Encompass vs ARIVE

The two are aimed at different balance sheets

Encompass is sold to lenders that originate, sell and buy loans from one system of record. ICE markets it as software that lowers the cost of lending at scale. Arive is sold to independent brokers and non delegated shops. It bundles origination, a borrower portal and a pricing engine into one subscription. ICE also pitches faster origination, selling and purchasing of loans. A shop choosing between them is choosing between an enterprise platform and a seat plan. The two rarely compete for the same loan file. Channel coverage, not screen design, decides this one.

One publishes a rate card, the other publishes nothing

Arive lists its prices in public. Core originator seats are $49.99 per month billed yearly and $59.99 billed monthly. Pro seats are $69.99 billed yearly. The Non-Del plan is $99.95 and adds MERS support and margin management. Support staff seats start at $19.99. Contract processor seats are $49.99 billed yearly. The Pro tier is where Zapier connections, built in electronic signature and white labelling arrive. ICE publishes no Encompass price. The product page ends in a get started button and a form. Ask ICE for base platform fee, per closed loan fee, minimum annual commitment and the uplift clause. Ask which services sit outside that base fee.

The 31 December 2026 deadline nobody should sign without reading

ICE is retiring the Encompass software development kit on 31 December 2026. That date already moved once, from October 2025. New features stopped landing in the kit after November 2025. Access after the cut off needs a special arrangement with ICE. The monthly fees for that arrangement are not published. Vendors have publicly called the move to Encompass Partner Connect a heavy lift. Any Encompass quote signed now should name who pays for that migration.

What buyers report about daily friction

Encompass carries 4.0 on Capterra across 42 reviews. TrustRadius shows 7.9 out of 10 across 89 reviews. The recurring complaints are consistent: crashes, no autosave and slow loading. All three show up directly in cycle time and in rework. A third party monitor logged sixteen incidents since April 2025. Arive has no G2 or Capterra listing, so no comparable review sample exists. Arive does publish a status page with a thirty day incident view. That window is short, and it is more than Encompass buyers get in public. Ask ICE for twelve months of incident history under a mutual disclosure agreement.

Integration breadth against integration risk

Encompass buys reach. Almost every mortgage vendor builds to it, and that is the honest argument for paying enterprise money. That same reach is what the kit retirement puts in play. Arive buys a narrower and more legible set of connections. It names its integrated wholesale lenders in a support article updated on 3 August 2026. UWM, Rocket Pro and Pennymac appear there. Its supported credit vendor list passes thirty names. It names no external pricing engine, because pricing is built in. That keeps the vendor count low and the substitution options low too.

Scale, spend and the questions neither answers in public

ICE booked $557 million in mortgage segment revenue in the June 2026 quarter, up 5 percent. That funds a large engineering team. It also funds a migration the buyer will pay to absorb. Arive states more than 24,000 users and more than 4,000 broker and non delegated shops. Those figures are vendor stated and unverified. Neither vendor publishes pull through, cycle time or cost per loan benchmarks tied to a method. Ask both for a named reference running your volume and your channel.

Which one to pick

Independent brokers and non delegated correspondents should take Arive. Published seat pricing, a public lender list and a public status page cut diligence cost before signing. Lenders selling to several investors, buying correspondent loans or holding servicing should stay with Encompass. Arive does not cover that work. Ask ICE for the monthly fee to keep software development kit access past 31 December 2026, in writing. Ask Arive which of your current vendors it cannot reach without Zapier.

Also in this category

Also in this category: Dark Matter Empower vs Arive and Dark Matter Empower vs LendingPad.