Per-seat pricing grows with your team. Flat pricing does not.
Five people on per-seat SaaS is cheap. Fifty people is a different story: the same tools, the same usage, ten times the bill. The open source equivalents we host are priced by the application, not the person, so the arithmetic changes as you grow. This calculator puts the two models side by side with real list prices.
Tick the tools your team pays for per seat, set your team size, and compare against the flat monthly price of the open source equivalents hosted by Node. Vendor prices are list prices, annual billing where the vendor offers it, recorded 2026-07-23 (billing exceptions in the small print below); check the vendors' pages for current figures.
Per seat today
- Google Workspace: Business Starter × 25£147.50
- Zendesk: Support Team × 25£375.00
- Slack: Pro × 25£143.75
Monthly today £666.25
Flat with Node
- Nextcloud: Medium£45.00
- Hosted email: Medium£45.00
- Zammad: Medium£45.00
- Mattermost: Medium£39.00
Monthly with Node £174.00 ex VAT
Estimated saving: £492.25 a month, £5907.00 a year.
Prices marked ~ are converted from US dollar list prices at an approximate rate.
Above around 100 people, sizes and prices are individual: talk to us and we will price it openly.
Node prices are flat per app regardless of team size (sizes typically suit up to around 15, 50 and 100 users), billed hourly against the published rate card. App sizes include SSD storage; heavy file estates may need extra storage at the per-gigabyte rate. Migration from your current tools is part of the service.
Where these numbers come from
The per-seat prices are the vendors' own published list prices for annual billing, recorded on the date shown in the calculator. We record them by hand and refresh them periodically; if a vendor has changed prices since, their page wins. Prices originally in US dollars are converted at an approximate rate and marked as such.
The Node prices are the same published rate card the platform bills from, so the flat side of the comparison is exact. Every price on this page renders from data, not prose, and cannot silently drift from what you would actually pay.
The honest caveats
A price comparison is not a feature comparison. Before deciding, read the honest side-by-side for each swap you are considering: Nextcloud vs Google Drive, Nextcloud vs Dropbox, Zammad vs Zendesk, Mattermost vs Slack, BookStack vs Confluence and Matomo vs Google Analytics. Each one includes a section on when the commercial product is still the right choice, because sometimes it is.
For small teams the per-seat model can genuinely be cheaper, and the calculator will tell you so rather than hide it. The case for switching then rests on what flat pricing buys you as you grow, and on the things a price cannot show: your data on UK infrastructure under an Article 28 agreement, one login across every app, and migration done for you.
Frequently asked questions
How accurate is this calculator?
Vendor prices are list prices on annual billing, recorded from the vendors' own pricing pages on the date shown, and vendors change prices, so always check their pages before deciding. The Node side is our published rate card, which is what you would actually pay. The comparison is indicative: your negotiated SaaS discounts, storage needs and feature requirements all move the real number.
Are the open source apps really equivalent to the tools they replace?
They are functional equivalents, not clones. Nextcloud covers file storage and collaborative editing but is not Gmail; Zammad covers helpdesk workflows but lacks Zendesk's AI add-ons; Mattermost's Team Edition does not include every feature of Slack's paid plans. Each comparison page linked from the calculator sets out honestly where the commercial product is still ahead.
Why is the Node price flat rather than per user?
Because our cost is running the application, not counting your logins. Each app is priced by resource profile (Small, Medium, Large), sized roughly for teams of up to 15, 50 and 100 people. Adding a person to your team does not change the bill; a growing file estate might, through extra storage at the per-gigabyte rate.
What is included in the Node price?
Deployment, upgrades, security patching, nightly encrypted backups, round-the-clock automated monitoring with engineers who respond, single sign-on across every app, and migration from your current tools. Billing is hourly against the published rate card with no minimum term.
What happens above 100 people?
The standard profiles are sized for organisations up to around 100 users per app. Beyond that we size and price the deployment individually, in the open, and a custom SLA is available. Talk to us and we will work it through with you.