Practical answers for business owners weighing self-hosted tools against SaaS subscriptions: what self-hosting actually takes, what the rent-vs-own math says, and how to buy scripts without getting burned. Written plainly, sourced where it counts.
Five verified SaaS list prices, sourced and dated, multiplied by 36 months — next to the one-time price of owning the equivalent self-hosted tool. Arithmetic, not a quote.
Read the guideSpreadsheets are genuinely fine — until specific failure modes appear. The honest thresholds for moving to a real tool, and which category to look at when you cross one.
Read the guideNine bundles group the tools a specific business actually runs on — compliance, restaurant, retail, workforce, and more — at ~25% off buying separately, self-hosted, one payment.
Read the guideOdoo is a fair deal if you want an all-in-one ERP. If you want two or three sharp tools you own outright — no per-user meter, no suite commitment — that is a different product. Here is the honest comparison.
Read the guideOne $499 payment: every app in the catalog plus the control plane that runs them. The honest case for small, sharp, separate tools over an integrated suite — and the honest limits.
Read the guideThe honest walkthrough: what self-hosting actually requires, what the 2-minute web installer does, and what you are (and are not) signing up to maintain.
Read the guideData ownership explained for non-technical owners: where records physically live, what export and backup look like, and the honest responsibilities that come with control.
Read the guideA vendor-neutral checklist for evaluating any self-hosted script before you buy — tests, installer, database honesty, source access, license terms, updates, demos, and exports.
Read the guideThe complete walkthrough for non-developers: what shared hosting is, the six-step install every product here uses, a try-it-locally path, and honest fixes for the three things that actually go wrong.
Read the guideThe complete, honest guide to the hosted tier: what we run for you, what stays yours at every moment, the 12-month license promise, and when self-hosting is still the better call.
Read the guideAn honest field guide to self-hosted appointment booking: the open-source options reviewed on their real strengths, and where a paid, owned tool fits.
Read the guideAn honest field guide to self-hosted Canny alternatives: the open-source boards reviewed on their real strengths, and where a paid, owned tool fits.
Read the guideAn honest field guide to waiting-room queue software: what the hosted tools cost, why there is no strong open-source option, and where a buy-once queue display fits.
Read the guideAn honest field guide to EU-Directive reporting channels: GlobaLeaks and SecureDrop reviewed on their real strengths, the quote-gated SaaS field, and where a simple owned channel fits.
Read the guideAn honest field guide to sales-commission software: what the per-rep SaaS costs, why the spreadsheet is the real incumbent, and where a buy-once penny-exact calculator fits.
Read the guideWhat actually changes — good and bad — when you stop renting the store layer and self-host it. Every platform fee cited from live pricing pages.
Read the guideA 10-technician shop pays $2,400-$9,000 every year for cloud CMMS at current list prices. A self-hosted CMMS is $129 once. Here is the math, and the honest list of what you give up.
Read the guideCanny bills by tracked users that never reset — so your feedback-tool bill climbs as your roadmap succeeds. Here is the self-hosted, buy-once alternative and the honest trade-offs.
Read the guideQminder now starts near $800 a month, Waitwhile bills per location — and there is no free self-hosted queue display. Here is the buy-once alternative for a waiting-room number board.
Read the guideThe EU Whistleblowing Directive requires a secure reporting channel — and the SaaS options are quote-gated enterprise. Here is a self-hosted, anonymous channel you own outright.
Read the guideCommission SaaS bills $25–$50 per rep per month, or hides the price behind a demo. Here is a self-hosted, penny-exact commission calculator you buy once and run yourself.
Read the guideSince Wayfair, you can owe sales tax in states you have never set foot in. Compliance SaaS charges recurring fees for tracking it. Here is a self-hosted nexus tracker you own outright.
Read the guideUS states are rolling out packaging EPR laws with annual reporting duties — and the software is all demo-gated enterprise. Here is a self-hosted per-SKU register you buy once.
Read the guideThe complete guide to running rentals on software you own: what the job actually is, what Buildium-class SaaS costs, where spreadsheets break, and how a one-time tool covers the core.
Read the guideThe complete guide to owning your booking system: what per-seat SaaS costs, the real open-source options, why double-booking is the whole problem, and what a buy-once engine covers.
Read the guideThe complete guide to public roadmaps on software you own: the tracked-user meters, the open-source boards, why the feedback loop compounds, and what a buy-once board covers.
Read the guideWe priced 82 SaaS vendors from their own pricing pages, then ran a ten-tool small-business stack out to five years. The bill is $11,188 — and a quarter of the market charges per seat, so it grows every time you hire.
Read the guideSix tracked vendors publish a minimum monthly charge under their headline per-user price. We worked out where each floor bites, from the vendors' own pricing pages. Below those thresholds, the advertised rate is decorative.
Read the guideRetail POS bills a monthly subscription per location on top of a percentage of every sale. Here are both published subscription prices, why the free tiers matter more than the paid ones, and the narrow case for a self-hosted till.
Read the guideOf 83 tracked pricing figures, 16 vendors publish no price at all and require a sales call. Here they are by name, what the other no-price cases actually are, and what quote-gating costs a small buyer in time and leverage.
Read the guideTill, rota, leave, food-safety checks, expenses. Five subscriptions nobody reviews, priced from each vendor's own page. The total is $2,214 a year — and roughly half of it can be removed without buying anything.
Read the guidePlatform, rota, waivers, leave, equipment. Five subscriptions priced from each vendor's own page, totalling $2,232 a year — and the single largest line is the one most gyms should not be buying at all.
Read the guideA ten-tool subscription stack is $11,188 over five years against $455 to own. That gap is real and it is also incomplete, because nobody prices the owning side honestly. Here is the full calculation, including where renting wins.
Read the guideWe read nine tracked vendors' privacy policies looking for one answer: how long is your data kept after you leave? Three gave a number. The three numbers were 7 days, 9 months and 6 years.
Read the guideInvoicing, time tracking, scheduling, expenses — $552 a year at entry tiers. For one person, per-seat pricing is the best case. What actually bites is the cap, and most of this stack has a free answer we will name.
Read the guideEvery tracked vendor has a headline price and a second one underneath it. Processing rates that change with your plan, per-transaction fees, volume caps, and a monthly charge to keep your own records. All quoted, all dated.
Read the guideDeputy's minimum is "USD $30/AUD $30/GBP £20". Those are not conversions. Four vendors, four different answers to where you live, plus the VAT line that makes the published price wrong for half the world.
Read the guideDeputy charges $5–$9 per user per month to schedule shifts. We did the 3-year math for a 15-person team from Deputy's own published prices, and we say plainly where Deputy still wins.
Read the guideTimetastic charges per person forever and Vacation Tracker enforces a EUR 50 monthly minimum. Here is the three-year math from both vendors' own pricing pages, and the self-hosted leave tracker nobody's comparison page mentions.
Read the guideTwo of the three leading contract tools will not publish a price at all. The third starts at $499 a month. Here is what renewal tracking actually needs, priced from each vendor's own page and dated.
Read the guideA hosted verification URL is a dependency. Cryptographic badges are a standard. A self-hosted verify page is a third thing. Here are all three trust models compared honestly, including where the self-hosted one is the wrong choice.
Read the guideBefore comparing waiver prices, understand the objection: a self-hosted signed record is produced by the defendant. Here is that argument in full, what mitigates it, and the honest case for owning your waiver system anyway.
Read the guideCheqroom publishes $184 per admin per month and a minimum it does not disclose. Shelf.nu is free and open source. Here is the honest three-way comparison, including where the free option beats the one we sell.
Read the guideSafetyCulture charges $24 per seat. FoodDocs charges $79 per site. Which is cheaper depends entirely on your shape, not your size — and nobody's comparison page shows you the crossover. Here it is, from both vendors' own pages.
Read the guideMost asset software tracks who has the laptop. A fixed-asset register computes depreciation, book value and disposal gain. They are different products and buyers routinely choose the wrong one. Here is the line, drawn clearly.
Read the guideSearch self-hosted expense software and you get Firefly III, Actual Budget and ExpenseOwl — all personal finance tools. Businesses need claims, approvals and reimbursement. That is a different product, and the category barely acknowledges it.
Read the guideSearch for petty cash software and you find expense platforms, personal finance apps, and abandonware from 2015. Here is why the category is empty, and what a real petty-cash ledger needs that a spreadsheet cannot provide.
Read the guideDocuClipper is $20/month for 60 pages. MoneyThumb is $24.95 for five statements. Both work well. Both require uploading your bank statements to somebody else — a decision most firms make without noticing they made it.
Read the guideFour extraction vendors, four different meters — per page, per credit, per document, and a $500 floor. The right choice depends entirely on your monthly volume. Here is where each one wins, from their own pricing pages.
Read the guideConsignCloud is $139/month and SimpleConsign is $159. We checked both against the vendors' own pages after a comparison site published three figures that were all wrong. Here are the real numbers and the arithmetic that matters.
Read the guideAppFolio requires 50 units before it will quote. DoorLoop's Starter caps at 10. We priced six property platforms from their own pages and found the small landlord sits in a gap the category has decided not to serve.
Read the guideGymMaster publishes $89 per site. Glofox and Mindbody do not publish a usable price at all. But the decision that actually matters is whether recurring billing is your core problem — because that answer rules self-hosting in or out.
Read the guideSearch this category and you get municipal citizen portals, because search engines conflate "self-service" with "self-hosted." Contractors chasing permits across several jurisdictions are served by almost nothing. Here is why, and what fills it.
Read the guideTyping 140 dishes and prices into a new POS is a day of work every restaurant does at least once. The one API vendor tracked for this won't publish a price and sits behind a $500 platform minimum. Here is the honest arithmetic.
Read the guidePrecoro starts at $499/month. Procurify won't quote publicly. The self-hosted answer is an ERP module that takes months to configure. For a business that just needs "two signatures over £2,000," there is nothing in between.
Read the guideCogsy is $199 a month. Sage's Inventory Planner won't publish a price. Both will tell you what to reorder; neither shows you the arithmetic. Here is why that matters, and the four formulas the whole category is built on.
Read the guideMost document-extraction tools read one document. The job that costs money is comparing two — what you ordered against what turned up. Here is what that check is worth, and what the tools cost.
Read the guideClockify charges $5.49 to $12.99 per seat per month, Harvest from $9 — which means your timesheet bill grows every time you hire. The per-seat math worked through honestly, including the free tier you might belong on, and the one-time alternative.
Read the guideSupplier spec sheets arrive as PDFs; your store needs structured rows. The PIM platforms that solve this run $499 a month or publish no price at all. What the job actually is, who genuinely needs a PIM, and the one-time tool for everyone else.
Read the guideEvery EU business must answer data-subject requests within a month, and most track them in an inbox. The rented portals run $9 a month to quote-gated enterprise. The self-hosted case has one argument the SaaS versions cannot make — and one honest limit.
Read the guideA small clinic runs booking, waivers, a staff rota and expenses. We priced the hosted options from their own pages and worked out which layers are worth owning outright — and which are not, including the one that disqualifies most self-hosted booking tools.
Read the guideDeadline timers and audit records are software problems. Legal sufficiency is not. Here is the honest line between them, why a one-time licence suits one side and not the other, and the question to ask any vendor in this category.
Read the guideIf you have never installed self-hosted software, this is the objection standing between you and owning your tools. Here is the actual sequence on ordinary shared hosting, and how to tell which of the three common failures you have hit.
Read the guideEvery self-hosted vendor tells you that you own your data, including us. That claim is worth exactly as much as your last successful restore. Here is the honest version, and the twenty minutes that make it true.
Read the guideMost security checklists are written for enterprises and will exhaust you before you finish. Here is what actually matters for a small PHP app on shared hosting — and, just as usefully, the advice you can skip at this scale.
Read the guideMost self-hosted apps offer both, and most advice reflexively says "MySQL for production." SQLite's documentation gives a specific traffic figure — and for a small business app, it is not close. Here is the honest threshold.
Read the guideTime tracking and invoicing have the strongest free self-hosted options of any category we track. Here is an honest account of when Kimai and Invoice Ninja are simply the right answer, and the small set of cases where they are not.
Read the guideWhere your business data physically lives, who can be compelled to hand it over, and what "EU hosting" does and does not buy you. The questions to ask any SaaS vendor, and the case where self-hosting answers all of them at once.
Read the guideThe honest case for a one-time, self-hosted invoicing tool over monthly SaaS — with today's competitor prices, verified and dated, and the free options named first.
Read the guideCalendly meters you per seat, forever. The honest self-hosted alternatives — the free open-source ones first, then a paid tool you buy once — with today's prices, verified and dated.
Read the guideGym SaaS meters you per member, forever — and some won't even show a price. The honest one-time-purchase alternative, plus what the free field really offers, with today's prices verified and dated.
Read the guideLandlord SaaS meters you per unit, every month. The honest one-time-purchase alternative for the portfolio you already manage — with today's Buildium/DoorLoop/TenantCloud prices, verified and dated.
Read the guideExpense SaaS charges per member every month. The honest one-time-purchase alternative — batch AI receipt extraction with your own key — plus today's Expensify/Zoho prices, verified and dated.
Read the guideStaff scheduling SaaS charges per employee, forever — a 10-person roster is where it bites. The honest one-time-purchase rota alternative, with today's per-user prices verified and dated, free tiers named first.
Read the guideWhat deal marketplaces actually require from a vendor — 1,000+ redemption codes, an instant redemption page, refund-safe fulfillment — and how to run all of it self-hosted. We fulfilled our own AppSumo listing this way.
Read the guideEvery Ownware tool now ships a REST API with OpenAPI, signed webhooks, two-factor sign-in, BYO-SMTP notifications, CSV import with a dry run, one-click backups and dark mode. One release, the whole catalogue.
Read the guideEvery Ownware tool now has an MCP endpoint an AI agent can use under the same guards a person faces, plus roles with email invitations, an append-only audit trail, printable PDFs, your branding, guided backups and restore, and optional single sign-on.
Read the guideEvery tool in the store is a one-time purchase that runs on your own server — the guides above explain exactly what that means and when it pays off.
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