Open Source vs SaaS: A 5-Year Cost Comparison for a 50-Person Team

SaaS pricing looks reasonable per user per month. But multiply by 50 users, 12 months, and 5 years — it's a different story.

The Full Stack Comparison

We're comparing 12 categories that most 50-person teams need:

SaaS companies raise prices regularly. Historical average: 5-10% annually.

Year	At 0% increase	At 5% increase	At 10% increase
1	$61,368	$61,368	$61,368
2	$61,368	$64,436	$67,505
3	$61,368	$67,658	$74,255
4	$61,368	$71,041	$81,681
5	$61,368	$74,593	$89,849
5-Year Total	$306,840	$339,097	$374,658

Activity	Year 1	Year 2+
Initial setup (30 hours × $100/hr)	$3,000	—
Monthly maintenance (4 hours × $100/hr × 12)	$4,800	$4,800
Incident response (~10 hours/year × $100/hr)	$1,000	$1,000
Total time cost	$8,800	$5,800

Year	Infrastructure	Time	Total
1	$378	$8,800	$9,178
2	$378	$5,800	$6,178
3	$378	$5,800	$6,178
4	$378	$5,800	$6,178
5	$378	$5,800	$6,178
5-Year Total	$1,890	$31,800	$33,890

Metric	SaaS (0% increase)	SaaS (5% increase)	Open Source
5-Year Total	$306,840	$339,097	$33,890
Average Annual	$61,368	$67,819	$6,778
5-Year Savings	—	—	$272,950 – $305,207
Savings %	—	—	89-90%

Stack	At 50 Users/Year	At 100 Users/Year	Cost Increase
SaaS	$61,368	$122,736	+100% (linear)
Open Source	$6,178	$6,578	+6% (server upgrade)

SaaS scales linearly with headcount. Self-hosted scales with load (sublinear).

Stack	Annual Cost	Difference
SaaS	$245,472	—
Open Source	$7,378	$238,094 savings (97%)

Risk	Probability	Impact	Mitigation
Extended downtime	Low	Medium	Monitoring + alerting + documented recovery
Data loss	Very low	High	3-2-1 backups + tested restores
Security breach	Low	High	Security checklist + updates + firewalls
Key person dependency	Medium	Medium	Documentation + automation scripts

Risk	Probability	Medium	Mitigation
Price increase	High	Medium	Annual contracts, negotiation
Vendor lock-in	High	High	Export data regularly
Service discontinuation	Low	High	Hard to mitigate
Data breach (vendor side)	Low	High	Vendor security audits
Feature removal	Medium	Medium	Accept or find alternatives

Not everything needs to be self-hosted. Optimize by category:

Category	Recommendation	Why
Chat	Self-host	Highest per-seat cost, easy to host
Project management	Self-host	High per-seat, Plane is excellent
Analytics	Self-host	Privacy benefits, simple to host
Password manager	Self-host	Security benefit, ultra-light
Email marketing	Self-host	Massive savings at scale
CRM	Evaluate	Complex, depends on needs
Design	Keep SaaS	Figma's collaboration is hard to match
Authentication	Self-host or managed	Keycloak is mature but complex

Hybrid estimated cost: $15,000-25,000/year (vs $61,000 full SaaS)

Over 5 years, a 50-person team spends:

Self-hosting saves $270,000+ over 5 years. Even the hybrid approach saves $180,000+.

The math gets more dramatic as you scale — at 100 users, 5-year savings exceed $550,000.

Find the best open source alternative for every SaaS tool at OSSAlt.