Orion vs. Black Diamond: Which Portfolio Management Platform Fits Your RIA?
The sticker price gap is $100/mo. The real cost driver is whether the platform you pick natively talks to the CRM you're already running — get that backwards and the migration bill dwarfs anything you'd have saved.
Orion $1,500/mo vs. Black Diamond $1,600/mo — the $100/mo gap is the smallest number in this decision
Pricing based on current portfolio-management platform data for an independent RIA.
Monthly cost comparison
This is the single biggest line item in an RIA's tech stack, which is exactly why the $100/mo headline gap gets so much attention and deserves so little of it. Both platforms handle portfolio accounting, performance reporting, billing, and rebalancing for a firm this size. What actually separates them is which CRM they natively pair with — and firms that pick based on the sticker price or the client-portal demo, without checking that, end up paying for a second integration layer they didn't budget for.
Orion: $1,500/mo — natively pairs with Redtail
Orion's price buys a billing engine built to automate tiered and blended AUM fee calculations across held-away and custodied assets. That automation is the actual reason firms pay for a platform instead of exporting Schwab data into a spreadsheet — the failure mode shows up when a firm doesn't fully configure its blended-fee rules at setup. Get it wrong and you either over-bill a household (a refund and a trust problem) or under-bill it (quiet revenue leakage that can run for quarters before anyone notices in a reconciliation).
Black Diamond: $1,600/mo — natively pairs with Wealthbox
Black Diamond is SS&C's platform, and its $100/mo premium mostly buys a more polished, white-labeled client-facing dashboard — a real differentiator for firms that pitch prospects on the reporting experience itself. The failure mode here is specific: firms buy Black Diamond for that client portal, but keep Redtail CRM running because that's what the team already knows. Redtail has no native Black Diamond connection, so the household data behind that premium portal has to be kept in sync by hand — and the polished dashboard the firm paid extra for starts showing stale AUM figures within a billing cycle or two.
Orion's native lane runs through Redtail; Black Diamond's runs through Wealthbox — mixing them means someone becomes the integration.
Portfolio management platform comparison
| Criterion | Orion Advisor Solutions | Black Diamond |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | $1,500 | $1,600 |
| Team size range | 5-200 employees | 5-300 employees |
| Native CRM pairing | Redtail | Wealthbox |
| Billing automation for tiered/blended fees | ||
| Custodian integration | Schwab Advisor Services | Schwab Advisor Services |
| Client-facing dashboard emphasis | Standard | Premium |
Questions to ask before switching platforms
- Which CRM does the platform natively pair with — and is that the CRM your firm is actually running?
- How is billing priced as AUM grows: a flat tier, or a rate that reprices automatically at a breakpoint?
- What's the timeline and cost to migrate historical performance and billing history off the old platform?
- If the client-facing portal is the reason you're switching, who owns keeping household data in sync with your CRM?
Running Orion and Black Diamond simultaneously after a merger of two RIAs costs $3,100/mo combined for one job — the single most expensive duplicate we see in this vertical, ahead of running two CRMs.
The actual decision rule
If you're already a Redtail shop, Orion is the fit at $1,500/mo. If you're already a Wealthbox shop, Black Diamond's $1,600/mo buys a native pairing plus its premium client portal. Building from scratch, decide based on whether the client-facing dashboard is a real sales differentiator for your prospect pitch — that's the only case where paying the $100/mo premium up front is worth it before the CRM decision even happens.
One thing worth naming directly: a lot of 'best RIA portfolio management software' content is written by, or paid by, whichever vendor has the bigger affiliate budget. That's exactly the incentive our engine is built to ignore — it ranks purely on your CRM fit and firm size, not on which platform pays the biggest bounty. Run the free audit with your real headcount and current CRM to see which one — plus the rest of your stack — actually fits.