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eDiscovery Buyers Report 2026

What eDiscovery Leaders Do Differently

Leading eDiscovery buyers refuse to let a vendor choose their deployment. 68% call portability between SaaS and private deployment important or a deal-breaker.

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What Leaders Do Differently

Among the 200 buyers we surveyed, a distinct group sidesteps the cloud-versus-private deployment debate and refuses to let a vendor choose for them. Rather than consolidating onto a single deployment model, they buy for movement between deployment models and treat the ability to change course as a requirement, not a convenience.
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Portability between SaaS and private deployment expresses that posture most clearly. Buyers want to move a matter into the environment it belongs in without having to renegotiate their platform every time.

68% call portability important or a deal-breaker, and 30% treat it as a deal-breaker outright

  • Portability is a primary requirement, a deal-breaker if a vendor cannot offer it (30%)
  • Portability is important, a meaningful factor, though not a deal-breaker (38%)
  • Portability is a nice-to-have (18.5%)
  • Portability is not a factor in our decisions (13%)
  • None of the above (0.5%)
Figure 13. Portability priority in platform decisions (n=200).

That demand reflects how buyers approach “future proofing” against the pace of AI
innovation. They invest in optionality because agility and scale are a competitive advantage.
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Migration patterns show it plainly. With Relativity Server ceasing to host new on-premises matters in 2028, buyers migrate to Reveal Private Deployment (RPD) more often than any other destination.

31% of buyers migrating from Relativity Server name RPD as their destination

  • Reveal Private Deployment31.1%
  • A Proprietary or Internally Built Platform24.2%
  • OpenText (EnCase / Accelerate)23.5%
  • Nuix21.2%
Figure 14. Migration destination from Relativity Server (n=132).

The Broader Industry Echoes the Findings

Alongside this report, we conducted a short survey in partnership with the Association of Certified E-Discovery Specialists (ACEDS), a leading industry group, to see how the views of their members compared to the broader legal profession. The responses of 60 eDiscovery practitioners pointed to the same conclusions as the wider study.

  • Hybrid is the norm. 45% run private or on-premises eDiscovery in some form, but only 13% run it exclusively. Those taking a hybrid approach outnumber those who don’t by more than 2 to 1. Nearly half expect to take a hybrid approach over the next 24 months.
  • Those impacted by vendor consolidation have not chosen a path forward yet. Of the 30 respondents on a privately deployed platform that is sunsetting, four say they are moving to the cloud with the same vendor, four to a rival vendor’s cloud, and four to another private deployment with another vendor. Twelve remain undecided and six are aware of end-of-life but haven’t started evaluating alternatives.

Source: Cloud, On-Prem, or Both? The 2026 Deployment Index, independent survey, n=60, fielded by ACEDS.

Chapter 6

Conclusion

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Get the 2026 eDiscovery Buyers Report

All the data from 200 senior buyers on AI adoption, private deployment, cost and portability, plus the ACEDS industry pulse survey.