Stop renting your business from Big Tech
Most small businesses bleed thousands a month on the SaaS line items that don't earn their bill — file storage, automation, per-user VPN, password managers, identity. We audit your stack, replace the heavy stuff with managed open-source you actually own, and leave the SaaS that pulls its weight alone.
A 10-person business easily pays $2,000–$4,000 a month in SaaS — Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Zapier, Dropbox, Slack, a VPN, a password manager, a CRM, project management, and so on. Most of that is paid per seat, every month, forever, with prices that go up and never down.
But not all of it is dead weight. Some SaaS earns its bill — Slack, when your customers reach you there. Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, when your team's velocity depends on them. Accounting, payroll, e-signature, and any vertical SaaS your operations are built around. We don't touch those. The point isn't ideological — it's economic.
A liberation project is exactly what it sounds like. We pull a real audit of your last twelve months of software spend, identify what's earning its keep and what isn't, and migrate the underperformers onto a managed open-source stack you actually own. File storage, automation, per-user VPN, password management, identity — the line items where the math is genuinely lopsided. The result is usually a 30–60% reduction in recurring software bills, with a setup that's faster, more private, and yours to keep.
We don't pitch this to everyone. If your bill is small, your stack is already lean, or your industry has hard requirements that make self-hosting harder than it's worth, we'll tell you. The audit is free — the math has to make sense before either of us commits to anything.
What's your SaaS bill actually costing you?
Tick the tools you pay for. Adjust your team size. Numbers are illustrative — the real audit is more detailed and free.
For each tool you pay for, choose Replace (we swap it for self-hosted) or Keep on SaaS (we leave it alone — it earns its bill).
Pricing assumes mid-tier published rates, billed annually. Real bills are usually higher with add-ons, extra storage, and per-feature upsells.
Things we'd never touch
Some SaaS earns its keep — your customers reach you there, your accountant relies on it, or the switching cost would obliterate the savings. We leave these alone:
Productivity & Email
Office apps, email, OneDrive, Teams.
Gmail, Drive, Docs, Meet.
File storage
Cloud file storage and sync (1TB–unlimited per user).
Replaced by: Nextcloud on your private cloud — flat-fee storage on disks you own.
Team chat
Team messaging and channels.
Meetings
Video meetings and webinars.
Automation
App automation and integrations.
Replaced by: n8n self-hosted on your private cloud.
Networking
Per-user remote access VPN.
Replaced by: Netbird self-hosted, or WireGuard mesh.
Security
Team password manager.
Replaced by: Vaultwarden self-hosted (Bitwarden-compatible).
Project mgmt
Project and task management.
CRM & marketing
CRM, email marketing, basic automation.
Today
After F09
What "After F09" includes
Managed Proxmox + Ceph cluster, Nextcloud, n8n, chat, monitoring, daily backups, patching, and support — plus any SaaS you marked as Keep, since you'll still pay those bills.
Directional estimate, not a quote. SaaS list prices come from each vendor's published per-user pricing on standard business plans as of 2026. Your real bill may include enterprise discounts, add-ons, or reduced seat counts — the audit gets those right.
How a liberation project actually runs
Four phases, parallel-running until you're ready. We don't break things to prove a point.
We pull every recurring software charge from the last 12 months and map what's actually being used. You'll get a one-page summary of where your SaaS dollars are going and what we'd recommend cutting first.
We propose a target stack — what gets self-hosted, what stays SaaS, and what just gets cancelled. Migration is sequenced so nothing breaks for your team.
We stand up your private cloud, move data over (drives, mailboxes, automations, chat history where possible), and run both stacks in parallel until your team is comfortable.
You walk away with documented systems, training for your team, and a managed-services agreement (or not — your call). The stack is yours, not rented.
Everything you need to actually leave SaaS behind
Liberation isn't just standing up Nextcloud and walking off. We migrate the data, train your team, document the systems, and keep the SaaS billing alive long enough that you have a safe rollback at every step.
Start with the free audit- 12-month SaaS spend audit, organized by category and ROI
- Identity migration (Microsoft 365 / Google Workspace → self-hosted)
- File storage migration (Dropbox / OneDrive / Drive → Nextcloud)
- Automation migration (Zapier / Make → n8n)
- Team chat migration (Slack → Mattermost or Rocket.Chat)
- Optional: email server, password manager, CRM, project management
- Backups, encryption at rest, and basic monitoring on day one
- Documented runbooks so the next admin (yours or ours) is never lost
Things you should actually ask us
Wait — aren't I just trading lock-in to Microsoft for lock-in to you?
Fair question, and we take it seriously. Everything we deploy is open-source, runs on commodity hardware or any major cloud, and is fully documented. If you fired us tomorrow, another competent admin (or shop) could pick up where we left off — that's not true with most SaaS. We can also build and hand off the stack with no managed-services contract. The whole point is that you own it.
What about HIPAA, SOC 2, or other compliance?
Self-hosted stacks can absolutely be compliant — sometimes more easily than SaaS, since you control the data path. We've designed builds with encryption at rest, audit logging, access controls, and BAAs in mind. If you're in a regulated industry, we lead the project with your compliance requirements, not retrofit them.
How long does a project take?
Typical liberation projects run 4–12 weeks depending on size and how many systems we're migrating. We don't disappear after — your team gets training and we keep the parallel SaaS subscriptions running long enough that there's a safe rollback at every step.
What does it cost?
One-time fees typically land between $3,000 and $8,000 for small businesses, scaling with team size and the number of systems migrated. The audit itself is free — we do the math first, before you decide.
What if a self-hosted tool isn't as good as the SaaS version?
Sometimes that's true and we'll say so up front. Slack is genuinely better than most self-hosted chat for some teams. Microsoft Excel still beats LibreOffice for power users. The point isn't to replace everything — it's to replace what's costing you the most for the least benefit, and keep what actually earns its bill.
Ready to see the math on your actual stack?
Free audit, no commitment. Send us your last 12 months of software invoices and we'll come back with a short proposal — savings, scope, timeline, price.
Get your free audit