SaaS vrs On Prem
Why we'd prefer you use SaaS!

TL;DR

You may feel we are biased, since we charge a little more (up front) for SaaS than for On Prem. If so, please read on to see why we recommend it because it is in the long term lower cost and greater customer satisfaction.

BUT if you decide to go with On Prem - we will support you as long as you are willing to pay for the costs. In many cases - if you have a contract with Microsoft for example, a lot of the costs will be on that side not with us.

Details

In practice - we and Microsoft etc.., typically end up charging you more for On Prem than for SaaS because of the Professional Services that are inevitably needed. It seems to fall into 3 categories:

  1. Your IT department is not really all that sophisticated, perhaps a 1 man show, and there is so much to learn to setup and maintain a sophisticated program that has been around for decades.
  2. Your IT department knows what they are doing, but they don't know the MC product line (and why should they!) so there are through the years lots of gotchas that cost a lot of time and downtime
  3. Your IT department is large and unable to keep track of all the details of every product, and the MC product is sophisticated and has been around for decades so it is complex to get right.

In general, On Prem customers pay us more than SaaS do in the long run. In addition, you have to own and run your own servers and have the people to do it (Labor costs). And you may have additional expenses with professional services of companies like Microsoft. Not to mention you have your costs for your servers, Microsoft licenses (OS, SQL).

In general, we find users are a lot happier when they are on SaaS. When on-prem, every mistake (which can be "we didn't do anything" ... but a Windows Upgrade happened) by your IT department makes our product look bad.

On SaaS:

  • We keep you up to date.
  • We worry about the effects of OS upgrades (such as when Windows made the method Accruent MC uses for mail not work anymore)
  • We worry about keeping email sending.

On Prem

  • Some of the on prem issues we run into:
    • changed password
    • changed username
    • changed sending rules (like requiring a specific email to send from)
    • changed registration requirements (like require SPF or DKIM)
    • OS upgrade
    • Relay server upgrade

None of these have anything to do with the software we provide you, but it LOOKS like it our SOFTWARE that is failing, when in fact the problem lies with the IT department changes and maintenance.

Your data is your data, even on our server

If you are worried about your data - talk to us about were your data is stored. For our Canadian customers for example, it is stored in Canadian locations with companies that are not under USA jurisdiction. Our attitude is 'your data is your data'. While we haven't had many customers leave us once they start with us, the few that have, we have worked with them to make sure they get their final backup at the time that works for them so they don't have a long lag between the old and new system.

We can also arrange for you to get regular backups for a small charge.