Rent a per-seat SaaS
Access while the subscription lasts.
A vendor spreads one product across thousands of customers. You get speed at the start, but the price, roadmap and exit terms remain theirs.
OWN VS RENT, LAST REVIEWED AUGUST 2026
Rent a SaaS, or run your own system.
This is not a comparison between two per-seat tools. It is a choice between renting access forever and running a focused system built around the way your team works.
Bottom line
Renting makes sense when the SaaS is genuinely hard to replace or still cheaper. But for a costly, simple workflow, a co-funded build replaces a rising per-seat bill with a flat annual running fee. Your data stays yours, you receive a perpetual, escrow-backed licence, and we host and run your isolated instance.
Run your own system
A focused build, shared once and run for you.
Around five founders share the core build. We migrate, host, monitor and maintain the system for a flat annual fee, with private extensions available when you need them.
AT A GLANCE
The difference is commercial before it is technical.
| Rent a per-seat SaaS | Your own system | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost model | Per seat, usually rising at renewal | A shared build contribution, then one flat annual fee |
| Cost as you grow | Each hire adds another licence | Add your whole team for no extra per-seat charge |
| What is yours | Access lasts while you pay, under the vendor's terms | Your data, plus a perpetual, escrow-backed licence and an isolated instance |
| Who maintains it | The vendor, on its shared roadmap | We do: hosting, monitoring, maintenance and senior engineers on call |
| Change requests | Join the product queue or change your process | Shape the shared core, then add private work when you need it |
| When it is wrong | When the seat bill is already painful, or you use only a narrow slice | When a data network, payment rail, deep compliance or low cost makes SaaS the better fit |
WHAT RENTING ACTUALLY COSTS
Price your structure, not the headline.
Enter your seats and current monthly price. The calculator holds the SaaS price flat to stay conservative, while showing what happens when the seat count or price rises.
Use EUR, GBP or USD for planning. Unseated pricing and invoices remain in EUR.
Savings calculator
See what you'd actually save over 5 years
Show values in
Tool to replace
Field service & trades · €90/seat/mo
63 tools preset. Yours not here? Type it in, the calculator still works.
25
€90
What if…
€27,000/yr€2,500/yrafter year 1
Year 1: you save €12,900Payback: month 65-year saving: ~€111,000
Stay on SaaS
Your own system
€27,000
€14,100
€54,000
€16,600
€81,000
€19,100
€108,000
€21,600
€135,000
€24,100
Assumes 1/5 share of the build, €2,500/yr flat run fee. SaaS list price held flat (conservative: most vendors raise 5–15%/yr).
SWITCHING WITHOUT THE CLIFF
Keep the old tool running until your new system is ready.
We map the workflow your team uses, migrate the agreed data, and time cutover around the renewal where possible. You do not have to turn off your SaaS to start the work.
What continues after go-live
Hosting, backups, security updates, monitoring and maintenance remain with us. You get the operational certainty of a service, without adding a per-seat tax.
WHERE RENTING IS STILL RIGHT
Some SaaS should stay SaaS.
This is the test that saves everyone time. If one of these describes your situation, keep the SaaS or replace only the narrow workflow around it.
The value is a network you cannot sensibly recreate, such as LinkedIn Recruiter or a job board.
It moves money or fulfils regulated infrastructure, such as Stripe, Xero, payroll or email.
You need a compliance-certified platform whose specialist capability is the product, not a supporting workflow.
Your team is small, the tool is inexpensive, and the five-year calculator still says staying costs less.
You rely on an end-to-end suite's back office, such as pay-and-bill, and would not replace only the workflow you actually need.
If that is you, keep the SaaS. We would rather lose the lead than take a bad fit.
WHERE OWNING WINS
Replace the rent trap, not useful infrastructure.
You use a simple database, form, workflow and dashboard, but pay enterprise-style per-seat pricing.
Headcount is growing, so each new hire makes the rental bill larger while the workflow stays broadly the same.
The process is your differentiator and the vendor's roadmap keeps forcing compromises.
You need your data exportable at any time, on your own isolated instance, with access protected by escrow.
Several businesses need the same core system and can share one focused build as a founding cohort.
WORKED EXAMPLES
The category matters more than the vendor name.
These are starting points for a scoped conversation, not claims that every deployment should be replaced.
Recruitment ATS
A rented Vincere workflow
Candidate and client records, a placement pipeline, email and reporting are often a focused workflow. Keep a specialist back office if it is essential.
- Typical annual rent
- €20,000
- Build share
- from €8,400
Field service
A rented Commusoft workflow
Scheduling, mobile forms, job history and customer updates can be shaped around the way your engineers actually work.
- Typical annual rent
- €27,000
- Build share
- from €11,600
Field sales CRM
A rented SPOTIO workflow
A mapped customer database, visit log and sales dashboard can be a good candidate. Keep the CRM it integrates with when that wider stack is essential.
- Typical annual rent
- €22,000
- Build share
- from €8,400
FREQUENTLY ASKED
A decision worth making clearly.
No. You own your data, can export it at any time, and hold a perpetual, escrow-backed licence to run your isolated instance. The platform IP stays with Rollout IT, which keeps the price lower and lets improvements continue.
Stop renting. Get your own system.
Tell us which costly workflow you would replace. We will tell you honestly whether it is a good candidate, then line up the right founding cohort.