Business software you own, with no per-user subscription

What weighs on subscription software

• You pay per user, and the bill grows with the company.
• The provider sets the price and the features. Something you use every day can disappear in an update.
• The data sits on their server, and getting all of it back depends on how good their export is.
• The software makes you work its way, and your exceptions end up in a spreadsheet on the side.

What owning it means

I write custom business software around your rules, and at the end the code and the database are yours. It runs on the server you choose: your own, ordinary hosting, or a server I set up and look after through the hosting plans.

The Dracartys CRM is plain PHP with no framework, made for ordinary cPanel hosting: you upload it and it works, and the database updates itself. It started with customers, products and quotes, and grew one piece at a time into sales, stock and orders.

How the switch works

1. We look at the software you use today: what you really use, what you do by hand on the side, what's missing. The analysis is free.
2. We pick where to start. Large projects are split into milestones, paid one at a time.
3. I import the data from the old software, which stays in use until switch-over day.

The full steps are in Process.

When a subscription is the better deal

If standard invoicing software like everyone else's is enough, and two people use it, keep the subscription: it costs less than custom software. The sums change when many people use it, when your rules don't fit, or when the data has to stay where you decide.

Frequently asked questions

Will you really give me the source code?

Yes. If you ask, I give you the code and the database, for example to move to another provider or to have another developer look after it.

So I stop paying every month?

The software is yours, but it has to run somewhere. The server has a cost, and if you want me to look after it there are hosting plans, with daily backups..

What if one day I want to change developer?

The code is PHP with MySQL or MariaDB, tools a great many developers know. The Dracartys CRM, for example, runs on ordinary cPanel hosting: you upload it and it works.

Can we bring the data over from the software we use now?

Almost always. Many programs export to Excel or CSV; from there I write a script that imports the data and can run again without creating duplicates. What can be moved we work out in the analysis, which is free.

Read more

• The service: Custom business web apps
• Work of this kind: CRM Dracartys
• Work of this kind: CRM gokalex
• More pages like this: Moving off spreadsheets and old software