Question 1

How can a custom build cost a fraction of the usual price?

Accepted Answer

We don’t start from a blank page. Every build sits on our own stack of patterns and components, refined across projects — so you pay for your system, not for reinventing login screens, permissions, and dashboards from scratch. You own your code and your data outright; we keep our reusable tooling. That trade is exactly why a build at roughly 65% of one year’s combined SaaS-and-labor spend is possible.

Question 2

What exactly does the fixed price include — what about scope creep?

Accepted Answer

The scope is agreed in writing during discovery, and the fixed price covers everything in it. Anything beyond that scope is a written change order, priced and approved before any work starts. No surprise invoices, no meter running in the background.

Question 3

We don’t have time for a long build.

Accepted Answer

Builds ship in weeks, not quarters. The ask on your side is small: roughly two one-hour discovery sessions up front, plus a short weekly review while we build. Your team keeps doing its job while we do ours.

Question 4

Who maintains it — what does the 12.5% per year actually cover?

Accepted Answer

The 12.5% annual fee covers security patches, dependency updates, bug fixes, and minor tweaks — the ongoing care that keeps the system healthy. New features are separate, scoped change orders, priced before work begins. Hosting runs on your own cloud account, typically €600–1,200/year (we model around €1,000), billed to you directly by your provider.

Question 5

What happens if OwnStack disappears?

Accepted Answer

You keep running, because nothing depends on us being here. We build on a deliberately boring, standard stack — Next.js, TypeScript, and Postgres — with your code in your own repository from day one and documentation written for the next developer. Any competent dev shop can pick it up and carry on. A SaaS vendor that shuts down takes your tool with it; owned code stays yours.

Question 6

Who handles security patches, GDPR, and data protection?

Accepted Answer

Security patches and dependency updates are covered under the annual support fee (see above). Your data lives in your own EU cloud infrastructure, so you keep full control over data residency and avoid the US-SaaS data-transfer questions that come with many subscriptions. You decide who has access and where the data sits.

Question 7

Won’t we miss the features SaaS ships automatically?

Accepted Answer

With SaaS you also pay for features you never touch, inside a UI you didn’t design. We build the 20% you actually use, shaped to how your team already works. When a genuine new need appears, it becomes a scoped change request with a transparent price.

Question 8

What if the audit says we shouldn’t replace anything?

Accepted Answer

Then that’s what it says. The engine recommends “keep” whenever the math doesn’t favor a build — some tools are genuinely good value at your size, and we’d rather tell you now than after you’ve paid for something you didn’t need. An honest “keep” is worth more to us than a sale you’d regret.

Question 9

We don’t want to fire anyone.

Accepted Answer

Neither do we. The point is to give your team their hours back, not to remove them — the admin who spends 20 hours a week exporting CSVs gets that time back for the work they were actually hired for: customer follow-up, quality checks, analysis. Same team, doing better work.

Question 10

A one-off payment is heavy — what about cash flow?

Accepted Answer

The standard schedule spreads the build across delivery — 50% on signature, 30% mid-build, 20% on delivery — and if that still strains cash flow, a lower upfront payment with a monthly fee is available. Think of it as an investment that ends the rent rather than a bill: the audit shows the full five-year comparison, so you can see when ownership overtakes subscribing.

Retire your SaaS subscriptions

Audit. Build. Own.

Audit your stack

We build it

You own it

Priced in the open

You own the code

Flat ~12.5% support

You host it yourself

Your SaaS bill is only the tip of the iceberg

Real math, not marketing

Common questions

Run the numbers. We’ll show ours.