Put your own numbers in.
The cost comparison on our cost-of-ownership page prices out a typical ten-person stack. This one prices out yours. Change any figure below and everything under it moves.
What you rent today
Switch off anything you do not pay for, switch on anything we missed, and correct the prices to your own invoices. The ten lines already ticked are the same stack the cost-of-ownership page prices, so the two pages start from the same place.
Prices are the published list rate for each plan, checked in August 2026. They are a starting point, not your invoice. Lines marked flat are billed per company rather than per seat, so the seat column does not apply to them.
What owning it costs instead
What it costs to build the thing, once, and what it costs to keep it running. Both are prefilled with figures we publish. Both are yours to change. First, though, pick which kind of build you are pricing, because it changes the shape of the answer more than any other choice on this page.
The build, once
The engagement, monthly
Together, $1,000 a month. That is the published ceiling for a ten-person deployment. It is not charged per seat, but it does step in bands as the environment grows. Under ten people it comes in below this, so the comparison here is deliberately conservative.
The assumptions
kept, rather than paid out in rent, over five years
Cumulative cost, cash out the door
Renting $14,890
Owning $19,445
$4,555 behind
Renting
Owning
Renting
Owning
Renting
Owning
Renting
Owning
The same thing as a table
| Year | Renting, that year | Owning, that year | Renting, cumulative | Owning, cumulative | Where you stand |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | |||||
| Year 2 | |||||
| Year 3 | |||||
| Year 4 | |||||
| Year 5 | |||||
| Five-year total |
A calculator is an argument, not a quote.
Five things it deliberately leaves out, all of which move the answer.
Nobody gets to zero. Some tools are worth renting, some are under contract, and a few have no alternative worth putting a business on. Switching a line off above assumes it goes away entirely; in practice a handful stay, and the audit is where we work out which. Card processing is not on the list at all, because that fee is not ours to remove.
This holds your headcount still for five years. We do not charge per person, but we do step in bands as the environment gets bigger, so a business that doubles will cross a step or two. The rented column would climb in the same direction, only per seat and every year.
On the hardware path, what you own is what you eventually renew. Most of a first build lasts well past five years, but a five-year window that assumes nothing is ever replaced is flattering itself. On a server we run, replacement is our problem and it is already in the monthly figure.
Migration is our work, but not only ours. Somebody on your side answers questions, checks that the data came across right, and learns the new way of doing a familiar job. That has a cost and it is not in this table.
Owning the data, not being repriced at somebody else's renewal, and having a system shaped around the way you work. Those are the reasons most clients give afterwards, and none of them fit in a column.
The engagement covers email and calendar, files, messaging and video, customer records, security, backups, monitoring and the strategy work around all of it. The specific tools we would put behind each of those are open source, and they are what we would recommend today rather than a permanent commitment. If something better comes along, you own the infrastructure and we move you to it.
This is an estimate. The audit is the actual figure.
We will go through your invoices with you, work out what can move and what should stay where it is, and put a real number on both columns. If the maths does not work for your business, we will tell you that on the call.