Ownership
Five years of payments, and you own nothing.
This is not a complaint about subscriptions in general. It is a specific observation about what you hold at the end. Five years of rent on an office gets you nothing either, but nobody pretends otherwise, and everybody knows the alternative exists.
With software, most business owners have never been told the alternative exists. Bespoke software is assumed to be an enterprise thing, priced for organisations with a procurement department. That assumption is out of date, and it is expensive.
What ownership means in practice
Four things, and the fourth is the one that matters.
The code is yours. In a repository you control, documented well enough for another developer to pick up. Not escrowed, not licensed. Yours.
The data is yours, in a normal database on your own hosting account, exportable at any time without asking anyone.
The hosting is in your name. We set it up, and the account belongs to your business, so nobody can switch anything off but you.
And you are not locked to us. That is the one that matters, because it is the one every vendor arrangement quietly gets wrong. If you never speak to us again, the software keeps running and any competent developer can maintain it.
The uncomfortable part
Ownership means the maintenance is yours too.
We are not going to pretend owning software is free of obligation. Things need updating occasionally. If a system you own breaks at 4pm on a Friday, there is no vendor support line to escalate to, and that is a genuine trade-off worth stating plainly.
In practice the systems we build are small, boring and run on infrastructure that looks after itself, which is a deliberate design choice rather than luck. And you can engage us, or anyone else, when you want changes. What you cannot be is charged every month whether you need anything or not.
Before you sign anything
Five questions worth asking any software vendor.
These are useful whether you build with us or renew with someone else. A good vendor answers all five without hesitating.
- If we leave, what exactly can we export, and in what format?
- What is the annual increase, and is it in the contract?
- What happens to our price if you are acquired?
- Which of our workflows depends on a feature you have flagged as deprecated?
- What does it cost to add ten users, and is that price fixed?
The answers tell you what you actually hold. Then put the number next to a build on the cost engine.
Common questions
Answered plainly.
Do we really own the code?
Yes. It sits in a repository you control, documented so another developer can pick it up. There is no licence back to us, no escrow arrangement and no clause that makes it conditional on continuing to pay us.
What if you go out of business?
Nothing happens to your software. It runs on your hosting account, the code is in your repository, and any competent developer can maintain it. That is the entire point of the arrangement, and it is a fair question to ask of anyone.
Who pays for hosting?
You do, directly, in your own account. For most systems this size it is a small amount, often under twenty dollars a month, and paying it directly is what stops it becoming a lever.
What about maintenance and updates?
Occasional and quoted when needed. We build deliberately boring systems on infrastructure that looks after itself, so maintenance is genuinely light. What we do not do is charge a monthly retainer for software you already own.
Is there any lock-in at all?
Only the ordinary kind: we know the system, so we are usually the fastest people to change it. That is knowledge, not a contract, and it does not stop anyone else picking it up.
Where to next
Ask us the five questions.
The ones above, aimed at us. We will answer all five on the call, in writing if you want them in writing, and you should expect the same from anyone else you are considering.