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FINTERY

MARKETPLACE · BUYER'S GUIDE

Own it or rent it? Here is how to decide.

Three honest ways to put a business system in place: subscribe to it, adopt mature open source and host it, or buy source you own outright. This page explains which one fits, including the cases where a Fintery Blueprint is the wrong answer.

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DECISION● THREE PATHS
  • ↳ SaaSRented, never ends
  • ↳ Open SourceFree, you operate
  • ↳ BlueprintOnce, source yours
  • ↳ MaintenanceAlways somebody's work

including against us

The three paths

There are three real options, not two

Most comparisons pit SaaS against self hosting and stop there. The middle path, mature open source you run yourself, is the strongest option for a large share of readers, so it is named here with what it genuinely does better.

Subscribe (SaaS)

You pay monthly per user and somebody else runs everything.

Does better

  • Fastest to running, often the same day.
  • Updates, backups and security are in the price.
  • Support you can call, with commitments.

Costs you

  • The cost never ends and grows with the team.
  • Your data sits with a vendor whose pricing and roadmap you do not control.
  • Leaving costs exactly as much as the export is bad.

Right forTeams with nobody to run infrastructure, who need standard software and value speed over control.

Mature open source

Established projects such as Odoo, EspoCRM, OpenProject, n8n, Matomo or Akaunting, hosted by you.

Does better

  • No licence cost, at any scale.
  • Years of feature depth, plugins and documentation that a single kit cannot match.
  • A community that keeps working even if one vendor stops.

Costs you

  • Operating it is your job: hosting, updates, migrations, security.
  • Customising means learning someone else's large codebase.
  • Nobody owes you anything when it breaks.

Right forAnyone with a broad standard problem (ERP, CRM, accounting, analytics) and people who can run it. For those cases this is often the best choice, including against us.

Buy the source (Blueprint)

A small, focused system, paid once, source yours, running wherever you choose.

Does better

  • One price, no subscription for the software itself.
  • A small codebase a developer can read and reshape in a day.
  • Data and operations stay with you, GDPR data map and AI provenance included.
  • Audited before listing, with the report and archive contents public before you pay.

Costs you

  • Maintenance and security updates become yours at purchase.
  • Far less feature surface than an established open source project.
  • No community, no plugin economy.

Right forTeams that need one specific thing no standard product covers exactly, and who want to change the code and keep it.

The arithmetic

What one time actually buys you

A one time price only beats a subscription if you keep the thing long enough. Here is the break even for each Blueprint on sale, against a subscription you would otherwise pay.

Assumption, substitute your own: €50 per user per month

This compares licence cost only. It leaves out the hours you spend running the system, which are real and which a subscription partly buys off. Ownership moves that work to you: see the first disqualifier below.

When not to buy

Four cases where a Blueprint is the wrong purchase

A Blueprint is a working system you own, not a platform and not a community. These are the situations where one of the other two paths serves you better, and saying so here costs less than a refund conversation later.

Nobody can run it

A Blueprint ships as source with docker compose. If nobody on your team can run it and keep it current, you are buying a maintenance problem instead of a solution. Take SaaS, or the Deployed tier where we run the instance.

Mature open source exists for it

If you need a full ERP, an accounting system or a broad CRM, take Odoo, Akaunting or EspoCRM. They are free, years ahead and backed by a community. Buy source only when you need the specific shape they do not have.

You want plugins and extensions

A kit is one focused codebase with no extension marketplace. If your plan depends on third parties shipping modules, a large open source ecosystem is the right place.

You want a guarantee it never breaks

The licence is perpetual but carries no warranty, and liability is capped at the purchase price. If you need commitments with penalties, that is the Managed tier or a SaaS vendor with an SLA, not a one time purchase.

Straight answers

The questions that decide it

What exactly does ownership mean here?

The Fintery Perpetual Source Licence gives you a perpetual, irrevocable right to run the source, modify it and host it anywhere, with no subscription for the software itself. What it does not allow is reselling the kit as a template product. There is no warranty, and liability is capped at the purchase price.

Who ships security updates after I buy?

You do, ultimately. We keep maintaining the version on sale and publish maintenance releases: in September 2026 all three Next kits moved to 1.0.2 after a critical Next.js advisory, with a new audit date on the listing. Applying it to your instance is yours to do. If that is not something you can carry, take the Deployed tier.

Why pay when free open source exists?

Often you should not, and this page says so plainly. Paying makes sense when you need a specific shape no large project covers, and you want a small codebase your team can understand in a day instead of months inside someone else's platform. You are buying focus and audited packaging, not feature count.

Can I see what is inside the archive before buying?

Yes. Every listing publishes the full audit report, the contents of the archive (file count, directory tree, dependencies, and the SHA256 of the exact file the download serves) and screenshots from the running system. Four Systems also link a publicly reachable live instance.

Where does the data live, and what about GDPR?

For a Blueprint, wherever you host it, including your own hardware. Every System ships a GDPR data map (which model holds which personal data), a DPA template and an AI provenance disclosure. On the Deployed tier the hosting is in the EU.

Next step

If owning the source is the right answer, here is the shelf

Four Blueprints are audited, priced and downloadable today, with the audit report and the archive contents published before you pay. If none of them is the shape you need, the honest move is one of the other two paths, and the comparison table will show you that faster than a sales call.

Compare every SystemOpen the marketplace