Self-hosted or managed OpenBoxes: a total-cost worksheet

OpenBoxes is open-source software, so the licence costs nothing either way. What you pay for is running it: a server, a database, backups, upgrades, and the hours of whoever looks after them. This article is a worksheet for comparing running OpenBoxes yourself with paying someone to run it. It gives you the line items; the numbers are yours to fill in, because a server, a salary and an hour of IT time cost very different amounts from one organization to the next.

How to fill it in#

• Pick a period. Three years is a sensible horizon: long enough to include a few upgrades and at least one bad week, short enough to estimate.
• Count money and hours separately, then convert. Write staff time in hours, then multiply by what an hour of that person costs you, including overheads. Hours are where self-hosting estimates usually go wrong.
• Leave out what is the same either way. Entering products, setting up locations, training your team and managing users inside OpenBoxes take the same effort on your own server or on a hosted one. Keep them out of both columns, or put the same number in both.

Column A: running OpenBoxes yourself#

OpenBoxes is a Java web application that runs in Apache Tomcat, backed by a MySQL or MariaDB database. Everything below is something that stack needs, whoever pays for it.

Money, per month or per year:

• The server that runs Tomcat. A cloud virtual machine, a rented server, or a share of hardware you already own.
• The database. The same server, a second one, or a managed database service from your cloud provider.
• Backup storage somewhere other than the server, for as many days of backups as you want to keep.
• A domain name and a TLS certificate for the address your team types in, and their renewal.
• Monitoring, so somebody finds out the system is down before the warehouse does.

Hours, one-off:

• Installing and configuring the server, Java, Tomcat, the database and OpenBoxes itself.
• Moving your existing data in, if you have any.

Hours, recurring:

• Upgrades. Reading the release notes, taking a backup, rehearsing on a copy and upgrading. Our upgrade checklist lists the steps, which is a fair way to estimate how long each one takes you.
• Backups and restore tests. Checking the nightly job ran, and restoring a backup now and then to prove it works. See OpenBoxes backups: what to back up and how to test a restore.
• Security patches for the operating system, Java and the database.
• Incidents. A slow morning, a full disk, a certificate that expired. Why is my OpenBoxes slow? covers the usual causes.
• Cover. Who does all of this when the person who set it up is on leave, or leaves? Budget the hours to write it down and hand it over.

Column B: a managed host (OpenBoxes Lift)#

Use the published prices. These are the list prices on the pricing page, which also shows any offer running when you read this:

• Shared: $150/month, or $1,440/year billed annually ($120/month).
• Dedicated: $600/month, or $5,760/year billed annually ($480/month).
• Enterprise: $1,800/month, or $1,440/month billed annually, for organizations that need availability and data-protection commitments in a contract.

What the plan price covers: the servers, the database, provisioning, OpenBoxes upgrades, backups, monitoring and TLS, chat support in the portal, and help getting your data in. Scheduled backups run nightly and are kept for 30 days on Shared and Dedicated. Shared includes up to 10 users and 10 GB of storage; Dedicated includes up to 50 users and 100 GB.

Add-ons, only if you need them:

• More users: 5 more on Shared for $25/month (up to two packs), or 25 more on Dedicated for $100/month (up to two packs).
• More storage: +25 GB for $25/month or +100 GB for $100/month on Shared (one at a time), or +100 GB for $60/month on Dedicated (up to three).
• Longer backup retention on Shared: 90 days for $15/month, or 1 year for $30/month.
• Priority Support on Shared: $99/month for a first-response target of 8 business hours in the portal chat. Dedicated includes the same target at no extra cost.

Discounts: annual billing saves 20% on every plan. Registered nonprofits and NGOs can claim a discount on Shared and Dedicated; the nonprofit discount post explains who qualifies and how to claim it.

Hours that remain: column B is not zero hours. Someone still plans the move, checks the imported data, invites your team and manages billing. For a sense of what a move involves, read Moving a self-hosted OpenBoxes to Lift.

What the worksheet cannot price#

Some differences are not about money, and one of them can decide the question on its own.

• You need to change the code. If you plan to fork OpenBoxes, add custom modules or change core behaviour, run it yourself. Lift runs a standard build.
• You must run on-premise or without internet access. A hosted service cannot do that. Run it yourself.
• You rely on OpenBoxes' server administration pages or custom SQL data exports. Lift runs the server, so these pages are not included; Dedicated keeps only the custom data exports. The ready-made downloads under Reporting › Data Exports are still there.
• Where your data lives. Lift runs on Google Cloud in the us-east1 region. If your country or your funder requires data to stay in the country, check that first.
• Leaving later. Either choice can be reversed. A self-hosted OpenBoxes can be migrated into Lift, and What happens to your data if you leave a hosted provider covers the way back out.

A worked shape, without the numbers#

Write two lines per column for each year: the money (server, storage, plan price, add-ons) and the hours multiplied by your hourly cost. Add the three years. If the totals are close, the deciding factor is usually the hours you did not count, so ask the person who will do the work to check column A before you trust it.

Summary#

• The software is free either way; compare the cost of running it.
• Column A: server, database, backup storage, domain and certificate, monitoring, plus hours for installing, upgrading, patching, testing restores and handling incidents.
• Column B: the published plan price and only the add-ons you need, plus the hours that remain.
• Code changes, on-premise requirements and data location can decide the question before the arithmetic does.