What self-hosting actually costs
Every comparison here prices the server, the backups and the hours it takes to look after, then puts that against the vendor's own published price. Sometimes self-hosting wins by an enormous margin. Sometimes it loses. We publish both, because a comparison that always reaches the same conclusion is not a comparison.
- Comparisons
- 90paid product against self-hosted tool
- Tools priced
- 49with a published sizing model
- Prices read from vendors
- 42on 2026-10-09
- Where self-hosting loses
- 53of those comparisons, at 10 people
Where the gap is widest
Largest 36-month saving at 10 people, your own time already deducted.
| Instead of | Run | Their price | Yours | Saved over 36 months |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Salesforce Sales Cloud | EspoCRM | $1,000 | $45.54 | $34,211 |
| Salesforce Sales Cloud | Twenty | $1,000 | $237 | $26,265 |
| Zendesk | FreeScout | $616 | $45.54 | $20,373 |
| Pipedrive | EspoCRM | $437 | $45.54 | $13,926 |
| Zendesk | Chatwoot | $616 | $237 | $12,428 |
| Zendesk | Zammad | $616 | $237 | $12,428 |
| SurveyMonkey | LimeSurvey | $336 | $45.54 | $10,299 |
| Help Scout | FreeScout | $300 | $45.54 | $9,011 |
And where it does not pay off
These are the comparisons where the paid product is cheaper once your hours are priced at $75. Self-hosting them is a choice about control, not about money.
| Product | Self-hosted option | Their price | Yours | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google One storage | Immich | $11.18 | $328 | why |
| Mixpanel | PostHog | $0.00 | $247 | why |
| Amplitude | PostHog | $0.00 | $247 | why |
| Google Analytics 4 | PostHog | $0.00 | $247 | why |
| Jira | Plane | $0.00 | $237 | why |
| Jira | OpenProject | $0.00 | $237 | why |
| Sentry | SigNoz | $26.00 | $237 | why |
| Dropbox Business | Immich | $134 | $328 | why |
By category
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Password managers
Store team credentials without a per-seat vault subscription.
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Web analytics
Measure traffic without handing visitor data to an ad network.
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Workflow automation
Wire apps together without paying per task executed.
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Docs and wikis
Keep the team knowledge base on infrastructure you control.
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Project management
Track issues and sprints without per-seat escalation.
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Helpdesk and support inbox
Run customer support without per-agent pricing.
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Identity and SSO
Own the login layer instead of renting monthly active users.
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Status and uptime monitoring
Publish uptime and get alerts for the price of a small VPS.
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Business intelligence
Query and chart your own data without seat licences.
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Forms and surveys
Collect responses without a per-response cap.
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File sync and storage
Replace per-seat cloud drives with your own storage.
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Team chat
Keep message history without paying to unlock the archive.
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Email marketing
Send campaigns paying only for delivery, not for list size.
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CRM
Track deals without per-seat CRM licensing.
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E-signature
Sign documents without a per-envelope charge.
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Infrastructure monitoring
Watch servers and services without a per-host monitoring bill.
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Error monitoring
Capture exceptions without event-volume billing.
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Scheduling and booking
Share availability without a per-seat booking tool.
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Photo libraries
Keep a family or team photo archive off metered cloud storage.
How this works
A paid seat has no floor and a steep slope: ten people cost ten times one person. A server has a high floor and almost no slope: the same machine serves ten people or a hundred. Every comparison on this site is really just the point where those two lines cross, and that point moves depending on how heavy the tool is and what your time is worth.
We size each tool from its own documented requirements where they exist, pick the smallest server plan that actually fits, add backups, and add the hours. Prices carry the date they were read and a link to the page they were read from. When we have not checked a price, we do not publish a figure that depends on it. The full method is here, including everything the model deliberately ignores.