For agencies & consultancies

Agencies sign NDAs promising to guard unreleased campaigns, embargoed launches and client strategy, and then store exactly that material in whichever US SaaS tools each team adopted, every one charging by the head. The result is a monthly software bill that scales with your team, and client IP whose location you cannot draw on a whiteboard.

The per-seat pile, priced

A 15-person agency on a typical stack: Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace at about £11.55 per user per month (M365 Business Standard list, rising from July 2026), per-agent client support at €7–25 per agent per month, entry CRM seats around $15 per user per month, per-user time tracking, and automation billed per task so your best month is your most expensive.

List prices, honest caveats: your negotiated rates differ, and at small headcounts the gap is modest. The structural difference is that the Node column ignores hiring; the per-seat column never does. Against per-agent helpdesk pricing the flat fee crosses over at roughly four agents; against per-task automation it crosses over the day a client workflow gets busy. Get a like-for-like figure.

The agency stack on Node

Self-serve today, from the signup portal, with SSO already wired: Nextcloud for files and branded client delivery, EspoCRM for the new-business pipeline, DocuSeal for SOWs and contracts without envelope economics. The workflows that stitch client work together are Apache Camel or NiFi, built with our engineers as managed setup.

Managed setup when you want them, deployed and connected by our engineers: Zammad for the client support inbox, Kimai for utilisation and billable time, Mattermost for team chat without per-user fees, Outline or BookStack for the agency wiki, Mautic for marketing automation, Matomo for privacy-first client analytics, Ghost for publishing, and dozens more in a catalogue of more than 50 open source applications. Names you would recognise use these apps daily: the European Commission's Europa Analytics runs on Matomo, Ghost's showcase includes Buffer and 404 Media, and Zammad's references include Amnesty International.

Client IP you can point to on a map

When a client's security questionnaire asks where their unreleased campaign lives, your answer becomes: in our own isolated tenant, on hardware our provider owns in a UK datacentre, under UK jurisdiction, behind our own single sign-on, with a signed Article 28 DPA and an audit trail behind it. Freelancers get accounts scoped to what they need, and losing a contractor means revoking one login, not chasing five SaaS admins. For client contracts that mandate UK data residency, this is the difference between a caveat and a yes.

And because every tenant is its own workspace with its own identity realm, the white-label angle is real: client-facing portals and tools run under your domains and your brand. If you want to operate workspaces for your clients, talk to us; we are open to it, and we will be straight about what is ready today versus what would be built with you.

AI on embargoed material, without the leak risk

Draft copy, summarise research, iterate on strategy documents: all on material that is under NDA. The AI gateway is OpenAI-compatible and labels every model UK-hosted or partner-routed: UK-hosted models run on our own UK GPUs and prompt content never leaves our infrastructure, so sensitive client work can stay inside the fence while the full catalogue remains available for everything else. Metered per token in GBP, on the same invoice as your apps, and usable from your own tools today.

Frequently asked questions

What does the per-seat stack really cost an agency?

A 15-person agency paying seat fees for files, chat, support, time tracking and automation typically spends 400 to 700 pounds a month, and the bill rises with every hire and every per-task automation overage. The equivalent Node stack is flat and billed hourly: apps at 25 to 75 pounds a month equivalent each, no platform fee, unchanged whether 5 or 50 people log in.

Where does client work actually live?

In your own tenant: an isolated private network on hardware Node owns in a UK datacentre, under UK jurisdiction, behind your own single sign-on realm. Campaign files, creative and strategy documents are not sitting in a US vendor's cloud, and a UK GDPR Article 28 data processing agreement is standard.

Can we white-label any of this for clients?

The bones are there: every tenant is an isolated workspace with its own sign-on realm, and apps run under your own domains, so client-facing tools can carry your brand rather than a SaaS vendor's. If you want to go further and run workspaces for your clients, talk to us; it is a conversation we are open to, not a packaged product today.

How does the helpdesk maths work against per-agent tools?

Hosted helpdesks charge per agent, typically 7 to 25 euros per agent per month, so involving the whole delivery team in client support gets expensive. Zammad on Node is a flat 45 pounds a month equivalent, billed hourly, however many agents log in, which crosses over at roughly four agents against mid-range per-agent pricing.

We live in Zapier and n8n. What changes?

We do not host n8n: its Sustainable Use Licence does not permit a provider to run it for you and charge for access, and we would rather say so than sell you something we cannot support. Keep self-hosting it yourself if it works. What we do run is Apache Camel and Apache NiFi as managed setup, built with our engineers and priced by scope rather than per task, so high-volume client workflows stop being a pricing anxiety. Zapier-style per-task plans charge more the more successful your automations get; a flat platform inverts that.

Do you replace our creative tools?

No. Figma, the Adobe suite and your production tools stay. Node replaces the operational stack around them: file storage and client delivery, CRM and new business, support, time tracking, wikis and automation, which is where per-seat fees and scattered client IP accumulate.