I started with SaaS and only recently after over 8 years moved to offering self-hosting as well. I tried code escrow for awhile, but that was hard and required

I started with SaaS and only recently after over 8 years moved to offering self-hosting as well. I tried code escrow for awhile, but that was hard and required a lot of hands-on support because at the time the app wasn't built with self-hosting in mind. I'd say go SaaS and offer self-hosting once the pain of not offering it outweighs the cost of offering it, because there is a cost to offering it -- from support, to onboarding, to setup flows, etc. If your customers want it, build it, but if they don't, you save a lot of time and money until they do.