McIntosh Systems/economics/own-your-software

A seat license is rent you never stop paying

Legacy software charges per seat, every year, for as long as your team uses it. Add people and the bill grows. At renewal the price moves in one direction. You are paying for access and nothing more, and the day you stop, the access stops with it.

You never own what you rented.

We build it once, and the software is yours

An implementation fee builds the system and deploys it into your own cloud. After that, the recurring cost is maintenance and continuous improvement: keeping it running, keeping it current, and extending it as the work changes. The annual line makes the asset better, and the asset is yours.

It runs in your own tenant, carrying only your data. There is no seat to license and nothing to renew to keep the lights on.

The two cost paths cross, then keep diverging

Set the two models side by side. Rent is a line that climbs and never ends. Ownership is a step up front to build, then a flat line for maintenance. A rising line and a flat one always meet, and once they meet they do not cross back.

Before that point, you have paid to build something real. After it, you pay far less than the rent would have been, and the gap widens every year the software keeps running. One path leaves you renting access at a price someone else sets. The other leaves you owning the software outright, running in your own cloud.

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Scope the build against what you rent today

Bring the workflow costing your team the most and we will scope the build, or email hello@mcintoshsystems.com.