Compare
The decisions people actually argue about.
Start with the map of software you can stop renting. The other pages are the argument behind each row, including the rows where the subscription should stay.
Software you can stop renting
A map of the subscriptions a company can replace, and the ones it should not.
Owning your automation versus renting a tool
Rent where a product already does the job, build where none does.
A hosted agent versus an agent you own
The difference is who holds the credentials and where the data can go.
Open source versus commercial SaaS
What you pay for either way, and who carries the server.
CRM you rent versus a CRM you run
Salesforce, HubSpot and Pipedrive, against systems whose code you can keep.
Helpdesk you rent versus a helpdesk you run
Zendesk, Freshdesk and Intercom, against a ticket system on your own host.
Live chat you rent versus chat you run
Intercom and Drift, against Chatwoot's community code. WhatsApp stays Meta's.
Marketing automation you rent versus automation you run
HubSpot, Marketo and Mailchimp, against Mautic and Listmonk.
ERP you rent versus an ERP you run
SAP and NetSuite are not a weekend swap. ERPNext, Odoo Community and Dolibarr are the systems that are.
Accounting you rent versus books you keep
QuickBooks and Xero, against GnuCash and ERPNext. Tax filing is the part a package does not finish.
Invoicing you can own, and payments you cannot
Stripe is a card network, not a piece of software you replace with a repository.
Procurement you rent versus purchase orders you keep
Coupa and Ariba do not have a mature open-source twin. Purchase orders can still live in ERPNext.
HR systems you rent versus an employee record you keep
Workday and BambooHR, against OrangeHRM and ERPNext.
Payroll you should not pretend to replace
ADP and Gusto file with the government. An open-source package does not.
Applicant tracking you rent versus a hiring record you keep
Greenhouse and Lever do not have a mature open-source twin. The applicant record can still be owned.
Performance tools you rent versus a review you can keep
Lattice and Culture Amp do not have a mature open-source replacement.
Team chat you rent versus chat you run
Slack and Teams, against Mattermost Team Edition and Element. SSO is the fork in the road.
Email you rent versus mail you operate
Google and Microsoft are a suite. mailcow is a mail system. Proton is another host, not an exit.
Documents you rent versus documents you keep
Google Workspace, Notion and Confluence, against Nextcloud, OnlyOffice and BookStack.
Project tools you rent versus a board you run
Jira, Asana and Linear, against OpenProject, Plane, Leantime and Taiga.
File storage you rent versus files you hold
Dropbox, Drive, OneDrive and Box, against Nextcloud.
Code hosts you rent versus a forge you run
GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket, against Gitea and Forgejo.
CI you rent versus a runner you operate
GitHub Actions and CircleCI, against Woodpecker.
Cloud you rent versus machines you operate
Proxmox replaces a hypervisor. It does not replace AWS.
Monitoring you rent versus monitoring you run
Datadog and New Relic, against Prometheus and Grafana. Wazuh is not CrowdStrike.
Identity you rent versus identity you run
Okta and 1Password, against Keycloak, Authentik and Vaultwarden.
BI you rent versus a warehouse you query
Tableau, Power BI and Looker, against Apache Superset. Metabase's tree is mixed.
Product analytics you rent versus analytics you host
Mixpanel and Amplitude, against Matomo, Umami, Plausible and a MIT PostHog compose.
A customer data platform you rent versus a database you hold
Segment does not have an open-source twin we will deploy. The warehouse can still be owned.
A storefront you rent versus a store you run
Shopify and BigCommerce, against WooCommerce, Medusa and Saleor.
A CMS you rent versus a CMS you run
Contentful and Webflow, against WordPress. The pages were never the hard part.
Design tools you rent versus design tools you run
Figma, against Penpot. Adobe for print is a different job. Canva is not a file format.
Meetings you rent versus meetings you host
Zoom, against Jitsi and BigBlueButton. Teams meetings are part of a suite.
E-sign you rent versus signing you host
DocuSign, against Documenso. A licence is not a legal opinion.
Security tools you rent versus tools you can run
Wazuh and osquery are not CrowdStrike, and nothing here is Vanta.