Per-seat software is excellent value at three staff and quietly punishing at twenty. Self-hosting flips a bill that scales with headcount into one that mostly does not. It is not free, though: the saving is real only if somebody maintains it.
Every row is something we have actually been asked in a scoping call.
| Per-seat SaaS | Betr Agency | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost at 5 staff | Roughly $150 to $300 a month across a couple of tools | Similar or slightly worse once our fee is counted |
| Cost at 20 staff | $600 to $1,200 a month, and rising with every hire | Broadly flat. Hosting barely notices the extra users. |
| Where the data lives | The vendor's infrastructure, under their terms | Your infrastructure, under yours |
| Customisation | What the vendor exposes | Configuration, integrations and branding, all under your control |
| Upgrades | Automatic, sometimes including changes you did not want | On a schedule we run, with a rollback path |
| If it breaks | A support queue | Us, with an agreed response time |
| Compliance posture | Depends on the vendor's region and terms | You choose the region and the retention |
| Switching cost later | Export what the vendor lets you export | It is your database. Take it. |
A comparison page that never recommends the alternative is an advertisement, not a comparison.
If two of those are true of you, do that instead. We would rather tell you now than take a deposit for something that will not pay for itself.
If two of those are true, the build usually pays for itself inside a year. You can check that yourself on the instant scope page.
Priced on the page, and you can add them to a scope without talking to anyone.
An open-source platform is deployed on infrastructure you own, branded, integrated with your other systems,...
An open-source platform is deployed on infrastructure you own, branded, integrated with your other systems,...
An open-source platform is deployed on infrastructure you own, branded, integrated with your other systems,...
Price the build yourself first. If the number does not work, you have saved us both a call.