Planlined
Formerly BART: carrier documents to branded proposals, presentations and employee guides, with comparisons and contribution modeling. For brokers, brokerage and GA service teams; confirm GA access and branding setup. Product facts and evidence.
Employee Navigator
Benefits administration and enrollment platform connecting 195,000+ employers, 7,000+ brokers and 600+ partners, with onboarding, HR, ACA reporting, time-off tracking and payroll integrations; quoting is supplied by the Zywave CPQ marketplace integration.
For: brokers who run open enrollment and ongoing benefits administration for their employer clients, and who want the quoting step to come from the same ecosystem.
Side by side
Capabilities, one row each.
“Yes” means documented, not independently tested for every carrier or workflow; extraction may need correction or manual entry. “Not documented” means absent from reviewed public sources, not necessarily unavailable. See evidence and limits, including medical PDF and dental spreadsheet examples; confirm vendor scope before choosing.
On smaller screens, scroll across to compare both products.
| Capability | Planlined | Employee Navigator |
|---|---|---|
| Parses carrier PDFs and spreadsheets | YesDocumented inputs; extraction may be incomplete and require manual entry. | Not documentedQuoting comes from the Zywave CPQ integration, which works from a rates database rather than the documents a carrier sent. |
| Side-by-side comparison for the broker | YesNo configured carrier-count cap; review normalized fields against the original document. | PartialEmployees compare plans during enrollment; broker-side quote comparison is via Zywave CPQ. |
| Proposal book export | YesBranded PDF and presentation mode. | NoNot a proposal tool; the deliverable is the enrollment experience. |
| Employee enrollment guide | Yes | PartialPlan information lives inside the enrollment portal; no standalone branded guide is documented. |
| Contribution and what-if modeling | Yes5+ structures plus a scenario manager. | Not documented |
| Invoice reconciliation | Yes | Not documented |
| Benefits administration and enrollment | NoPlanlined produces the proposal and guide; it does not run enrollment. | YesCore product: benefits administration, new-hire onboarding, HR management, ACA reporting, integrated payroll. |
| Plan and case libraries | PartialCase library available now; Plan Library is in staged rollout. | Not documented |
| Live carrier rate feed | NoWorks from the quotes you already have. | PartialRates come from the Zywave CPQ integration, not from Employee Navigator itself. |
| Works alongside Employee Navigator | YesEmployee Navigator connector, enabled per workspace on Enterprise plans; sold plans flow into enrollment. | YesIt is Employee Navigator. |
| Self-serve signup with a free start | Yes7-day free trial with full features. | NoEvery tier is "Contact Sales"; no free trial documented. |
| Pricing | $75/month or $744/year ($62/month billed annually); 250 AI credits/month. Unlimited paid cases and exports; AI allowance is separate. Confirm team workspace setup.Pricing and trial terms | Not published as dollar amounts. Four broker tiers — Enhanced, Enhanced Plus, Elite and Platinum — each "Contact Sales". The only figures on the pricing page are 834 EDI feed fees: $0.45 PEPM on Enhanced Plus and Elite, $0 on Platinum. |
Choose Employee Navigator when
- You need enrollment, benefits administration, ACA reporting and payroll integrations for your clients — that is the product, and Planlined does not do it.
- Your brokerage already quotes through Zywave CPQ and wants sold plans to flow straight into enrollment.
Choose Planlined when
- The step you want to fix is the proposal before the sale: parsing the carrier quotes, comparing them, modeling contributions and producing the proposal book and guide.
- You do not want to buy a benefits-administration platform to get quoting, and you want a price you can see before a sales call.
- You already use Employee Navigator for enrollment. They are not substitutes — most brokers who use Planlined keep their ben-admin platform.
Weighing more than these two? Read our roundup of Employee Navigator quoting alternatives, which lines up five tools that do this job.
Frequently asked
Questions about switching.
- Is Planlined an alternative to Employee Navigator?
- Not for enrollment or benefits administration — Planlined does not run either. For the quote-to-proposal step it is: Planlined parses the carrier documents into a side-by-side comparison, contribution model, proposal book and employee guide. Brokers typically use it alongside a ben-admin platform such as Employee Navigator.
- Does Employee Navigator create benefit proposals?
- Quoting and proposals come from its Zywave CPQ marketplace integration, which quotes from a rates database and exports to PowerPoint or Excel. Employee Navigator itself is the enrollment and administration platform.
- Does Employee Navigator publish pricing?
- Not as dollar amounts. Its pricing page lists four broker tiers, each "Contact Sales"; the only published figures are 834 EDI feed fees of $0.45 PEPM on two tiers and $0 on Platinum. Planlined is $75 per month or $744 per year, with a free trial.
Sources · reviewed September 5, 2026