Stack Cost · 1 minute
Software stack cost calculator: What are you paying to rent your own operation?
The subscriptions are the part you can see. The expensive part is the person who exports from one tool and types it into the next, the quote that waits because two systems disagree, and the number nobody trusts because it lives in three places. Those hours never appear on an invoice, which is exactly why they survive for years.
Run Your Numbers
What is your software stack renting you back?
Nobody chooses a stack. You accumulate one, a tool per problem, and the real cost is not the subscriptions — it is the person who exports from one system and re-keys into the next. Put your own numbers in.
Your estimate
Subscriptions, per year
$10,800
The work between the tools, per year
$21,000
What the stack costs you a year
$31,800
$159,000 over five years
An Essential build starts at $5,000 and runs from $80 a month self-run. Against the share you set, that pays back in 4 months.
Or start smaller: the Workflow Map.
Illustrative estimate from your own inputs (50 working weeks). It is not a quote, and it is not a promise that a rebuild removes every subscription — most operations keep accounting, payroll and email whatever else changes.
Reading the number
What the result does and does not tell you
The annual figure is arithmetic on your own inputs, not a benchmark and not a quote. It is useful for one thing: putting the cost of the current arrangement next to the cost of changing it, because most owners compare a build price against zero rather than against what they already spend every month.
When the math says automate
The subscription line is modest, the tools are ones you would keep anyway, and nearly all the cost sits in a few handoffs. Fix the seams and leave the stack alone. That is the Process Automation answer.
When the math says rebuild
The share one system could carry is large, the labor line dwarfs the license line, and every year of delay repeats the whole number. That is the Operations Platform answer.
Published prices
- Workflow Map — $500, credited against the audit
- Operations Audit — $3,500
- Automation build — from $10,000
- Operations Platform — from $5,000 to build, then From $80 / month self-run or $450 / month managed
Full ladder on the pricing page.
Frequently asked
Stack cost questions
How much does a business software stack actually cost per year?
Add the subscriptions, then add the labor between them. A ten-person business paying $900 a month in software spends $10,800 a year on licenses — and if two people lose twelve hours a week to re-keying and reconciling at a $35 loaded rate, that is another $21,000. The second number is the one nobody budgets, because it never appears on an invoice.
Is it cheaper to replace the stack or keep renting it?
It depends entirely on how much of the stack one system could actually carry. Accounting, payroll and email stay whatever you do. The tools that hold your customers, jobs, documents and numbers are the ones a single system can absorb, and the calculator asks you to set that share yourself rather than assuming it.
What does an owned operations platform cost?
Builds start at $5,000 for Essential, $8,500 for Standard and $15,000 for Advanced. After the build you either run it yourself on your own infrastructure, from about $80 a month depending on size and usage, or CMA hosts and runs it for $450 a month. Neither option is priced per seat, and you own the system either way.
What is the smallest first step?
The $500 Workflow Map: one workflow watched end to end, written down as it actually runs, with the hours and the failure points marked. It is credited in full against an Operations Audit ($3,500) if you go further. If the honest answer is that a subscription you already pay for solves it, that is what the map will say.
Does automation reduce these costs without replacing anything?
Often, yes, and that is the cheaper path when the tools are right and the handoffs are wrong. Automation earns its keep on the seams between systems you intend to keep. A rebuild earns its keep when the seams are the whole problem, because there are too many systems for any amount of glue to hold together.
Keep going
See what you would still own in a year
Automation, a build inside someone else's tenant, open-source glue, one system you own: the leftovers are not the same, and the difference only shows up later.