The renewal quote went up again. Here is what the alternatives actually cost.

Adobe licenses ColdFusion per instance, with a Standard and an Enterprise edition, and Enterprise costs several times Standard. Public list pricing runs into five figures per Enterprise instance, with annual maintenance on top, and real invoices vary widely depending on your agreement, instance count, term and how the deal was negotiated. That variability is precisely why a modelled number from your own contracts is worth more than any published figure — including this one.

Often yes. Lucee is an open-source CFML engine with no per-instance licence fee, and a large proportion of ordinary CFML runs on it with modest changes. The costs that replace the licence fee are the porting effort for Adobe-specific tags and features, commercial support if you want it, and accepting a smaller vendor ecosystem. For estates that are mostly standard CFML it is frequently the fastest payback available. For ones leaning heavily on proprietary Adobe features, the porting effort can approach the cost of leaving CFML altogether — which is the comparison the model makes explicit.

Honestly, it depends, and the timeframe is what decides it. Migration is a real upfront cost with a payback period, typically somewhere between two and four years once you count licences, infrastructure, and the difference between a scarce CFML contractor rate and a mainstream TypeScript hire. If your estate is small and stable, renewing may genuinely be the rational choice. We have told clients exactly that. The point of the model is to find out which case you are in rather than assume.

Four consistently: the contractor premium (CF specialists command a significant multiple over mainstream rates and the pool keeps shrinking), infrastructure sized for per-instance licensing rather than actual load, the recruitment drag when a CF role sits open for months, and the opportunity cost of the features that never get built because changes to the legacy app are slow and risky. The first two are invoices you can find. The last two are usually larger.

We do not act as your procurement agent, but the model is built to be used in that conversation, and a credible, costed alternative is the single strongest lever you have. Clients regularly tell us the review paid for itself in the first negotiation after it. If you want hands-on negotiation support we can recommend specialists.

Ten working days from receiving your contracts and inventory. Most of the elapsed time is gathering the inputs on your side — the licence agreements and the honest picture of what you spend on people. The modelling itself is quick once the numbers are in.

Licence agreements and renewal quotes, an infrastructure inventory, support contracts, and a realistic picture of CF-related staff and contractor spend. All under NDA before anything is shared, and the commercial detail stays with the review team. We can work from redacted contracts if your agreement restricts sharing — it costs a little accuracy, not much.

Then you renew, with a documented, defensible reason and a better negotiating position than you had before. That is a legitimate outcome and we say so when the numbers point there. A review that can only ever recommend the expensive option is not a review, it is a sales process.