Iguana to Mirth Migration Cost — Fixed Pricing, Full TCO Breakdown
The productized sprint price is $34,500 starting for ≤20 channels delivered in 8 weeks, $62,500 starting for 20–50 channels in 12 weeks, and $118,000 starting for 50+ channels with heavy custom Lua scripting in 16 weeks. Fixed price. Fixed timeline. No timesheet billing.
Sprint price is just one number. The full cost picture compares against staying on Iguana — typically a $200,000+ swing in five-year TCO depending on channel count and license tier. This page breaks down all the numbers, including the costs that are easy to miss.
Migration sprint pricing — every number public
| Channel count | Sprint price | Duration | Includes |
|---|---|---|---|
| ≤20 channels | From $34,500 | 8 weeks | Discovery, environment setup, Lua→JS translation, parity testing (1,000–10,000 messages per channel), 5-day parallel run, batched cutover, Iguana decommission, handover pack |
| 20–50 channels | From $62,500 | 12 weeks | Same scope, scaled hour pool and timeline |
| 50+ channels (custom Lua) | From $118,000 | 16 weeks | Same scope plus extended parallel-running for clinical-critical channels and custom Lua-helper-API replacement work |
Three-or-more sprint bundles get 10–15% off. Sprint clients get 10% off the first month of any subsequent monthly support tier.
The fixed-price discipline is what makes the 8-week timeline achievable. When there's no incentive to stretch the work, the work doesn't stretch. Most T&M-equivalent pricing runs 30–40% higher because of scope-creep allowance. Backed by senior US-based engineers and our broader Mirth Connect support practice.
Why Iguana customers move to Mirth — the cost forces
Three forces drive most Iguana-to-Mirth conversations in 2026. Cost is the dominant one but not the only one.
Iguana licensing compounds at scale
Iguana is per-server commercial. As channel counts grow and as multi-environment standard (dev / staging / production) becomes universal, license fees compound. We've seen multi-environment estates with 30+ channels paying $80,000–$140,000/year in Iguana license + maintenance fees. Mirth Connect is open-source (MPL 1.1). The license cost goes to zero. The only ongoing cost becomes managed support, which is itself optional.
FHIR R4 maturity gap
Mirth's FHIR R4 implementation has converged with the spec faster than Iguana's. Teams whose roadmaps include ONC (g)(10) certification, payer-provider FHIR, or SMART Backend Auth find the Mirth path lower-friction. The cost dimension here is opportunity cost — staying on Iguana means longer FHIR delivery timelines, which means revenue or compliance milestones slip.
Talent pool depth
The US labor market has dramatically more Mirth Connect / NextGen Connect engineers than Iguana specialists. Hiring costs are lower. Key-person risk is lower. Internal upskilling has more public material to work from. The cost dimension is recruiting expense and salary premium — Iguana engineers command ~15–20% over Mirth engineers in our hiring data.
5-year TCO comparison
Real numbers from a representative 20-channel mid-market health system, comparing five years of Iguana versus five years of Mirth Connect after the migration sprint.
Staying on Iguana — 5-year TCO
| Line item | Year 1 | Year 2–5 (each) | 5-year total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Iguana license + maintenance | $48,000 | $52,000 (3% escalator) | $263,000 |
| In-house Iguana engineer (loaded) | $260,000 | $278,000 (avg) | $1,372,000 |
| Optional Lyniate professional services | $25,000 | $15,000 | $85,000 |
| Compliance and audit support | $12,000 | $12,000 | $60,000 |
| 5-year TCO (Iguana) | $1,780,000 | ||
The in-house engineer line dominates, but the license escalator and professional-services line are the ones that surprise procurement teams in years 3–5.
Migrating to Mirth — 5-year TCO
| Line item | Year 1 | Year 2–5 (each) | 5-year total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Iguana → Mirth Migration Sprint | $34,500 | — | $34,500 |
| Mirth Connect license | $0 (open-source) | $0 | $0 |
| Silver Managed Support ($6,800/mo) | $81,600 | $84,000 (3% escalator) | $417,600 |
| Optional in-house liaison (0.25 FTE) | $65,000 | $69,500 | $343,000 |
| Compliance and audit support | $0 (included in Silver) | $0 | $0 |
| 5-year TCO (Mirth migration) | $795,100 | ||
Net 5-year savings: ~$985,000 for a 20-channel mid-market health system.
The exact delta depends on internal labor cost, Iguana license tier, and growth assumptions.
Variables that move the TCO
The numbers above are for a representative case. Five variables move the TCO meaningfully.
Channel count growth. TCO scales sub-linearly on Mirth (open-source, so no license growth) and linearly on Iguana (per-server, per-environment). A 5-year horizon with 2x channel growth widens the gap by another $150–300K.
Multi-environment requirements.Some Iguana customers run a single production environment to control license cost. The right architecture is dev / staging / production with full Iguana licensing on each — which most cost-comparisons understate. The Mirth path doesn't have this trade-off because environment count is free.
Compliance scope. SOC 2 Type II, HITRUST, ONC (g)(10) certification each add ongoing cost. Silver Managed Support includes compliance evidence pack work; standalone Iguana shops typically expense this separately at $40K–$80K/year.
Custom Lua complexity. Heavily customized Iguana estates with hundreds of custom Lua transformer functions have higher migration sprint cost (move toward the $62K or $118K tiers) but the post-migration savings still dominate over 5 years.
Lyniate professional-services usage. Some Iguana shops are heavy consumers of Lyniate professional services; some never use it. The TCO comparison above assumes moderate usage. Heavy users save more by migrating; light users save less.
Hidden costs of staying on Iguana
Three line items procurement teams often miss when modeling “do nothing” against migration. (Four, actually — the recruiter line is the one that surprises most.)
Annual license escalators.Lyniate's standard contract includes 3–5% annual price escalators on Iguana licenses. Over a 5-year horizon at 4% compounded, that's a 22% increase from year 1 to year 5. The TCO model above uses 3%; real-world contracts often run higher.
Per-server pricing in DR scenarios.Disaster recovery architecture typically requires a hot standby with full licensing. If your DR posture matures during the 5-year window, expect an additional Iguana license for the standby environment. We've seen this surprise teams that didn't model it.
End-of-life risk on legacy Iguana versions.Lyniate has historically deprecated older Iguana versions with limited backwards compatibility, forcing upgrade projects. Each forced upgrade is 2–4 weeks of work that doesn't ship clinical value.
Recruiter cost on Iguana engineers. The thin talent pool means higher recruiter fees (typically 20–25% of first-year salary) and longer time-to-fill on Iguana-specific roles. Filling a Mirth Connect role is roughly 40% faster than filling an Iguana role in our hiring data.
Iguana migration cost — by channel count
If you don't fit the standard 20-channel-or-less template, here's the sizing guide.
| Channels | Custom Lua complexity | Sprint price | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|
| ≤10 | Light | From $34,500 | 6 weeks (compressed) |
| 11–20 | Light to moderate | From $34,500 | 8 weeks |
| 21–35 | Moderate | From $48,000 | 10 weeks |
| 36–50 | Moderate to heavy | From $62,500 | 12 weeks |
| 51–75 | Heavy | From $85,000 | 14 weeks |
| 76+ | Heavy with custom Lua libraries | From $118,000 | 16 weeks |
The price band reflects custom Lua complexity. Estates with vanilla HL7 v2 routing and standard Lua transformers fit the low end. Estates with custom Lua helper APIs, metatables, and shared library structures fit the high end.
Risk-mitigated migration sequence
A common concern with Iguana migrations is clinical-workflow disruption. The 8-week sequence is built specifically to minimize this risk.
- 1
Week 1
Discovery
Channel inventory, complexity map, risk register. No production change.
- 2
Week 2
Environment setup
Stand up Mirth in parallel to existing Iguana production. No production change.
- 3
Weeks 3–5
Channel translation and parity testing
Lua-to-JavaScript translation. Each channel parity-tested against 1,000–10,000 representative messages from Iguana production. Discrepancies fixed before moving forward. No production change yet.
- 4
Week 6
Parallel running
Both engines live in production with messages mirrored. 5-day minimum parallel run. Outputs diffed. Production cutover only after parity is proven on real traffic.
- 5
Week 7
Batched cutover
Low-criticality channels first, clinical-critical channels last. Each cutover monitored for 1 hour. Iguana left running in passive mode for 24 hours as rollback safety net.
- 6
Week 8
Iguana decommission
Archive Iguana message store. Decommission infrastructure. Handover pack delivered.
The full sequence is documented in the Iguana Migration Playbook.
What's included in the sprint price
The $34,500 fixed price includes
- • All discovery and architecture work
- • Mirth Connect installation and environment setup (dev / staging / production)
- • Lua-to-JavaScript / Groovy translation for all channels in scope
- • Parity testing against representative message cohorts
- • 5-day parallel-running window
- • Batched production cutover
- • Iguana decommission and message-store archive
- • Handover pack: channel documentation in your Git, operational runbook, monitoring dashboards, BAA and HIPAA evidence
- • 30-day post-cutover stabilization support
Not included (priced separately if needed)
- • Cloud infrastructure costs (you bring your own AWS / Azure / GCP)
- • Mirth Connect support after the 30-day stabilization window (transitions to monthly tier)
- • Workflow re-engineering beyond like-for-like migration
- • Lyniate license termination negotiation (we provide a template but your legal owns the relationship)
Frequently Asked Questions
Can we migrate channel by channel without a big-bang cutover?
What happens to our Iguana message history?
Will our channels work exactly the same after migration?
How long does the Iguana license run after migration?
Is the migration price fixed or estimate?
Can we finance the migration sprint cost?
Do you have references from previous Iguana migrations?
What if we change our mind during the migration?
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The free 30-minute Iguana audit produces a written estimate of migration scope, sprint price, and 5-year TCO comparison for your specific estate.