Self-Hosting vs SaaS: How Much Can you save?

Why Developers Are Moving Back to Self-Hosted Software (With a Cost Calculator) For the last decade, SaaS has dominated almost every category of software. CRM? SaaS. Helpdesk? SaaS. Chat platforms? SaaS. Automation tools? SaaS. The promise was simple. Pay a monthly fee and forget about infrastructure. But recently, something interesting has been happening in developer communities. More teams are starting to look at self-hosted tools again. Not because SaaS is bad, but because the cost and control tradeoffs start to look very different as you scale. I built a small calculator to explore this: https://whauto.chat/self-hosted-vs-saas-calculator Before jumping into the calculator, let's look at why this shift is happening. The Hidden Cost of SaaS SaaS pricing looks simple at first. For example: $49/month $99/month $299/month But most SaaS tools eventually charge based on things like: number of users number of contacts number of conversations number of automations API usage As your product