SaaS Sprawl
Most growing businesses run 15–40 disconnected SaaS tools. Each adds cost, another authentication layer, another data residency question, and another vendor relationship to manage.
Managed Infrastructure
Managed Open-Source Systems
for Growing Businesses
We design, deploy, and operate production-ready open-source systems — replacing costly SaaS tools or building internal platforms tailored to your operations. Governance, monitoring, upgrades, and long-term operational ownership included. Control, without operational complexity.
Production-ready
deployments from day one
No lock-in
you own your infrastructure
Ongoing ops
monitoring, patches, upgrades
Open source
governed and fully supported
The ProblemInfrastructure decisions made early
Infrastructure decisions made early
compound over time
Growing businesses inherit infrastructure debt quietly. SaaS subscriptions accumulate. Vendor dependencies deepen. By the time the cost is visible, migration is expensive and risky.
Rising Per-Seat Costs
SaaS pricing is optimized for vendor growth, not yours. As your team scales, per-seat costs compound — often reaching five to six figures annually for tools your team uses partially.
Vendor Lock-In
Data migration, API dependencies, and contract terms make switching expensive. The longer you stay, the harder it becomes to move — regardless of whether the product continues to serve you.
Governance Gaps
Consumer SaaS tools rarely offer the access controls, audit trails, data residency options, or compliance reporting that regulated industries and serious internal platforms require.
DevOps Burden
Running your own systems requires infrastructure expertise. Without a dedicated team, open-source deployment often means undocumented environments, missed upgrades, and reactive incident response.
The Solution
Systems you own,
operated by people who built them
TrySelfHost takes full operational responsibility for your open-source systems — from initial architecture through long-term operations. Replace costly SaaS or build the internal platforms your workflows actually need, without carrying the operational burden yourself.
01
SaaS Stack Replacement
We identify which SaaS tools are replaceable with open-source equivalents and handle the full migration: deployment, data migration, user onboarding, and documentation.
02
Production-Ready Deployment
Every system we deploy is treated as production infrastructure from the start — with proper configuration, secrets management, high availability considerations, and documented runbooks.
03
Ongoing Monitoring & Maintenance
We operate what we build. Uptime monitoring, alerting, log aggregation, version upgrades, and security patches are included — so you're never left managing an environment you didn't build.
04
Security & Governance Controls
Access controls, audit logging, backup verification, and compliance-aligned configurations are built into every deployment — not retrofitted as an afterthought.
05
Infrastructure Ownership
You own the systems. We operate them. No vendor relationship to manage, no SaaS terms to negotiate, and no data leaving your environment unless you choose otherwise.
Use Cases
Where growing businesses
benefit most from ownership
Open-source infrastructure is a practical advantage when your team reaches a scale where SaaS costs are material, and governance requirements are real. These are the most common starting points.
Internal Collaboration Stack
Replace commercial messaging, video, and document platforms with governed, self-hosted alternatives that keep communications and files within your own environment.
Messaging · Video · Documents
Project & Workflow Management
Deploy structured project management and workflow tools tailored to your team's processes — without per-seat pricing that scales against you as you grow.
Tasks · Sprints · Automation
Ticketing & Support Platforms
Operate your own customer and internal ticketing systems with full data ownership, custom integrations, and no external data sharing with SaaS analytics vendors.
Support · ITSM · Requests
CRM & Internal Tools
Build or deploy CRM systems and internal business tools that conform to your existing data model and integration requirements — not the other way around.
Contacts · Pipelines · Dashboards
Self-Hosted AI Systems
Deploy and operate language model infrastructure, retrieval pipelines, and AI tooling within your own environment — keeping proprietary data off third-party inference APIs.
LLM · RAG · AI Assistants
Custom Internal Platforms
Design and operate bespoke internal platforms that consolidate fragmented tooling — built on open-source foundations with operational infrastructure included.
Dev Portals · Data · Backends
How It Works
A structured engagement
from assessment to operations
- 0101
Assessment
We review your current SaaS stack, infrastructure environment, team workflows, and governance requirements. You receive a structured report identifying the highest-value replacement and build opportunities, ranked by cost, risk, and operational complexity.
- 0202
Architecture
Based on the assessment, we design an infrastructure architecture that fits your environment — cloud, on-premises, or hybrid. Architecture decisions account for high availability, data residency, integration requirements, and long-term operational overhead.
- 0303
Deployment
We deploy selected systems in a staged process: staging environment first, production second, with documented configuration, secrets management, and integration testing at each step. No production deployments without verified readiness.
- 0404
Hardening
Every production deployment goes through a hardening phase: security configuration review, access control setup, backup validation, monitoring and alerting configuration, and runbook documentation. Systems are operational before handoff.
- 0505
Ongoing Operations
After deployment, we assume operational responsibility — monitoring, incident response, version upgrades, security patch application, and capacity review. You retain full infrastructure ownership while we handle day-to-day operations.
Why TrySelfHost
Operational accountability,
not just deployment services
Most managed services either handle the initial build or the ongoing operations — rarely both with equal discipline. We take full responsibility for the environments we build, from first deployment through long-term operation.
Production-First Mindset
Every system we design is built for production from the start. Staging environments, backup validation, runbook documentation, and monitoring are part of the initial scope — not post-launch additions.
Governance-Driven Architecture
Infrastructure decisions are made with governance in mind: access control design, audit trail requirements, data residency, and compliance considerations are evaluated at the architecture stage.
No Vendor Lock-In
The systems we deploy are open-source and owned by you. We document everything. If you ever choose to bring operations in-house or engage another provider, you have a complete, documented environment to hand off.
Operational Ownership
We don't deploy and disappear. Ongoing operations — monitoring, incident response, upgrades, and patch management — are part of how we work. We are accountable for the environments we build.
Built for Growing Businesses
Our work is calibrated for businesses between 10 and 100 employees: teams large enough to have real infrastructure requirements, and lean enough to need operational leverage rather than full-time infrastructure staff.
Perspectives
Infrastructure thinking
for operators and decision-makers
January 15, 2025Infrastructure Strategy
When SaaS Becomes a Structural Cost Problem
At a certain team size, per-seat SaaS pricing stops being a convenience and starts being a material line item. We examine the thresholds where self-hosted alternatives become financially and operationally justified.
8 min readRead
December 8, 2024Governance
Access Control as Infrastructure: Why It Belongs in the Architecture Phase
Most access control decisions are made reactively — after incidents, audits, or compliance reviews. We make the case for treating identity and access management as a first-class infrastructure concern.
6 min readRead
November 20, 2024Operations
The Handoff Problem: Why Self-Hosted Deployments Fail Operationally
Open-source deployments often succeed technically and fail operationally. We break down the most common failure modes and what production-ready infrastructure actually requires beyond the initial deployment.
10 min readRead
ContactEvaluate Your
Evaluate Your
Infrastructure Strategy
If you're evaluating whether managed open-source systems make sense for your business, we'll give you a direct, honest assessment — not a sales pitch.
The strategy call covers your current stack, your governance requirements, and whether a managed self-hosted approach is the right fit.
30-minute call, no obligation
We'll assess your stack before we speak
Direct answer on whether self-hosting fits
Prefer to write first? We respond within one business day.