Self-host vs SaaS estimator
Money you save on seats, minus the server, backups and the hours you spend. The hours are what most comparisons leave out.
Self-hosting saves about $780 a year for 20 seats: SaaS $2,400 vs self-host $1,620 (server $144, backups $36, admin time $1,440). Break-even at about 14 seats at these numbers.
Server presets
Real prices from DigitalOcean, checked 2026-11-10. Pick one to fill in the server and backup prices above (backups are 20% of the Droplet price, weekly backups).
Source: DigitalOcean Droplets pricing, checked 2026-11-10. Hetzner prices are not recorded: the vendor pricing page needs JavaScript to show prices, and third-party figures for the same plan disagree.
The formula
SaaS year = seats × price × 12 ; self-host year = (server + backups + admin hours × your rate) × 12
- Every input is yours. Default values are examples, not prices; the server presets above are real DigitalOcean prices (checked 2026-11-10).
- Admin hours default from difficulty: 1→1, 2→2, 3→3, 4→5, 5→8 hours a month. That is our guess; edit it.
- Not included: migration effort, downtime risk, security incidents, compliance, feature gaps, and support contracts.