Rent the hosting, own the software — how Ownware Cloud actually works

This store has spent a year arguing you should own your software. So a hosted tier needs explaining — carefully, because "we run it for you" is exactly the sentence every SaaS lock-in starts with. Ownware Cloud is built to be the opposite thing, and this guide walks through precisely how, including the parts where self-hosting still wins.

What Cloud actually is

Pick an app, choose a web address, and a few minutes later your own instance is running at your-business.cloud.ownware.io — provisioned automatically, on its own private database. Not a shared account with your rows next to a thousand strangers': the isolation is per-instance by construction, the same one-database-per-tenant design the SaaS Kit ships to its own buyers. You pay one flat monthly price per app — no per-user meter, no per-record meter, nothing that punishes growth — with a 14-day free trial before the first charge.

The three exits, and why they are the whole point

A hosted service is only as honest as its exits. Cloud has three, and each one is a built-in mechanism, not a support-ticket promise:

• The export exit. One click downloads everything you have put in — your data, complete, any time, no asking. Leaving is a button.
• The source exit. You can take the complete source code with you and stand the same app up on your own server. Same software, same data format; the self-hosting guide covers the rest.
• The 12-month exit. Pay for twelve months and the perpetual self-host license is yours regardless — at that point you are hosting with us out of convenience, not dependence. The subscription rents the hosting; the software stops being rented at month twelve, permanently.

Compare that with the exits from a normal SaaS: a CSV of whatever they deign to export, no source, and a license that evaporates the day you stop paying. The difference is the product.

What we take off your plate

Running a server is genuinely work, and pretending otherwise is how "self-hosted" gets a bad name. On Cloud, that work is ours: the server, TLS certificates, software updates, and nightly backups — every instance's database is snapshotted, integrity-checked, and rotated automatically, with copies pulled off the hosting box. (Backup age is visible on the console, so "backed up" is a timestamp you can read, not a slogan.) You log in and run your business; the plumbing is our problem.

The honest ledger — what each side costs you

Cloud costs money forever while you use it. Twelve months of a $12 app is $144 — more than buying most of these tools outright on day one. If you are comfortable uploading a PHP app to shared hosting, owning it once is cheaper within the first year, full stop. Cloud earns its fee only if the hosting, updates, TLS, and backups are chores you genuinely do not want.

Self-hosting costs attention forever. Backups are yours to run (and to test), updates are yours to apply, and when the server misbehaves at 9 a.m. on a Monday, that is your morning. What "your data, your server" actually means lays this out without romance.

Neither side of that ledger is wrong. They are different purchases: one buys convenience with money, the other buys independence with attention.

The honest chooser

• Comfortable with cPanel or a VPS, want the lowest lifetime cost: buy the app once and self-host — that remains this store's founding recommendation.
• Want the tool today with zero ops, and an exit you can actually take: Cloud, knowing the license becomes yours at month twelve.
• Not sure: start on Cloud's free trial; if you outgrow the fee, export, take the source, and move home. That path is designed, tested, and priced in — not a loophole.

Four apps are on Cloud at launch — Rentara, Slotly, Gymora, and Votera — with more joining as demand shows. The calculator now shows all three numbers side by side for each: what the SaaS rival rents for, what owning once costs, and what we charge to run it for you. Three honest columns; pick the one that fits the year you are actually having.

For the numbers behind the comparisons: the Price Observatory tracks every verified vendor price this store cites.