Count what you rent today.
Make a list. For each tool, write down the monthly price, the number of people it charges for, the add-ons you’ve bought, and what you actually use it for. Then add the part no invoice shows: the time spent moving information between tools.
A worksheet, not a benchmark
- Tool, and the one job it does for you.
- Monthly cost, per person and in total.
- Features you pay for and don’t use.
- Where its information is typed in again somewhere else.
- What happens to your data if you stop paying.
When a subscription is the right call.
Some software does the same job in every business, and does it well: accounting, payroll, email, file storage. These tools keep up with tax and compliance changes so you don’t have to. Rebuilding them rarely makes sense.
A subscription also suits work that’s still changing, where you’re not yet sure what the process should be.
When owning a system is better.
- Your process is your advantage. The way you quote, schedule or serve customers is what sets you apart, and generic tools flatten it.
- Several tools, one job. You pay for a handful of subscriptions that each do part of the work.
- Costs grow with your team. Per-person pricing climbs every time you hire.
- Your data is scattered. No one place holds the whole picture, and the tools disagree.
- The data matters who holds it. Where it lives and who controls it is part of your obligations. See data sovereignty.
What owning actually means.
Owning a system means you hold the source code and the data, it runs in an account in your name or on your own devices, and you can move it to another developer. Ask any supplier to put that in writing.
It doesn’t mean free. Hosting, backups, updates and support have costs, and someone needs to own them. Compare those with what you rent, over several years rather than one month.
An example.
Invoices is MindLabs’ own invoicing app, shown on its case study as an illustrative joinery, Fernwright. It does invoices, payments, expenses, GST and reports in one app that runs on the business’s own computer, with no per-user subscription. FitFam replaces a family’s handful of separate apps with one they own.
A quick test.
Owning is worth exploring if you answer yes to two or more:
- We pay for three or more tools that overlap.
- Someone re-types the same information every week.
- Our way of working doesn’t fit the software, so we work around it.
- We couldn’t easily get all our data out today.