Home / Services / Software cost review
SVC/COST — Software cost review
You are probably paying for software you don't use.
Not because anyone was careless. Subscriptions accumulate — a tool for a project that ended, a tier bought for one feature, seats for people who left, two departments solving the same problem separately. Nobody owns the total, so nobody sees it.
OUT/ — Six possible answers
What a review can conclude.
Deliberately in this order. The cheap, boring outcomes come first because they are where the savings usually are — and building something custom is the last option, not the destination.
01
Cancel the shelfware
Subscriptions nobody logs into any more — bought for a project that ended, or by someone who left. Every organisation over about fifteen people has some. Free money, no build, no migration.
02
Right-size the licences
Dormant seats still billed, a tier bought for one feature nobody uses, the same tool paid for twice by two departments. Usually the fastest win available and rarely requires anyone to change how they work.
03
Consolidate overlap
Three tools doing one job because three people each solved the same problem independently. Consolidation costs some retraining, so it only makes sense where the overlap is genuine rather than superficial.
04
Renegotiate
Annual commitment instead of monthly, a competitor quote in hand, or simply asking. Vendors discount to retain, and the ask costs nothing. Nobody does it because nobody owns the renewal.
05
Self-host an open-source equivalent
Where a mature open-source alternative genuinely exists and the per-seat cost has become the dominant line. The software is free; operating it properly is not, and that is the honest trade.
06
Build something narrow
Last, and only where usage is small, stable and unregulated — a fraction of a big product used heavily, with no statutory churn underneath it. This is the smallest bucket, not the goal.
HON/ — The obvious objection
Sometimes we will tell you to keep paying.
There is a clear conflict of interest in a firm that builds software offering to review what you spend on software. We would rather name it than hope you don't notice.
So the review is paid and standalone, written to be handed to anyone, and it is genuinely common for the recommendation to be "this tool is worth what it costs — leave it alone." A mature product with a vendor absorbing compliance changes, security patching and support is frequently excellent value, and saying so is the only thing that makes the other five recommendations credible.
The review covers
- Every subscription — what it costs annually, who owns it, when it renews
- Actual usage — seats assigned against seats active, pulled from the admin consoles
- Overlap — where two or more tools do the same job
- Contract position — notice periods, renewal dates, negotiation leverage
- Alternatives worth considering, with the switching cost stated honestly
- A ranked plan — by saving against effort and risk, not by size of saving
OSS/ — The self-hosted option
Free software, paid operations.
Mature open-source equivalents now exist for most common business tools. The licence cost goes to zero and an operational responsibility appears in its place — updates, backup, monitoring, security, and someone accountable at 9am. That responsibility is the entire trade, and pretending otherwise is how self-hosting projects fail.
PRF/ — We did this to ourselves first
Five containers to one.
We needed invoicing, so we deployed the well-regarded open-source platform. It worked. It was also five services — application, web server, database, cache and a backup sidecar — with a migration path to maintain and a feature surface built for businesses issuing hundreds of invoices a month with recurring billing and payment gateways.
We issue a handful of export invoices a year. We decommissioned it the same day and built a single-container replacement: PDF generation, a ledger, sequential numbering that cannot leave gaps, and authentication delegated to the reverse proxy rather than hand-rolled.
Why we cite it
- It is inspectable — the reasoning is published, including the feature we built and then deleted
- It shows the judgement, not the outcome — deploy the standard thing first, measure it honestly, be willing to discard it
- It cuts both ways. The right answer for a business issuing hundreds of invoices a month would have been to keep the platform
- It was a day's work, because the scope was narrow. That is the only condition under which building beats buying
FAQ/ — Common questions
Questions we get asked.
Isn't this just a route to selling us a custom build?
It would be, if the review were free and the recommendation predictable. So: the review is a paid, standalone deliverable written to be handed to anyone, and a build is the last of six possible outcomes and the rarest. On most engagements the largest savings come from cancelling unused subscriptions and right-sizing licences, neither of which involves us doing anything further. If the honest answer is that your tools are worth what you pay, that is what the report says.
Is custom software actually cheaper than a subscription?
Often no, and the comparison is usually done dishonestly. People weigh a one-off build cost against an annual subscription and omit the years of maintenance, security patching, browser and OS compatibility, and the fact that somebody must own it indefinitely. We compare against total cost over a realistic horizon, including our own ongoing involvement. That arithmetic rules out custom more often than it supports it.
What happens if you disappear? We would be running software only you understand.
A fair question and you should ask it of anyone small. Three answers. We build on mainstream, widely-hired technology rather than anything clever. Everything is documented — architecture decisions, runbooks, deployment — as we go. And the code, infrastructure and credentials are yours from the first commit, in your accounts. The test we hold ourselves to is whether another developer could pick it up in a morning.
What should we never replace?
Anything with statutory requirements that change underneath it: accounting, payroll, tax filing and compliance reporting. A vendor absorbing every budget-cycle rule change is worth every rupee, and businesses that rebuilt these have regretted it. Also payments — use a payment provider — and email infrastructure. We will tell you these are off the table before you ask.
Self-hosting sounds like it just moves the cost.
It does, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. You are converting a per-seat subscription into an operations cost: hosting, updates, backup, monitoring, restore testing and somebody accountable when it breaks. Sometimes that is materially cheaper — particularly at higher seat counts, or where you are paying in dollars for a tool used lightly. Sometimes it is not, and you do it for control or data residency instead. We will show you which case you are in rather than assuming.
We are in India and pay in USD. Does that change anything?
Yes, in two ways. Per-seat pricing set for US buyers lands harder here, which widens the range where alternatives make sense. And the DPDP Act makes where your customer data physically sits a question you may have to answer — which turns self-hosting from purely a cost decision into a control and compliance one. That does not make it automatically right, but it does mean the maths is not the only input.
CTA/ — Software spend
What did you spend on software last year?
Most businesses cannot answer that quickly, which is usually where the savings are hiding. Send a rough list of what you subscribe to and how many people use each — that is enough for a first honest view.
Ask about a spend review →