1. Hosting — the one recurring cost, and it isn’t ours
Your system runs on hosting accounts registered to your company, and the host bills your card directly, at their standard rates with no markup stop in between. For the class of systems we build, that’s typically a utility-bill amount per month — the exact figure depends on usage, and you can see it on your own invoice because the account is yours. The domain renews yearly at registrar cost, also yours.
If you ever stop working with us, this is the only bill that continues — and the system continues with it.
2. Changes — when you want them, quoted before they start
Businesses change: a new service line, a new report, a workflow that evolved. Changes to your system are scoped and quoted like the original build — a number before the work, one-time, written up with the hours behind it. No change happens unrequested, and none bills by surprise. What you never pay for: “maintenance” as a standing fee for software that’s just running. Software doesn’t wear out like a truck; a system that’s running and unchanged costs you hosting, period.
3. Support — the part the ownership model makes honest
Before handover, we run your real workflow through the system end to end while you watch — that’s the gate, and it’s why handover isn’t the start of a support relationship on life support. After it: documentation and your team’s training are already yours; if something we built doesn’t work as proven at handover, fixing it is on us; if you want something new, that’s a change (see above). And because you own the code and the accounts, “support” is never leverage — any developer could take over tomorrow, which keeps everyone honest, including us.
The three-year picture, side by side
A rented operational stack at common published/user-reported prices: $10,000–$29,000 per year, every year, rising with headcount. An owned system: the build once, hosting at a utility-bill amount, changes only when you order them. That’s the whole after-cost story — nothing recurring comes to us.