The SaaS Dilemma: Convenience, Complexity, and the True Cost of Ownership

by bernt & torsten

Software as a Service (SaaS) has transformed how organizations adopt, use, and pay for software. Companies like Salesforce, HubSpot, Monday.com, and others have built their success on the premise of ease and simplicity - allowing businesses to sign up with minimal effort, start using their solutions within minutes, and scale as their needs grow. However, beneath the convenience lies a story of growing complexity, escalating costs, and long-term sustainability concerns that businesses can no longer ignore.

The Allure of SaaS

SaaS platforms excel in their onboarding process. Signing up is effortless, with free trials or freemium models designed to get users hooked. Need a CRM? Salesforce offers quick templates to start. Want project management? Monday.com delivers visually appealing workflows. Marketing automation? HubSpot has tools ready to deploy. The pitch is straightforward: no need for technical expertise, no need for servers, no waiting time - just pay a subscription fee and go.

The Hidden Complexity

While SaaS appears simple at first, complexity grows over time. Your monthly subscription costs climb as your team adopts more features and adds more users. Then comes the cost of additional storage, premium features, and integrations with other SaaS platforms. Need AI to analyze your data? That’s an add-on. Want to connect your CRM to your accounting software? Integration fees may apply. The result is often a system that becomes indispensable, expensive, and increasingly difficult to manage.

Moreover, SaaS vendors design their products to foster reliance. They provide robust integrations, ensuring their platform fits seamlessly into your workflow. This convenience has a downside: businesses may find it nearly impossible to function without them. Replacing a well-integrated SaaS tool often seems unfeasible due to the cost, time, and expertise required to replicate its functionality internally.

The Sustainability Challenge

Beyond cost, there’s the question of sustainability. SaaS providers operate vast data centers, consuming immense amounts of energy. While many claim to be energy efficient, the environmental impact of maintaining these platforms at scale is significant. Furthermore, SaaS vendors hold the keys while you “own” your data. Moving your data elsewhere is often cumbersome, and as your data grows, so does the storage cost.

Another concern is data sovereignty. Are you truly in control if your data is stored on a third-party platform? And how easily can you audit, maintain, or reduce your data costs when locked into a SaaS ecosystem?

Rethinking the Approach: Building Your Own

For businesses looking to escape this dependency, building an internal platform—whether on-premise or cloud-based—offers a competitive edge. Open-source solutions now cover nearly every organizational need, from CRMs to project management and marketing tools. With the right investment in skilled developers and compensation for open-source contributors, businesses can create tailor-made systems that suit their needs without the bloat or recurring fees of SaaS platforms.

This shift allows companies to own their data fully, control their costs, and even build internal expertise. By creating a team of practitioners within the organization, businesses can reduce reliance on external consultants who often favor specific SaaS platforms due to their affiliations.

AI and the SaaS Arms Race

As AI becomes a standard offering in SaaS solutions, the promise of automation and efficiency is compelling. But AI doesn’t necessarily require SaaS. Open-source AI models and tools are readily available, allowing companies to implement AI-driven solutions without the need for a large team or a subscription-based vendor. Businesses must ask themselves: does paying for AI within a SaaS platform truly offer a competitive advantage, or is it just another layer of cost?

The Consultant Bias

Many organizations rely on consultants to guide their software selection. While consultants bring expertise, their recommendations often reflect biases toward certain vendors. If a chosen solution fails, businesses can conveniently shift the blame to the consultant, masking their own lack of technical insight. However, this approach perpetuates a cycle of SaaS dependency and missed opportunities for innovation.

Finding a Way Forward

The SaaS model has its merits, particularly for small businesses or those without technical expertise. But for larger organizations, the long-term costs, sustainability concerns, and loss of competitive edge are significant drawbacks. The solution lies in striking a balance: leveraging open-source tools, building internal expertise, and embracing a hybrid approach that combines the convenience of cloud-based platforms with the control of in-house systems.

By investing in their own platforms and practitioners, companies can break free from SaaS dependency, achieve true data ownership, and foster innovation that aligns with their long-term goals—without sacrificing sustainability or control.

The question is not whether SaaS solutions work—they clearly do. The real question is whether businesses can afford to remain captive to them in a world where independence, innovation, and sustainability are the keys to success.