A small UK manufacturer shopping for MRP software meets two kinds of pricing: quote-based per-seat ERP (Sage 200 and SAP Business One are widely reported at roughly £150 to £200 per user per month once implementation is amortised) or cloud MRP with a friendly headline and expensive add-ons. Meanwhile the data at stake is the business itself: bills of materials, routings, unit costs, supplier terms and customer pricing.
What the cloud MRP stack really costs
Katana's Core tier lists at $299 per month as a base fee. Add the manufacturing, traceability and warehouse add-ons a real factory needs and the verified list total runs $747 to $1,095 per month (katanamrp.com pricing, July 2026). Unleashed lists at $380 per month for 3 users, then $109 per additional user. Neither does your accounts.
| Capability | Cloud MRP stack | On Node (flat) |
|---|---|---|
| MRP: BOMs, work orders, stock, purchasing | Katana: $299 base, $747-1,095 with add-ons (~£590-865) | ERPNext (Large): £75 |
| Inventory (if bought separately) | Unleashed: $380/mo for 3 users, +$109/user (~£300+) | included in ERPNext |
| Drawings, CAD files & certs | Per-seat file storage | Nextcloud (Large): £75 |
| Work instructions & SOPs | Confluence at ~$6/user | BookStack (Small): £25 |
| Warranty & support desk | Zendesk at $55/agent/mo | Zammad (Medium): £45 |
| Identity, SSO, audit | Spread across the above | Included with your apps: £0 |
There is no headcount crossover to calculate here: Katana's base fee alone, around £235 a month, exceeds a whole Node workspace with ERPNext before you have added a single user. The honest pitch is that this is cheaper on day one, it stays flat as you hire operators, and it does your accounting too. These are list prices; ask for a like-for-like figure for your shop.
What your factory runs on Node
Nextcloud and n8n deploy self-serve, in minutes, from the signup portal; ERPNext and the rest are managed setup, deployed and connected by our engineers.
Production ERP - ERPNext (managed setup): bills of materials, work orders, stock across warehouses, purchasing and accounting in one open source system. Manufacturing is ERPNext's heartland vertical. We implement it with you, because an ERP without item and BOM discipline is a spreadsheet with extra steps. Frappe's own case studies document ERPNext in metal fabrication, packaging and concrete producers; other companies using it include Zerodha, India's largest stockbroker, which publicly credits ERPNext as core to its operations.
Drawings and certificates - Nextcloud (self-serve): revision-controlled drawings, CAD files, material certs and customer packs, with expiring password-protected shares for suppliers instead of email attachments.
Work instructions - BookStack (managed setup): SOPs, setup sheets and quality procedures on the shop floor without paying Confluence per head.
Warranty and support - Zammad (managed setup): a shared inbox for warranty claims and customer support with full history per customer and machine. Zammad's published references include appliance maker De'Longhi.
Glue - n8n (self-serve): move orders, invoices and stock alerts between ERPNext, your accountant's Xero and your inbox. Run something niche already? Bring Your Own App hosts it from £7.02 per month equivalent.
Your BOMs are the business
A manufacturer's confidential data is not customer emails; it is the BOM, the routing, the margin and the drawing. Put those in a multi-tenant US cloud and you are trusting a vendor's word for who can see them. Your Node tenant is an isolated private network on hardware we own in UK data centres, under UK jurisdiction, with access through your own single sign-on realm so a leaver loses every app at once, and admin actions fully audited. A UK GDPR Article 28 DPA is standard: generate a completed copy now. Infrastructure that supports your obligations; your quality system and policies remain yours.
AI on production data, without it leaving the UK
Summarising NCRs, drafting supplier emails, first-pass work instructions: useful AI work on exactly the material you should not paste into a consumer chatbot. The AI gateway labels every model UK-hosted or partner-routed; UK-hosted models run on GPUs we own, so prompt content never leaves our infrastructure. Metered per token in GBP on the same invoice: see the model catalogue.
Start with the files, or scope the ERP
Deploy Nextcloud or n8n yourself in minutes with £25 of free credit, or tell an engineer what your shop runs on today and we will scope the ERPNext implementation.
Frequently asked questions
Where do our BOMs, costings and drawings actually live?
On hardware Node owns and operates in UK data centres, under UK jurisdiction, inside a tenant that is network-isolated from every other customer. Your bills of materials, unit costs and customer pricing sit on our metal, not in a US SaaS vendor's multi-tenant cloud, and a UK GDPR Article 28 data processing agreement is standard.
How does the billing actually work?
Everything is billed hourly against a published rate card with no minimum term and no contract; the monthly figures on this page are equivalents for comparison. Stop an app and the meter stops. There is nothing to cancel and no renewal negotiation, which is not something Sage or Katana will offer you.
Is ERPNext honestly a match for Katana or Sage 200?
Not on every axis, and we will say so. Katana's shop-floor screens and scheduling are slicker than ERPNext's, and ERPNext has no machine monitoring or IoT story. What ERPNext gives you is a full ERP: BOMs, work orders, stock, purchasing and accounting in one system, flat-priced, on your own infrastructure. Frappe, its maker, reports 30,000+ companies using it; treat that as a vendor figure.
Do we have to implement the ERP ourselves?
No, and honestly you should not. An ERP is only as good as its item and BOM discipline, so ERPNext is a managed setup: our engineers deploy it, connect single sign-on, and work through the item, BOM and warehouse structure with you before go-live. Nextcloud you can deploy yourself in minutes from the signup portal.
Can we keep Sage or Xero for the accounts?
Yes. ERPNext includes accounting, and some firms eventually consolidate onto it, but plenty run ERPNext for MRP, stock and purchasing while the accountant stays in Xero or Sage. n8n can move invoices and journals between the two so nobody rekeys anything.
What does it cost for a fifteen-person shop?
From the published rate card, with no platform fee: ERPNext (Large) is 75 pounds per month equivalent, Nextcloud for drawings (Large) 75 pounds, and BookStack for work instructions (Small) 25 pounds. That is 175 pounds per month equivalent plus VAT, billed hourly, and the same figure however many staff use it; the workspace, single sign-on and audit come free with the apps.