Evaluating Newforma Alternatives: A Guide for Architecture and Engineering Firms in 2026

The leading alternatives to Newforma in 2026 are TonicDM, Autodesk Construction Cloud (now renamed Autodesk Forma), and Cogram. TonicDM is a lean, lower-cost tool for filing project emails and running basic construction administration. Autodesk Construction Cloud fits firms standardizing on Autodesk. Cogram is an AI-native platform built for architects and engineers that keeps project email, correspondence, RFIs and submittals, meeting minutes, field reports, and search in one place.

What Newforma does well

Newforma helped create the project information management (PIM) category in 2003 and was, for a time, the go-to solution for architecture and engineering firms. Battery Ventures took a majority stake in Newforma in 2017, and Ethos Capital acquired the company in 2023.

Many design firms we spoke to were clear on what they appreciate in Newforma’s capabilities. Four strengths came up throughout conversations:

A defensible record of project email
The most common reason firms value Newforma is that if used consistently, it keeps a record of project correspondence, which can be critical if a dispute surfaces years later. One long-time user said:

"The biggest thing that I hold tight to with Newforma is the fact that it can maintain email correspondence. We can track our emails, whereas other software is unable to do that well."

Another design firm, after more than a decade of using Newforma, confirms the platform’s strength as a system of record in disputes:

"I enjoy Newforma. I consider it litigation software for documentation purposes."
Search across the project and filesystem access
Firms repeatedly named indexing and search as the feature they would most fear losing. Newforma continuously indexes project folders, so staff can dig up an email, an attachment, or a document from years back:

"One thing the team loves about Newforma is the indexing.”

Firms also appreciate that Newforma overlays an existing file system rather than moving data somewhere new, so people can open project files from inside Newforma without changing how the firm stores anything:

"I always love Newforma because it overlays itself over our traditional file system, so we can view the files within the project folder from within the Newforma project. Just the ability to do that is huge."
RFI, submittal, and transmittal tracking
On the construction administration side, firms rely on Newforma to log and time-stamp who sent what and when. That is both a workflow and a form of protection:

"What Newforma does is it allows us to track that. We can log when it's submitted, when it's reviewed, whether it's approved or sent back with revisions. It really helps us keep things on track."

"We have to be able to track that and time stamp that, because that's a piece that could really hurt the company. You sent this. We responded. That's a very crucial piece, to have that protection."

These Newforma capabilities allow architecture and engineering firms to store project records and make those easily accessible to defend the firm’s work when needed.

Why architecture and engineering firms are migrating from Newforma to alternatives

Despite these strengths, in 2026, many architecture and engineering firms are looking for alternatives to Newforma, motivated by several factors:

The cost structure of Newforma
In our conversations with former and current Newforma customers, firms routinely describe paying for license counts several times larger than the number of people who consistently use the tools. Often this is the result of paying for a bundled product, where only some modules see consistent usage and only by a subset of the licensed user base.

One Head of Technology at a US design firm put the gap plainly: Of the firm's roughly eighty licenses, about a dozen people used the tools regularly, at more than $500 a license. "Too much for what we don't use." That works out to around $40,000 a year to support a dozen active users, most of whom only touched email filing.

Because Newforma is sometimes sold as one bundle rather than by module, firms can't trim down to the parts they rely on. Another firm described their situation as:

"Newforma comes as one package. You pay for a lot of these things that you don't get to use, and I don't want to pay for something and then buy something else to replace it."

Smaller firms often can't reach a workable number at all, because the seat minimums outstrip their team size. One practice of under twenty people found the minimum was around fifty seats, which made the cost per license "way too high."

One firm cut its bill sharply once it measured actual usage against its license total: from roughly $80,000 a year to under $20,000, "based on the numbers and the actual real use.”

For most firms, this mismatch only becomes visible at a renewal, or when a new cost-conscious hire pauses to ask how many people are really using what the firm is paying for.
The split of Newforma’s legacy product (Project Center) and cloud product (Konekt)
Newforma offers both its legacy on-premise product, Project Center, and its cloud product, Konekt. Some firms we spoke with are moving work to Konekt, while others said they expect Newforma to encourage a move over time. Firms described the products as having separate APIs, and several said Konekt does not yet cover every Project Center workflow. This can leave teams split across both: some data and workflows in the cloud, the rest still on-premise, with no clean bridge between them. In our conversations, several firms said this transition was what prompted them to look at alternatives. For firms considering a move, it can be a natural moment to ask whether the destination should still be Newforma. One large architecture practice reported:

"There are many things we do in the legacy version of Newforma that don't exist in the cloud yet... my gut is telling me they're gonna force us into [the migration] sometime."
A perceived slowness of development
In our conversations, firms repeatedly described Newforma as a product that no longer innovates quickly, in a time where technology is going through a fundamental shift with AI and firms expect their software to take real work off their plate. Newforma’s core dates to the mid-2000s. To the people using it, it still looks and behaves that way. One engineering firm said:

"The entire system is legacy. It's not built with AI in mind, so any AI they use is like an add-on."

Some connect the stall in R&D to ownership: after two private equity owners since 2017, some customers read the priority as protecting revenue rather than building. Newforma is working on a cloud successor, but some firms we spoke with describe the pace as slow and the roadmap as always a year out.

Alternatives to Newforma in 2026

Over the last decade, several alternatives to Newforma have emerged. We cover the leading three, TonicDM, Cogram, and ACC in detail below.

The table below compares the leading Newforma alternatives on the jobs architecture and engineering firms care about. The figures come from firms we spoke with and each vendor's published materials.

Capability	Newforma	TonicDM	ACC	Cogram
Best for	Established A/E system of record	Lean, low-cost email and basic CA	Firms consolidating on Autodesk; model coordination	AI-native A/E system of record
Project email of record	Yes, its core strength	Yes	Not built for it; usually paired with a separate tool	Yes, can file project email automatically with AI
RFIs, submittals, transmittals	Yes, deep	Narrower CA tier	Yes (Autodesk Docs and Build)	Yes, with AI-assisted triage
Field reports and punch lists	Yes	No	Limited	Yes, dedicated mobile capture
Meeting minutes	Yes	No	No	Yes, AI notetaker
AI (search, filing, agents)	Add-on, cloud only	Limited	Limited	Built in from the ground up
On-prem or customer-controlled storage	Yes (Project Center)	Cloud only	Cloud only	Yes: your cloud or your own file system
Works alongside Procore and ACC	Yes	Limited	Native to Autodesk	Yes. Two-way Procore sync; connects to ACC
Pricing model	Track-based or bundle	Per user	Per user; collaborators need Autodesk seats	Modular, floating licenses, free viewers
Reported cost signal	About $500 per seat per year	About $15 per user per month, roughly a third of Newforma	Pricey per seat for design firms	Pay only for the modules and seats you use

TonicDM
TonicDM is a cloud platform built for architecture and engineering firms, founded by an ex-Gensler technologist who had used Newforma Project Center, so the Newforma-alternative positioning is baked into its origin. Tonic covers the core PIM jobs: email filing, file sharing, transmittals with download tracking, and search across one or many projects, with an optional construction-administration tier for RFIs and submittals. It is priced per user, around $15 per user per month, and firms consistently report it runs about a third of what they paid for Newforma. In a 2024 review, AECbytes named Lake|Flato as a firm that moved from Newforma to Tonic. What users like is that it is lean and fast. On the 4specs forum, an architect who moved his firm off Newforma in 2023 put the trade-off plainly:

"Tonic was 1/3rd of the price, and granted, it's half the program Newforma is, but what it does, it does much better than Newforma does."

They also said adoption climbed once his staff were on it:

"I had maybe 50% success ratio with Newforma, but a much higher utilization ratio with Tonic, probably over 90% or higher. It's just easier to use, and much, much faster performing."

The flip side to this is scope. Tonic deliberately does less: its construction-administration depth is narrower than Newforma's, and it does not offer field reports, a mobile app, or punch lists. For a firm that wants a lighter, cheaper, easier email-and-CA record and nothing more, that focus is the appeal. For a firm that also wants field reports, meeting minutes, or AI working across its project data, Tonic leaves gaps.

Autodesk Construction Cloud
Autodesk Construction Cloud (ACC) is a contender for firms that want to consolidate on Autodesk. Its modules, Autodesk Docs and Build, cover document control, a common data environment, and construction-administration workflows like RFIs and submittals, and it connects tightly to Revit. In 2026 Autodesk began renaming ACC to Autodesk Forma, and Autodesk Docs to Forma Data Management. ACC is especially strong for model-based collaboration: architects and engineers praise it for hosting and sharing Revit models, running clash detection, and keeping drawings in one controlled place. As one architect put it in a review:

"It offers better co-ordination tools for designers, and makes full use of rendering tools to be able to fly through models to identify clashes."

ACC is priced per user, and collaborators generally need their own paid Autodesk seat, or consume one of yours, to take part. Practitioners are blunt about this on Autodesk's own forums:

"It doesn't make any sense to me that everyone would need a license to receive a submittal or an RFI."

That model is expensive for design firms that coordinate with consultants, owners, and contractors who will not all buy Autodesk licenses. Design-side reviewers echo it plainly: "it is pricey per seat," "its cost is very high." Finally, ACC is not built to be a project email system. Architects and engineers consistently pair it with a separate tool for filing and archiving project correspondence, which is the job tools like Newforma, Cogram, and TonicDM are built around. If email-of-record is central to how your firm defends its work, ACC alone does not cover it.

Cogram:
Founded in 2021, Cogram matches the breadth of Newforma's project record with a faster, AI-native interface. It is built around AI to remove the manual, repetitive admin work that slows project teams down. We examine the platform in detail in the next section.

Cogram: an AI-native alternative to Newforma

Cogram makes AI software specifically for architects and engineers. The Cogram platform is a suite of tools for project management, with modules including:

Email Management
- Instead of manual drag-and-drop filing, AI summarizes incoming and outgoing email and files a copy of each project email to the right project folder. Email that has been filed receives a tag in Outlook to indicate filing status.
- Send large files with an audit log, and manage transmittals.
Contract Administration
- Manage RFIs, Submittals, Change Orders, and more in one place. Receiving and issuing works with Procore and via Outlook.
- Initial triage and review against specs is AI-assisted.
Meeting Minutes
- Cogram’s notetaker for virtual meetings (Teams, Zoom, Webex, Google) and in-person meetings automates minutes in your firm’s custom templates.
- Controls built for the architecture and engineering industry mean attendance in meetings and sharing of minutes can be carefully managed.
Field

Automates data capture for field reports, punch lists, or surveys via transcription and photo capture in Cogram’s mobile app. Also provides tools for drawing management and data access in the field.
Agent and Search
- Chat with your project record and quickly find anything across projects.
- Firms use Cogram’s Agent workbench to set up long-running agents for regular project reporting, QA/QC, or task management.
Project Management
Task management, scheduling, and collaboration. Integrates with tools like Deltek, Unanet, and Teams.

Modular pricing and floating licenses: Each module in Cogram can be purchased separately, and license counts for multiple modules can be independent, so architecture and engineering firms only pay for what they need. Usage analytics are transparently shared in Cogram’s administration dashboard.

Licenses in Cogram are floating. That means customers can deactivate a license at any time and reassign the free license to someone else in the organization. Viewer licenses in Cogram are free, so anyone in the organization can sign in, find and view information, or respond to assignments.

That licensing flexibility and cost structure makes Cogram work for organizations ranging from small teams to the largest design firms in the world, across more than 80 customers. Many of those organizations started out with one or two of Cogram’s capabilities and over time have layered on additional modules. Several have made a complete transition from a legacy PIM software like Newforma to the Cogram platform.

Integrations:

Deltek and Unanet:
Cogram integrates with Deltek Vantagepoint, Ajera, Vision, and Unanet for project provisioning, member management, and close-out: when projects are created in Deltek those appear automatically in Cogram. When projects are closed out in Deltek they automatically close out in Cogram.
Procore:
For projects where design firms work with contractors that use Procore, Cogram’s Procore connector allows RFIs and submittals to be managed from within Cogram. Correspondence created or updated in Procore is synced into Cogram. Review, forwarding, and issuing can be done entirely in Cogram and responses are synced back into Procore. All data synced into Cogram is stored and backed up, so design firms have their own copy of the record outside of Procore.
Microsoft Teams:
Search Teams channels from Cogram with AI, or talk to Cogram’s Agent from project channels in Teams
Sharepoint:
Search and work with files from Sharepoint, directly in Cogram
Autodesk Construction Cloud:
Search and work with files from ACC, directly in Cogram
File systems:
Cogram’s filesystem connector makes your file system searchable from Cogram, allowing staff to access and save files directly to your storage. We explore this in more detail below.

A platform that works with the cloud and on-prem file systems:

Cogram can be used both with Cogram-hosted cloud storage of project information, or with customer-controlled storage. The platform is architected to support both those firms that are cloud-native and those that value a long-term on-premise or hybrid storage approach.

In the case of customer-controlled storage, two options are available: Cogram can store all project information in the customer’s cloud storage, or directly in the customer’s file system. Integrations are available with systems like Panzura, LucidLink, Nasuni, Egnyte, and others.

In the case of Cogram-hosted storage, customers can use Cogram’s API to export their full project record at any time, in a well-structured, file-based export format. That export capability can also be used to regularly sync the project record to your firm’s own storage or archival environment, so a current copy of the record always sits in storage you control.

Controls, Security, and Data Export: Cogram does not train AI models on customer data and is SOC 2 Type II-certified. An overview of Cogram’s security and control posture is available at https://cogram.com/security.

Authentication is via SSO or two-factor sign-in. Support for Microsoft Entra (Active Directory) makes authentication and access manageable at scale.

Migrating from Newforma to Cogram

The hardest part of leaving Newforma is usually the migration itself. Firms have years of project email and records they cannot afford to lose. How the move works depends on where you want your project record to live, and Cogram supports two models.

Option A: cloud storage
If you want Cogram to hold your record in the cloud, Cogram imports your historical Newforma project email and correspondence into the Cogram platform, mapped to the right projects, so past records stay searchable from day one. Projects in Cogram can come from Unanet, Deltek, or another tool.

Cogram runs the migration as a shared project with named owners on both sides and a live tracker. A typical import takes about two weeks once your project list and source access are in place, moving through five phases: scoping which projects to bring over, securely extracting the data, importing and validating it, reconciling the results with you, then cutting over with training. Your Newforma source data is only read, never changed, and is handled in a secure environment Cogram removes once you sign off.
Option B: file system storage
If you want to keep your project record in your own file system, as many firms did with Newforma, the migration is lighter as Newforma already stores your records on your file server. The Cogram Connector, a lightweight Windows service, connects to your file system in place, indexes your project folders so your history is searchable in Cogram from the start, and files new email and correspondence into the right folders going forward. Your files stay where they are, under your control. The connector talks to Cogram outbound-only over TLS, so there are no inbound ports to open and no firewall changes, your content stays on your network, and access is trimmed per user so each person only sees files their existing Windows permissions already allow.

With either option, you review sample projects and give final acceptance before anything goes live, with a dedicated account lead, migration engineer, and customer success contact working with you throughout. A migration can also run alongside going live, or on its own timeline afterward, so your teams can start using Cogram without waiting for every historical project to move.

Next Steps

If you’d like to discuss a migration from Newforma to Cogram, the team at Cogram is happy to help you evaluate options. To get started, book a migration assessment. If you do decide to make the move, we’ll run it as a high-touch process so your firm’s project delivery stays uninterrupted. We’re also happy to connect you with other design firms that have made the move.

FAQs

What are the best alternatives to Newforma in 2026?

The main alternatives are TonicDM, Cogram, and Autodesk Construction Cloud. TonicDM is a lean, lower-cost cloud tool for email filing and basic construction administration. Autodesk Construction Cloud suits firms consolidating on Autodesk. Cogram is an AI-native platform built for architects and engineers, covering email, correspondence, meeting minutes, field reports, and search in one place. The right choice depends on whether you want the lightest possible tool, deeper Autodesk integration, or a modern system of record with AI built in.
What is the difference between Newforma Project Center and Newforma Konekt?

Project Center is Newforma's legacy on-premise product, installed and maintained on your own servers. Konekt is its newer cloud product. Some firms we spoke with are moving work to Konekt, while others said they expect Newforma to encourage a move over time. Firms mid-transition tell us Konekt does not yet match every Project Center feature, so they often run part of their work in the cloud and part on-premise.
Is Newforma being discontinued?

No. Newforma is still sold and supported. Customers can migrate from Newforma Project Center, its legacy on-premise product, to its cloud product, Konekt, which firms tell us is still catching up on features. Some firms treat that transition as a moment to re-evaluate whether Newforma is still the right platform.
Does Newforma have AI?

Yes. Newforma has announced AI capabilities, including natural-language search, submittal review, and email filing, as part of its Konekt cloud product. Per Newforma's own materials, these are cloud features, so a firm on the on-premise Project Center would move to the cloud to use them.
How much does Newforma cost?

Newforma does not publish pricing, but firms we spoke with report paying around $500 per user per year, and that it is sometimes sold as a bundle rather than by module, with seat minimums, so smaller firms and firms with light usage often pay for far more than they use. One firm told us it held around eighty licenses but had only about a dozen regular users.
Is there a cheaper alternative to Newforma?

Yes. TonicDM is reported to cost about a third of Newforma. Cogram uses modular pricing with floating licenses, so you pay only for the modules and the number of seats you actually use, and viewer access is free. Some firms found they were overpaying: one told us they cut their Newforma spend by more than three quarters once they matched licenses to real usage.
Is Autodesk Construction Cloud or Procore a good Newforma replacement for architects and engineers?

They can be, but design firms often find both are oriented to the general contractor's workflow rather than the design side. On a project the contractor owns, the architect or engineer works inside someone else's system and someone else's record. Autodesk Construction Cloud is also priced per user, and collaborators generally need their own paid Autodesk seat, which gets expensive for design firms coordinating with consultants and owners. Neither is designed primarily as a project email system, which is why design firms usually keep a separate system of record.
Can I keep my historical Newforma emails and project data if I switch?

Yes. Newforma's on-premise Project Center keeps your records on your own file server, so that data is yours to bring. You can import your historical project email and correspondence into a new platform, or, if you keep your own file system, connect to it in place so the history stays searchable without a bulk move.
How long does it take to migrate off Newforma?

A typical cloud import takes about two weeks once your project list and source access are in place. It runs in five phases: scoping the projects, extracting the data, importing and validating it, reconciling the results with you, and cutting over with training. If you keep your own file system, the migration is lighter.
Can you run Newforma and a replacement at the same time?

Yes, and many firms do. New projects start on the new platform while in-flight projects finish on Newforma with a reduced seat count. The two systems do not interfere, so you can move at a pace that protects live project delivery.
What should we test before switching from Newforma?

Test three things: run search on your own historical data and see whether the new system finds what you need. Export your record yourself and open it, to confirm you can leave with your data intact. And track filing adoption during a pilot, since a record is only as good as what actually gets filed.
Does Cogram integrate with Procore, Deltek, Autodesk Construction Cloud, and Bluebeam?

Yes. Cogram syncs RFIs and submittals two ways with Procore and keeps your own copy of the record. It integrates with Deltek (Vantagepoint, Ajera, and Vision) and Unanet for project setup and close-out, and connects to Autodesk Construction Cloud, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, and your file system for search and file access. Cogram’s API covers anything not listed.

Disclaimer

This guide draws on conversations with hundreds of architecture and engineering firms in the US, Canada, and the UK, on public product announcements and coverage, and on Cogram's product documentation. Newforma, Newforma Project Center, and Newforma Konekt are trademarks of Newforma. TonicDM and Autodesk Construction Cloud are trademarks of their respective owners. Cogram is not affiliated with Newforma, TonicDM, or Autodesk.