Verticals
Features
Hudson Technology Systems is a technology company and not a bank. Banking services provided by our partners or customers. Hudson Technology Systems LLC © 2026. All Rights Reserved.
If you are comparing Agiletics vs. Hudson vs. ZSuite, you have already worked out the hard part: your bank has commercial clients with one deposit relationship and many parties underneath it — tenants, unit owners, beneficiaries, escrow files, exchange proceeds — and opening hundreds of accounts on the core is not viable. What you need now is escrow sub-accounting software that tracks each party independently against a single master account, and lets the client manage their own sub-accounts without calling your operations team.
Among Agiletics competitors in escrow accounting software, these three are the platforms most US banks actually shortlist, and they arrive from three different directions. Agiletics is the incumbent: founded in 1987, acquired by Jack Henry & Associates on October 1, 2018, and sold today inside Jack Henry Banking. ZSuite spun out of Leader Bank in 2019 and built the modern SaaS challenger, now on 150+ financial institutions. Hudson, founded in 2020, came at it from the payments side, treating disbursement rather than record-keeping as the core problem.
They are not interchangeable, and the differences that matter are not the ones on the feature grid. This comparison works through the five decisions that actually separate them.
Disclosure: Hudson publishes this comparison and appears in it. We have sourced every claim to public material, marked as "not published" anything a vendor does not document, and resisted the temptation to state our competitors' gaps more confidently than the evidence allows.
The short answer. If you are on a Jack Henry core and your escrow book is static holds, Agiletics is already on your contract and procurement friction is close to zero. If you want the most proven self-service experience for commercial clients and genuinely automated tax filing, ZSuite has the deepest deployed footprint among the modern platforms. If your escrow relationships require principal to move — construction draws, per-unit payouts, milestone releases — that is the axis on which these three diverge most sharply, and the one to test in a demo rather than a feature list.
Two naming and packaging changes make shortlists confusing. Jack Henry now markets this as Commercial Deposit Escrow Management and has registered the newer marks "Jack Henry Deposit Escrow" and "Jack Henry Deposit Escrow System: Symitar Interface," while the original "JHA Agiletics Escrow System" mark remains live in its technology guides — so you will meet both names for one product. Separately, the 2018 acquisition included the Agiletics Investment System, covering repos, fed funds, money market savings, and automated DDA-to-investment sweeps. It does not appear in Jack Henry's current (© 2024) technology guides or trademark listings, which instead show separate Mutual Fund Sweep and 3rd Party Sweep products. If sweep automation is part of what you think you are buying with escrow, confirm it explicitly.
Static escrow and transactional escrow are different products. This is the substantive reason banks reassess, and it has nothing to do with the acquisition. A ledger that records balances accurately is entirely sufficient for a security deposit sitting untouched for a year. It becomes a constraint the moment money has to leave on a schedule or a condition: construction draws against milestones, per-unit payouts, escrow releases tied to a closing, 1031 proceeds against a deadline. Jack Henry's public materials describe transferring funds between sub-accounts and the master, and do not state whether a sub-account can originate an outbound ACH, wire, or check for principal. Put that question directly to the vendor rather than infer — but it is the question, and it is why banks with growing transactional escrow books start looking.
Architecture diligence, and contract timing. Deployment model, implementation timeline, and real-time API availability are not published for the Agiletics product, where newer entrants publish all three — and for a bank whose diligence now includes an architecture review, unpublished is itself an answer to chase down. Timing matters too: Jack Henry's core processing agreements typically run seven years, sometimes ten, with annual escalators and volume-based pricing. That is a vendor-level pattern rather than this module specifically, but it shapes when a competitive evaluation is even possible.
Best for banks already on a Jack Henry contract, where procurement friction is close to zero.
Agiletics was founded in 1987 in Longwood, Florida, and acquired by Jack Henry for a net cash outlay of $6.3m per Jack Henry's Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2018. Terms were not disclosed publicly at the time.
Functionally it is a master-to-sub-account escrow ledger with genuine depth in US statutory escrow types. Customers add, edit, close, reopen, and delete sub-accounts and transfer funds between sub-accounts and the master, self-servicing through an internet banking application with branded portal access. Jack Henry documents ten escrow types: attorney trust — explicitly including IOLTA and IOLA — landlord/tenant, title company, pre-need funeral and cemetery, resident care, surrogate, developer, real estate, municipalities, and 1031 exchanges. Interest handling covers special regulatory and conditional accrual with state-specific processing requirements, and reporting includes alerts, master and sub-account statements, exportable history, BAI interface files, and federal tax withholding reports. Jack Henry describes the system as core-agnostic, and it appears in both the Banks and Credit Unions technology guides.
Its strongest public proof point is real. Per Jack Henry's case study, Peapack-Gladstone Bank ($6.2B assets) grew escrow deposits from around $89m at year-end 2018 to $250m in July 2021, running approximately 292 active masters with 12,500 active sub-accounts. The bank's own comment: "we've more than doubled the amount of deposits and didn't have to add anyone."
What is not published. Outbound disbursement from a sub-account. Deployment model and implementation timeline. Real-time API availability. 50-state compliance coverage as such — Jack Henry says "state-specific processing requirements" and names IOLTA/IOLA, which is not the same claim. Split-interest engines. 1099-INT specifically, as distinct from the federal tax withholding reports it does document. OFAC screening. Multi-currency support, and every documented compliance feature is US-domestic. Verify each of these in diligence rather than assuming either direction.
Best for community banks and credit unions that want the most proven self-service escrow experience and automated tax filing.
ZSuite spun out of Leader Bank in 2019, is headquartered in Boston with a fully remote team, and reports more than 150 financial institutions nationwide. Jill Feiler was appointed CEO in August 2025. Alongside ZEscrow it sells ZRent for recurring rent collection and a Security Deposit Advantage add-on. It raised an $11m Series A with ICBA and BankTech Ventures, and holds ICBA Preferred Service Provider and ABA Partner Network positions — distribution that matters in conservative bank rooms.
The architecture is a master and holding-account model in which ZSuite is the system of record for sub-accounts, so no additional accounts are opened on the core. Sub-accounts are unlimited, each with a unique account number, with bulk upload for larger books. Self-service is its standout: three distinct access tiers for bank employees, commercial customers, and beneficiaries, with commercial customers opening and closing their own sub-accounts, pulling data, and accessing statements without bank involvement. Interest is calculated at sub-account level with split-interest capability, and monthly statements generate automatically.
On compliance it does two things better than either alternative documents. It runs daily OFAC checks on every active beneficiary in the platform. And it files 1099-INTs with the IRS on the institution's behalf — ZSuite provides the annual interest data, the bank verifies, ZSuite files. W-9 collection runs through DocuSign. Verticals: property managers and security deposits, law firms, 1031 exchange facilitators, municipalities, title companies, and HOAs.
Deployment is AWS-only with a separate instance per client, no on-premise option, SOC 2 Type II and SOC 1 Type II, and a published 120-day average implementation — the only one of the three to publish a timeline. Named core integrations are the best-documented here: Jack Henry, Fiserv (via AppMarket, with Fiserv Premier support), FIS, Q2, Finastra, Finxact, and COCC, the last reaching credit unions as well as banks.
Trade-offs. Principal disbursement runs through an Onbe partnership added in July 2024 covering virtual cards, ACH, push-to-card, and mobile wallets — worth asking what the client experience and economics look like when payouts route through a third-party payments intermediary rather than your own rails. Rail-level support is not published on the product pages. The platform is purpose-built for escrow as a holding construct, so workflow extensions such as milestone draws or 1031 deadline tracking are a roadmap conversation rather than a shipped feature. No multi-currency; US only; no native mobile app; and the IOLTA acronym does not appear on its product pages even though it serves law firm trust accounts, so confirm the specifics if state bar reporting matters to you. One thing to note fairly: compliance responsibility explicitly remains with the financial institution.
Best for banks whose escrow relationships require principal to move on the terms of a contract.
Founded in 2020 and based in New York, Hudson sells a virtual account and specialty deposit platform to US banks and credit unions, white-labeled under the bank's brand, reporting $5B+ in annual payment volume across six modules: Virtual Account Management, Contract Intelligence, Payment Processing, a Rules Engine, Approval Workflows, and Client Portals.
The sub-ledger is multi-tier — one master per relationship, unlimited sub-accounts beneath it, each independently tracked and segregated — and sub-accounts are routable, so inbound payments land directly rather than being allocated by hand. Three-way reconciliation for fiduciary accounts (firm ledger, bank statement, sum of matter balances) runs continuously rather than monthly. IOLTA/IOTA/IOLA pooled trust accounts accrue interest continuously and remit to the state bar foundation; non-IOLTA trusts pay interest to the client with automated allocation and year-end 1099 generation. OFAC, KYC, KYB, and AML screening throughout.
Where it diverges from both alternatives is money movement. Principal disburses from a sub-account across ACH, bulk ACH, Fedwire, check, RCC, and eCheck, with instant payments through a partner integration — Hudson instructs and initiates, the bank's infrastructure moves the funds, with no third-party payments intermediary in the path. The rules engine and contract terms drive execution, so a construction draw or milestone release fires without a person initiating it. Contract Intelligence ingests the loan document, property management agreement, or escrow agreement and generates the entities, sub-accounts, and payment triggers from its terms, with covenant testing in the same layer. Neither alternative describes deriving payment rules from an ingested document.
Deployment is SaaS on AWS with SOC 2 attestation and a dedicated instance per customer, built on Salesforce — an advantage at Salesforce and nCino shops, a consideration elsewhere. It sits above Jack Henry, FIS, or Fiserv via REST API, taking either a dedicated routing number or a synced range of core account numbers, and can sit behind an existing digital banking front end. Two published pricing models: from $10,000/month on the enterprise plan, or roughly 1–3% of monthly transaction volume for the managed escrow platform — both volume-linked rather than charged against deposit balances. Verticals: corporate escrow, property management and HOA, 1031, municipal, law firm banking, settlement funds, construction draws.
Trade-offs. Founded 2020, so a far shorter track record than either alternative — Agiletics has 39 years in the domain and ZSuite has more than 150 institutions live. Published references are size-anonymised ($1B, $4B, and $20B institutions) rather than named. No tier-one deployments. The Salesforce dependency will matter in some architecture reviews. Domestic only, no multi-currency, and no sweep or short-term investment capability.
1. Procurement, not capability. For a Jack Henry bank, Agiletics is an existing vendor on an existing contract — no new security review, no new MSA, no new vendor-risk file. Both alternatives are net-new. If your evaluation is really about whether the incumbent is good enough, run the disbursement test below before concluding it is.
2. Who opens the account. All three offer client self-service — the feature every bank asks about first, and therefore the one that differentiates least. ZSuite goes furthest, extending a portal tier to beneficiaries as well as the commercial client. In all three cases, ask how adoption actually goes after go-live, and whether any routine action still requires someone at the bank to log in and initiate it.
3. Whether money can leave the sub-account. The sharpest divergence. Hudson originates principal disbursement from the sub-account on the bank's own rails. ZSuite routes it through Onbe, a third-party payments partner it added in July 2024. Jack Henry does not publish an answer for Agiletics either way. Test this in a demo with your own use case: show me a payment leaving this sub-account, on these rails, triggered by this condition.
4. Who owns the tax and screening work. ZSuite is the clearest here: it files the 1099-INTs. Hudson generates 1099s and automates state bar interest remittance for IOLTA. Agiletics documents federal tax withholding reports and state-specific interest handling but not 1099-INT specifically. On sanctions, ZSuite publishes daily OFAC checks per beneficiary and Hudson publishes OFAC/KYC/KYB/AML; Agiletics does not publish OFAC screening. Ask each vendor precisely which forms they produce, which they file, and where liability sits.
5. Whether you also need sweep. Neither ZSuite nor Hudson offers sweep or short-term investment management. Jack Henry does — but through separate Mutual Fund Sweep and 3rd Party Sweep products rather than, on current evidence, inside the escrow product. If deposit-gathering plus yield optimisation is one project for you, that is a Jack Henry conversation, and it should be scoped separately from escrow.
What is Agiletics, and who owns it now? Agiletics was an escrow and sub-accounting software company founded in 1987 in Longwood, Florida. Jack Henry & Associates acquired it on October 1, 2018 for a net cash outlay of $6.3m, and it is now sold inside Jack Henry Banking — currently marketed as Commercial Deposit Escrow Management, though the "JHA Agiletics Escrow System" name is still in active use.
What are the best Agiletics alternatives in 2026? For US banks, the two most commonly shortlisted are ZSuite (ZEscrow), the most widely deployed modern SaaS escrow platform with 150+ financial institutions, and Hudson, which adds native principal disbursement and contract-driven payment rules. Core-bundled escrow modules from other core providers are also worth including in a full RFP.
Agiletics vs. ZSuite — what's the difference? Agiletics is the long-established incumbent with deep US statutory escrow heritage, sold through Jack Henry. ZSuite is the cloud-native challenger: AWS SaaS with a 120-day published implementation, three tiers of self-service including beneficiary access, daily OFAC screening, and 1099-INT filing on the bank's behalf. ZSuite publishes considerably more about its architecture, timeline, and compliance operations than Jack Henry does about the Agiletics product.
Can a sub-account send a payment directly? This is the most important question in the category and the answers differ. Hudson originates ACH, wire, and check disbursement of principal directly from a sub-account on the bank's rails. ZSuite routes principal disbursement through its Onbe partnership. Jack Henry does not publish whether an Agiletics sub-account can originate an outbound payment. Verify it in a demo rather than from a feature list.
Which platform handles IOLTA and attorney trust accounting? Agiletics names IOLTA and IOLA explicitly among its ten escrow types, with state-specific interest handling. Hudson covers IOLTA/IOTA/IOLA with continuous accrual, automated state bar interest remittance, and three-way reconciliation. ZSuite serves law firm trust accounts and files 1099-INTs, though the IOLTA acronym does not appear on its product pages — confirm the specifics if state bar reporting is central to your book.
All three platforms will give a commercial client a master account with sub-accounts underneath it and let them open their own. If that is the whole job — static escrow, balances tracked, statements produced — the honest answer is that your incumbent probably suffices, and the deciding factor is procurement rather than product.
The comparison only gets interesting when the escrow book becomes transactional. Then three questions separate these platforms: can principal leave the sub-account, and on whose rails; what triggers it; and who owns the tax and screening work afterwards. ZSuite is strongest on proven self-service adoption and automated tax filing. Agiletics is strongest on statutory heritage and contractual convenience for a Jack Henry bank. Hudson is built for the case where money has to move on the terms of an agreement, without an operations team keying it.
Ask all three to show you a payment leaving a sub-account, on your rails, triggered by your condition. The demo will settle in ten minutes what a feature grid cannot.
Book a walkthrough with your own escrow use case and we will show you the path from contract to disbursement end to end.
Book a discovery call to learn how escrow products create new revenue streams and elevate consumer trust.
