three and have you come back than quote you thirty and hear nothing. Tell us which lines cause the most grief and we will suggest where to start.
Why won't you look at my Siemens PLC?
Because we have not spent years in it, and you should not pay someone to learn on your system. The same applies to PostgreSQL and Oracle. It is a narrow service on purpose — that is what makes the flat rate honest.
Why do I pay before you deliver?
Because chasing invoices is time better spent on analysis, and keeping that overhead out of the business is part of what holds the rate down. The trade is the refund: if the packet is not what this site describes, tell us within 14 days and we refund in full. If your AP process requires a PO and net-30, say so up front and we will invoice that way.
Do you work with older Ignition versions?
Yes, 7.9 through current. If you are on 7.9, part of the deliverable is an honest assessment of what upgrading actually costs you — including the case for staying where you are.
What if the analysis finds nothing serious?
Then you get a clean, current document of your system and written confirmation that it is in good shape, which is worth having on file for the next audit or the next hire. We say so plainly rather than inventing findings to justify the invoice.
No quote required. The price is the price.
Tell us your Ignition version, roughly how big the system is, and how many PLCs and database connections you have. We will send the itemized total.
Start an analysis