Choosing between EDI VAN, AS2, and APIs for your business in 2026 isn't a one-size-fits-all decision. You have to weigh what your partners expect, what your own IT team can manage, and the realities of cost and risk. If you're a CFO, CIO, CTO, IT Director, or EDI Coordinator, the choices you make now will shape both your integration budget and the flexibility of your supply chain for years ahead.
Each option has a core purpose. If you work in a supply chain environment, you'll encounter all three in one way or another—often side by side.
An EDI Value Added Network (VAN) is a managed service that routes, validates, and securely delivers EDI documents between you and your partners. You get a mailbox per partner, protocol conversion, and a fully audited, encrypted path for your transactions. Think of it as a professional mailroom: you connect once, and the VAN manages everything behind the scenes.
AS2 is a protocol for sending documents securely over the internet, directly between two parties. You handle certificates, acknowledgments, and monitoring yourself. It's fast and traceable, but you own every connection—if something goes down, it's on you to fix it and notify partners.
APIs let two software platforms talk in real time, often for accessing live data or pushing orders and status updates. APIs offer a modern way to connect with digital-first partners, but many large retailers and healthcare providers will still require standard EDI documents sent through traditional channels.
Retail, healthcare, manufacturing, and logistics follow a pattern that's steady even as tech trends come and go:
In other words, APIs can speed up internal workflows, but most businesses still need a core fabric based on EDI VAN and AS2 to maintain their network of trading partners.
Using a modern EDI VAN makes sense if you work with a dozen or more trading partners, especially when those partners require a mix of connection types (AS2, SFTP, HTTPS, and more). With a VAN, you avoid the need to build and maintain point-to-point links with each partner. Instead, you have:
The main concern companies often raise is the cost of legacy EDI VANs—recurring fees, rounding up data quantities, mailbox costs, and charges for onboarding or migrations. These practices leave many tech and finance teams frustrated. If you're interested in deeper insights on EDI pricing models, you might find this blog on EDI VAN fees helpful.
AS2 is essential for direct, secure communication with specific partners. Some major retailers and industry groups require it outright. In these cases, you must build, maintain, and monitor each AS2 connection. Doing AS2 right means managing certificates, maintaining high availability, and keeping a watchful eye for delivery confirmations or failures. For a small number of very high-volume partners, this investment can make sense, but scaling AS2 connections to dozens or hundreds of partners is rarely practical for most IT teams.
If you use a modern EDI VAN, you can delegate some or all AS2 management, integrating it alongside your other methods of data exchange.
APIs excel at real-time data transfer and integration with new digital services, whether it's pulling shipping statuses from a carrier or sending orders straight into an ERP. However, most established partners will not migrate away from EDI anytime soon. Many companies, especially in healthcare and retail, rely on traditional EDI for strict compliance, industry certifications, and business continuity.
Your best approach is to use APIs internally, or with partners who support them, while maintaining EDI flows for those who require them. You want a platform that can bridge these two worlds rather than force you to choose between them.
Hidden fees sabotage your EDI budget. The traditional model rounds up document sizes, charges setup and mailbox fees, and adds costs each time you onboard a trading partner. By the time you calculate your effective per-document or per-character cost, it's hard to predict future spend as your business grows or your trading partners change their demands.
Nexus VAN works differently. We charge by the exact kilo-character (KC) transferred, which means no rounding, no mailbox fees, no onboarding or migration surcharges. Packages scale predictably as you grow, and every tier includes technical support and a migration dashboard for full transparency. Finance teams and IT leaders aiming for predictable budgets can dig into our pricing model for full details. For more background on optimizing EDI billing, check out this breakdown on EDI billing.
Switching EDI VANs can feel daunting, especially with business continuity on the line. However, modern migrations are planned, staged, and reversible. We provide a migration dashboard showing every trading partner, document type, and cutover status. You and your EDI team can monitor parallel traffic to ensure that nothing gets dropped during the switch. Our team handles connections to every major VAN worldwide, meaning your partners do not need to change their end. The migration service is included in your monthly fee, so you're not staring down an invoice for a separate project.
If you want guidance on minimizing migration risk or what to check before switching providers, this migration guidecovers best practices and actionable steps.
Every business relying on digital supply chains expects reliability. Your EDI infrastructure should meet or exceed 99.9 percent uptime, with end-to-end encryption (TLS and AES standards), SOC 2 compliance, and detailed audit trails. If you run AS2 yourself, you're responsible for setting these controls and monitoring for issues. A managed EDI VAN service should provide this as a baseline, freeing up your IT team for more strategic work.
Most companies in 2026 benefit from a hybrid pattern:
This approach lets you satisfy partner requirements, control costs, and adopt new technologies on your terms. You do not have to take on extra risk with a migration. With full-service onboarding and parallel traffic testing, you can switch with confidence and transparency, free from the worry of hidden fees or billing surprises.
EDI is not going away, but the ways you can manage it have expanded. If you want to streamline your connections, keep billing predictable, and ensure your team can see, track, and troubleshoot every transaction, a modern EDI VAN with flexible protocol support (including AS2 and API integration) is the practical path. Whether you're responsible for the budget or the tech stack, you can now make choices that prevent overpayment while reducing operational headaches.
To see exactly how this will look for your business, and to compare real cost scenarios, you can explore more about Nexus VAN at https://nexusvan.com. You'll find transparent details about pricing, migration, and integration strategies that fit your needs today and as you grow.
