The SaaS bill that started it
In early 2026, our monthly SaaS bill hit €450:
| Tool | Cost/mo |
|---|---|
| Mailchimp (10K subs) | €110 |
| HubSpot CRM (free tier was limiting) | €50 |
| Zapier (automation) | €100 |
| Todoist Business (team) | €36 |
| Sharesight (investments) | €25 |
| OpenAI API + ChatGPT | €100 |
| Miscellaneous | €30 |
That’s €5,400/year on software. For a bootstrapped company, this was too much.
The self-hosted stack
We consolidated everything onto a single Hostinger KVM 2 VPS (€20/month):
| SaaS | → Self-hosted | Monthly cost |
|---|---|---|
| Mailchimp | listmonk | €5 (VPS share + SES) |
| HubSpot | Twenty CRM | €5 |
| Zapier | n8n | €3 |
| Todoist | Vikunja | €3 |
| Sharesight | Ghostfolio | €4 |
| OpenAI GPTs | Hermes Agent | €5 (API costs) |
New total: €25/month. Plus the VPS base cost.
The real costs nobody talks about
Self-hosting is not zero-cost. Here’s what you’re actually paying:
1. Initial setup time
Each tool took 2-4 hours to deploy:
- Docker compose setup
- Caddy reverse proxy configuration
- PostgreSQL database setup
- Environment variables and secrets
- Initial data import
For 8 tools: about 24 hours total.
2. Monthly maintenance
Ongoing work per month:
- Docker updates: 2 hours
- Security patches: 1 hour
- Backup verification: 1 hour
- Monitoring and alerts: 2 hours
- Log review: 1 hour
Total: ~7 hours/month.
3. The elephant in the room: you
If you’re a developer, your time has a market rate. At €50/hour, 7 hours/month = €350 in opportunity cost.
But here’s the key: you’d spend time on SaaS tools too — configuring integrations, managing users, dealing with support. Self-hosting shifts where you spend time, not just how much.
The break-even
| SaaS Stack | Self-Hosted Stack | |
|---|---|---|
| Software cost | €450/mo | €25/mo |
| Maintenance (time) | 3h/mo | 7h/mo |
| Maintenance (€ at 50/h) | €150 | €350 |
| Total effective cost | €600/mo | €375/mo |
Annual saving: €2,700. Even factoring in time.
What you get that SaaS can’t give you
Beyond the money:
- Data sovereignty — your customer data lives on your server, not in a multi-tenant cloud
- No vendor lock-in — if listmonk disappears tomorrow, your data is in PostgreSQL, not a proprietary format
- No pricing surprises — VPS costs are predictable; SaaS prices increase
- Customizability — want a feature? It’s open source. Modify it
- Learning — you become better at infrastructure, which is valuable for your business
The honest truth
Self-hosting is not for everyone. If you hate terminal windows and Docker logs give you anxiety, pay the SaaS tax. It’s cheaper than the stress.
But if you’re technical, or have a technical co-founder, the savings compound every month. €2,700/year means €27,000 over a decade — that’s a car, a conference budget, or 10% of a junior hire.
We built TheStackTax to help people make this decision with accurate data. Every number on this site is verified by our own deployment. We run all 8 tools on the same VPS you see in the calculator.
Want us to build this stack for your business? We deploy self-hosted tools for a living.