SaaS

The €37K Software Bill Nobody Told You About

I'll let you in on a dirty secret about SaaS pricing.

It's not about the sticker price. It's about everything around the sticker price that never shows up on the pricing page.

I had a client — a mid-sized Dutch manufacturer — who thought they were spending about €35,000 a year on software. When we actually sat down and mapped everything out, the real number was closer to €72,000.

Where did the extra €37K come from? Four places.

1. The growth penalty

They added 8 people in one year. That triggered three separate tier upgrades across their tools. Not 8 new licences — three entire pricing jumps. One tool went from €400/month to €900/month because they crossed from 25 to 26 users. That's not linear scaling. That's a cliff.

2. The integration tax

They were running Monday.com, HubSpot, Xero, and a custom ERP. Each one needed to talk to the others. So they were paying for Zapier (€600/year), a middleware tool (€2,400/year), and one developer on a retainer just to keep the integrations from breaking (€18,000/year). That's €21,000 in "glue costs" that nobody budgeted for.

3. The shadow IT problem

When the official tools didn't fit, people improvised. Personal Google Drives. Rogue spreadsheets. WhatsApp groups for critical business data. I found 14 different spreadsheets tracking the same customer information across three departments. Fourteen.

Under GDPR, that's not just messy — it's a liability. You can't control what you can't see.

4. The migration trap

Their previous CRM got acquired. The new owner raised prices 40% and changed the API. Migration took 4 months and cost €30,000 in consulting fees. That's the cost nobody puts in the TCO calculation — the eventual, inevitable switch.

The real comparison

Here's what the 3-year picture actually looks like for a 20-person team:

SaaS stack: €50K year 1 → €57K year 2 → €65K year 3 = €172,000
Custom software: €40K build → €8K maintenance → €8K maintenance = €56,000

That's a €116,000 difference. Over three years. And with the custom option, you own the asset. With SaaS, you own nothing the moment you stop paying.

I'm not saying SaaS is always wrong. For commodity tools — email, video calls, basic accounting — subscription makes sense. But for the software that runs your actual business? The workflows, the data, the core operations? That's where the math stops working.

Do yourself a favour: add up every software subscription you have. Include the integrations, the admin time, the workarounds. I promise the real number will surprise you.

Your Business Runs on Spreadsheets. That's a Problem.

Let me guess. You have a spreadsheet that runs your business. Maybe it's tracking orders. Maybe it's managing inventory. Maybe it's your "CRM" — a fancy name for a spreadsheet with customer names and phone numbers. Maybe you have several. Maybe someone calls

Custom Software Costs Less Than Your SaaS Stack. Here's the Receipt.

Two years ago, if you told a small business owner "you should build custom software," they'd laugh at you. "I can barely afford my current tools" was the standard response. And they were right. Custom software used to be a €50,000–€100,000

Your SaaS Vendor's Data Processing Agreement Is 47 Pages. I Read One.

Quick question: where does your customer data live right now? I mean actually live. Not where you think it lives — where is it physically stored? Whose servers? Which country? Whose employees can access it at 2am on a Tuesday? I asked this to a Dutch healthcare company last year. They

I Was Spending €45K/Year on SaaS Before I Built My Own

I ran a cafe before I ran a software company. Still do, actually. And here's the thing nobody tells you about running a small business: your biggest enemy isn't your competition. It's your software. I was paying for 12 different SaaS tools. Twelve. CRM,