SaaS or Self-Hosting? What I Would Actually Use?

Source: Dev.to

SaaS: When It Makes Sense

Since 2011 I’ve been developing digital‑signage software (mostly open source) and co‑own a company that sells both SaaS licenses and self‑hosting support. After 15+ years of watching businesses choose one model over the other, here’s what I’ve learned.

• Quick start – If you need a handful of screens for a short‑term campaign or just want something up today without touching a server, SaaS is the honest answer. Low upfront cost, automatic updates, and no server to babysit.
• No IT overhead – No IT department is required, and you can hook into an existing SSO provider (Azure AD, Okta, etc.) so your team can log in from day one without any setup.
• Low barrier to entry – SaaS is a legitimate way to test a business idea before committing to infrastructure.

The Hidden Costs of SaaS

• Rising subscription fees – A cheap first‑year subscription can look very different in year three.
• Vendor lock‑in – Acquisitions, price hikes, roadmap changes, or outages can leave your screens dependent on decisions you have no control over.
• Data sovereignty – Your data sits on infrastructure you don’t control, often in jurisdictions with different privacy laws.
• Outage dependency – When the provider experiences an outage, you simply wait.

These issues aren’t unique to digital signage; they affect any SaaS or cloud service. Examples include:

• Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware, which dramatically increased licensing costs.
• Microsoft locking organizations out of Teams and Exchange when a license lapses.
• Twitter killing its API, taking dozens of businesses down with it.
• Google discontinuing products that companies relied on.
• Heroku ending its free tier, causing thousands of small projects to go dark.

The pattern is the same: it works great until someone else makes a decision.

Self‑Hosting: Full Control, More Responsibility

Self‑hosting means you run the software on your own infrastructure—your server, your data, your rules.

• No price surprises – No one can double your fees, kill the product, or lock you out.
• Update control – You decide when (or if) to apply updates.
• Data ownership – Your data stays where you choose, subject to your own compliance requirements.
• Open‑source guarantees – The code is auditable; if the original developer stops working on the project, the community can fork and maintain it.

When Self‑Hosting Shines

• Regulated environments – Healthcare, public sector, and other industries often require auditability and compliance that closed‑source SaaS can’t provide.
• Long‑term stability – If you plan to run the signage for years, the upfront time investment can pay off compared to ongoing subscription costs.

The Real Costs of Self‑Hosting

• Initial setup – Someone must install, configure, and secure the server.
• Ongoing maintenance – Updates, backups, monitoring, and incident response are your responsibility.
• Skill requirements – Small businesses without technical staff need an employee, freelancer, or managed hosting provider—still a dependency, but one you control.
• Potential downtime – If your server goes down at 3 am, you (or your hired help) must fix it; there’s no external ticket that automatically resolves the issue.

A well‑documented open‑source project with an active community makes the process far smoother than a poorly maintained one with no docs.

Choosing Between SaaS and Self‑Hosting

If you need a quick, low‑effort solution for a short campaign, SaaS is usually the better choice. If you require full data control, regulatory compliance, or plan to run the signage for many years, self‑hosting can be more economical—provided you’re willing to invest the necessary time and expertise.

Conclusion

The decision isn’t about price alone; it’s about how much control you’re willing to hand over and to whom. I offer both models because each has its place. Personally, I’d run my own infrastructure—something I can see, touch, and own—not out of ideology but because I’ve seen too many businesses forced to rebuild after a vendor’s decision.

My skepticism about depending on other people’s software decisions goes back to 1992, when I was an enthusiastic OS/2 user. The platform was technically superior to Windows, backed by IBM, and then slowly strangled—partly because it wasn’t profitable enough, partly because Microsoft ensured it wouldn’t survive. Everyone who had built on it had to start over. That experience still informs my choices today.

Originally published on sagiadinos.com.