Self-hosted CRM: what it costs to run
Self-hosted CRM running costs: the method for adding up hosting, mail, backups and your own time, before any licence is bought.
what does a self-hosted CRM cost to run is a better question than the one people usually ask, which is what the licence costs. The licence is one line. The running cost is the thing that decides whether owning your own copy was the cheaper choice, and it is almost never written down anywhere.
This page is the method for working it out, with your own numbers. It prints no figures, because the only figures that matter are the ones on your hosting invoice and in your own diary.
One honesty note first: this store does not sell a CRM. There is no pipeline, no lead stage and no deal board anywhere in the catalogue. What it sells is a booking tool that keeps customer records and an invoicing tool that keeps client records, and the arithmetic below applies to any self-hosted application of that size.
The six lines
Hosting. The shared plan or the small virtual machine the application runs on. Read the figure off the invoice for the plan you would actually use, not the headline rate for the smallest one, and annualise it.
The domain. Small, annual, easy to forget.
Mail. A self-hosted application sends through your own SMTP server, which means either an existing mailbox you already pay for or a transactional sending account. Either way, write down the figure and note whether it is metered by volume.
Backups. Storage for the dumps, plus whatever your host charges for snapshots if you use them. A backup nobody has restored is not a backup, so include the time to test one.
Certificates. Usually nothing now, and worth a line so that usually is a decision rather than an assumption.
Your own time. The line everybody omits, and often the largest one. Break it into three: the install once, the update cadence, and the incident you will eventually have.
How to cost your own time without lying to yourself
Pick a rate you would genuinely charge, or genuinely pay somebody, for an hour of this work. Then estimate three quantities:
The install. One afternoon is typical for a PHP application on a host you already have. If you have never done it, double it and read a walkthrough first -- the store's own ten-minute install guide is a reasonable rehearsal.
The upkeep. Updates arrive as a file replacement with a self-migrating database in this catalogue, so the recurring cost is minutes rather than hours -- but it is minutes on a cadence, and a cadence times a year is a real number.
The incident. Once a year something breaks: a host upgrades PHP, a certificate renewal fails, a cron stops. Budget an hour or two annually rather than pretending it is zero.
Add the three, multiply by your rate, and put the total on the same line as hosting. Now the owned column is honest.
The comparison that follows
You now have an annual running cost. The rented alternative has an annual figure too: its published monthly price times your seat count times twelve, which you can read off the observatory where each vendor figure sits beside the date it was read and a link to the page it came from.
Two refinements decide most cases.
Which one grows. A per-seat subscription grows with the team and with price rises. A running cost grows with hosting, which moves slowly. Run both at the head count you expect in three years, not today's.
The switching cost. Renting is easier to leave. If the decision is close, that flexibility has real value and it belongs in the comparison rather than in a footnote.
What the catalogue actually offers here
Slotly holds customers, their appointment history, services and staff hours, with a CSV export and a one-click backup. Invora holds reusable clients, an item catalogue, estimates that become invoices, and recurring cycles that draft rather than send. Both run on PHP with PDO and MySQL, MariaDB or SQLite -- ordinary hosting, no container runtime -- which is why the hosting line above is small.
Try the Slotly demo ↗Live, on sample data, no sign-up.
Neither is a CRM, and joining them is your work: an API on each side and a CSV in the middle. For a small service business that is usually a morning once. For a sales team, the right answer is a CRM that is not in this catalogue, and the honest thing is to say so.
Questions people ask
What is usually the biggest line? Your own time, if you cost it properly. Hosting for an application of this size is minor by comparison.
Does the store publish its own figure for this? There is a whole page on it: what self-hosting actually costs, including the cases where buying is the wrong decision.
Is there a CRM in the catalogue? No. A booking tool with customer records and an invoicing tool with client records, and nothing with leads, stages or pipelines.
Where to look next
The two product pages are Slotly and Invora. The honest account of the owned side is what self-hosting actually costs, and the rented figures with their read dates are on the observatory. Prices are on the observatory; read them on the date shown there.