Marg's renewal keeps going up. Where should you shift?
This is written by someone who sells competing software. So everything below is either a figure you can check yourself or a link to the customer saying it, and there is a section near the end on when you should ignore me and stay on Marg.
What is actually documented
Two things are easy to verify and worth separating.
Marg does not publish a price. On Capterra the starting price for MARG ERP 9+ reads "Contact vendor for pricing." On Software Advice, "pricing available upon request." Neither lists a free trial or a free version. Third-party sites that try to fill the gap quote the Basic edition anywhere between ₹7,200 and ₹10,300, before 18% GST — a spread that tells you the number depends on which dealer you walk into.
The renewal is what customers complain about. On Trustpilot, Marg sits at 2.6 out of 5 across 110 reviews. The complaints are specific, and they are about money:
"nonuser friendly with overpriced renewal cost. it's the way marg people exploit it's customer by first selling there software and after that they make money in renewal time."
"they keep charging for features already included in the software from time to time even after renewing the license anually."
On Software Advice, a customer of ten years describes their AMC going from ₹2,500 to ₹5,500 plus GST while the company's own site advertised ₹4,500 — "price difference for same service dealer to dealer." Others report that policies change "every now and then, and that too for old customers."
Across Capterra and Software Advice the score is 3.2 out of 5 from 54 reviews, unusually split — 41% five-star, 39% one-star — with support the weakest category at 2.9.
I could not find a primary source confirming any single across-the-board price rise, so I am not going to claim one. What is documented is narrower and, for your purposes, worse: the renewal is where the increases land, it is set by your dealer, and you cannot check it against a published rate.
Why it climbs
The structure explains the complaints better than any accusation does.
The licence is one-time. The Annual Renewal Contract is not, and aggregators put it at 25% to 35% of the licence cost, every year. Take Silver at ₹12,600. A quarter to a third of that is ₹3,150 to ₹4,410 a year, plus GST.
Run it out five years:
| Licence | 4 renewals | Five-year total | |
|---|---|---|---|
| At 25% | ₹12,600 | ₹12,600 | ₹25,200 |
| At 35% | ₹12,600 | ₹17,640 | ₹30,240 |
Add 18% GST to all of it. The renewals cost as much as the software did, or more, within four years — and unlike the licence, that figure is quoted to you fresh each time by someone whose margin depends on it.
That is not a scandal. It is a perfectly normal perpetual-licence-plus-AMC model, and it was the standard way to sell software for thirty years. But it is why "how much does Marg cost" has no answer, and why the number you were told in year one stops being the number in year five.
Before you shift, answer this
Most people asking "what should I move to" are answering the wrong question. Software cost is rarely the thing actually costing you.
Watch your own evening. If the bottleneck is a stack of supplier bills and somebody typing them in — item, quantity, rate, tax, batch, line by line, forty bills in three hours — then switching ERP does not fix it. Data entry is data entry. Every option below hands you the same typing, except one, and that one is not a replacement for your ledger.
So: are you paying too much for software, or are you paying for the wrong thing entirely? The answers differ.
Where to shift
An honest shortlist, including the option I do not get paid for.
Stay on Marg
Seriously consider it if any of these is true:
- You bill offline. In a godown with patchy internet, offline billing is not a feature, it decides whether you can invoice at all. Every cloud option here — mine included — loses this outright.
- You are a pharma distributor leaning on batch, expiry and scheme handling. Marg has two decades of edge cases in it. We support batch and expiry too, and we are far younger at it.
- Your dealer actually turns up. The average review score says nothing about your particular dealer. A person who arrives when billing is down on a Saturday is worth paying for.
If those are what you are buying, you are buying the right thing, and a 30% AMC is the price of it.
Vyapar
Cheaper and much simpler. A Trustpilot reviewer comparing the two cites "7500/- for 3 years" against Marg's renewal model. Good for retail and small trading. Weaker once you need real distribution depth — schemes, multi-rate structures, serious stock control.
Busy, or staying with Tally
Accounting-first, like Marg. Sensible if what you actually want is a ledger your CA is fluent in, and you can live with the same data entry. We wrote separately on why replacing Tally is usually the wrong move, and the reasoning transfers.
Dhela
Worth a look for one specific problem, and it is not "cheaper ERP":
- You photograph supplier bills instead of typing them, and the lines, HSN, batch and expiry are read off the page.
- Cost is computed from what you actually paid after discount, not the printed rate, so margins stop drifting.
- Dead stock and receivables ageing are a screen rather than an afternoon in a spreadsheet.
Our price, since the complaint is that nobody can find Marg's: ₹0, ₹3,999 a year, or ₹7,999 a year. GST included. No dealer quote, no AMC, no separate renewal. The free tier is a tier, not a trial that expires.
And what it is not: not an accounting package, no offline billing, no local dealer, and it prepares GST working papers rather than filing returns. If you need a ledger, keep the one you have.
What moving actually costs you
The reason people stay on software they have outgrown is the thought of retyping years of masters.
Export your item list, suppliers and retailers from Marg as CSV and paste them in. The columns are read for you whatever they are called — Item Description, Bal. Qty, Landing Cost, Op. Bal all land in the right place — and you see exactly what will happen before anything is saved.
Two things said up front rather than discovered later:
- Past invoices do not come across, deliberately. Importing years of transactions would restate stock that has already moved and double-count GST you have already filed. Your old system stays the record of what it recorded.
- An import can be undone. Wrong export, one button, back where you were — except anything already billed against, which is left alone on purpose.
The short version
Marg's problem is not that it is expensive. It is that the price is unknowable in advance, set by your dealer, and renewed on terms you cannot check — and the renewal quietly matches the licence cost within about four years.
If you bill offline, or you are deep in pharma, or your dealer is good, stay. That is a real trade and it is worth the money.
If what you actually want back is your evenings, the thing to change is not which ERP you licence. Try it for nothing at dhela.in, and leave your books exactly where they are.