7 ms·

We use so many SaaS I'm not sure it's worth resisting anymore. Microsoft 365. Can't exit because: it's our SSO provider, also it's cost competitive with all th

We use so many SaaS I'm not sure it's worth resisting anymore. Microsoft 365. Can't exit because: it's our SSO provider, also it's cost competitive with all the other email providers and you can't self-hosted email because sender reputation is too important in business. Job tracking system. Can't exit because: it integrates with our cloud accounting software and getting that to link up with anything self-hosted is virtually impossible. Freshdesk. Can't exit because: we could get off the ticketing system, but the knowledge base is hosted here as well, and that's publicly accessible. Miro. Can't exit because: needs to be cloud hosted to share boards with customers, probably not worth hosting it considering costs involved and feature gaps with open source version. This probably costs us like $2-3,000/yr per employee, sure, but wages are like 50x that these days. On the business continuity side of things using a bunch of SaaS does make me nervous, but if you have to have to rely on APIs connecting everything and throwing SSO around the place, can you really escape being held hostage to it all? I think what it would take to escape SaaS is to go back to paper filing, and I think that would be more expensive than the money saved by the cross-integration of SaaS, for example manually copying bank lines from statements from several banks would take a good part of a day. Manually distributing copies of documents around the office would mean we get less work done. Manually backing-up everything probably costs more in external hard drives and time than it saves in SaaS fees. I write this while holding back tears (:/) that things have come to it.

formerphotoj 2y ago
This. Should be a long German word for the unaccountable cost delta/savings?/increase? from digitizing and then maintaining APIs and such into at least 2038. Maybe AI knows what it is; I'll ask and get back to y'allz!
- croemer 2y ago
  Digitalisierungsschattenpreise
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    To save some folks a few clicks, "Digitization Shadow Prices".
    - croemer 2y ago
      This isn't a real word (yet) of course (at least no Google hits). Just made it up on the spot.
      - valenterry 2y ago
        I'm German and I wasn't sure if you made it up or if it existed before. :)
  - cookiengineer 2y ago
    As a German, I approve this wording. Basically, it's a Digitalisierungsschattenwucherbepreisungsskandal
    - formerphotoj 2y ago
      I'm having fun sounding this one out for myself! I like how it audibly bounces along via -ung -en -er -ei(eye) -ung and -al. Makes me wanna say, "Now That's Fahrvergnügen!" Or rather, Sprechenvergnügen?
- junto 2y ago
  Softwarelizenzverschlimmbesserung “Verschlimmbesserung” is a great German word that describes “an attempted improvement that actually makes things worse”.
ajb 2y ago
I remember the days before SaaS. Sure we paid only once and self hosted services with open source, but we also needed a full time sysadmin/IT person for a 12 person startup. I'm not sure it worked out cheaper.
- dijit 2y ago
  Out of interest, who's managing your mail, accounts, purchasing and computer setup now?
  - cadamsau 2y ago
    What I’ve observed is it becomes part of the job of the office admin person. So not zero headcount maybe 0.1 or 0.2 but that’s pretty good if the SaaS bill is another 0.2 headcount.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    You pay $25 a seat to either Google (GSuite) or Microsoft. There is nothing to manage but signing into the account. As far as computer purchasing, my latest employer had my computer shipped directly from Apple. Once I got it, I installed the mandated MDM software.
    - zie 2y ago
      You clearly have never dealt with their support system(s). You still need a geek or geek adjacent person. Their stuff breaks all the time in weird and wonderful ways and someone local has to figure that out and send trouble tickets in to the vendor(s). With Google, you pretty much can't get support, even if you are a paying customer, so you absolutely have to have your own human, if only to tell you: You can't use Google that way... With MS you can get support, but you pay extra for it, and it's hit and miss as to how useful it is. With Apple, you get support. It's generally pretty good, but can occasionally fail.
esperent 2y ago
> it's cost competitive with all the other email providers Have you looked at MXRoute? We pay $65 per year for unlimited domains and addresses. Not a huge amount of storage space so there's a bit of education in getting people to share large files using another service, but otherwise it's great value.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  No serious company is going to go that route instead of using GSuite or O365. It doesn’t even offer an SSO solution that you can link to all of their other SaaS products. And now they have to use another solution for file sharing?
  - esperent 2y ago
    I run a serious company and we have found MXRoute to be a great fit. The main alternative that we could budget for (since we're an F&B business in Vietnam and many options are too expensive) is the Google Workspace lowest tier. That only gives 30gb per user which is shared between email and everything else, so it's not that different really. We'd still have to be making sure people were not sharing huge files by email.
    - scarface_74 2y ago
      It’s different because you also get the complete office suite from Google. Are you really saying the difference between $6/month for the lowest tier that you said is affordable and $12/month for a shared 2TB pool of storage would break the bank?
      - jazzyjackson 2y ago
        In think they said even $6 per month per user was a bum deal next to $65/year flat for unlimited.
zx8080 2y ago
> you can't self-hosted email because sender reputation is too important in business. Email saas vendor only lock-in seem to be the root of some vendor lock-ins.
graemep 2y ago
> and you can't self-hosted email because sender reputation is too important in business. You can self-host and use a delivery service for outgoing. > I think what it would take to escape SaaS is to go back to paper filing Why not self-hosted alternatives? > Manually backing-up everything probably costs more in external hard drives and time than it saves in SaaS fees. I find that hard to believe. Even cloud backup services are not that expensive.
- redserk 2y ago
  > You can self-host and use a delivery service for outgoing. Going from relying on a subscription SaaS service to…still relying on a subscription *aaS service. And you still have the cost of keeping someone on staff to maintain the server and be available at 3am and 3pm.
sam_lowry_ 2y ago
> I write this while holding back tears (:/) Dunno about all other things, but it's totally possible to self-host email. I do it for myself, and I did it when running the IT of a media company. I now work for the government, and I know that sensitive mails go through foreign entities and none can do anything about it because we lost not only the skills but the understanding that mail can be self-hosted.
baobun 2y ago
> and you can't self-hosted email because sender reputation is too important in business. It is not uncommon to self-host everything except the outgoing sending. So you can mostly bring it all home without tackling sender reputation. > Freshdesk. Can't exit because: we could get off the ticketing system, but the knowledge base is hosted here as well, and that's publicly accessible. This can be done. The knowledge base sounds like some of the easier things to migrate tbh. Why the need to go to paper filing? Airgapped servers are a middle ground. But I guess your deeper issue is one of organizational culture norms, not of technical limitations or challenges... Which I hope can be encouraging. It's all doable if you (plural) actually want it. One path is to start with setting up contingency systems. Continously sync all mail to your own infra so you can access mailboxes even if o365 is unavailable. Mirror the knowledge base. Forward ticket mails to a duplicate archive (obviously potential caveats around PII and security here).
- jazzyjackson 2y ago
  I’m on Team Airgap but I would expect that bringing on dedicated devops staff to maintain internal systems would blow away any cost savings and leave you at higher risk for downtime if the one Linux Wizard you hired to set it all up leaves for greener pastures. At least the SaaSs have a higher bus factor. And then you have your security risks of duplicating your access control. So you mirror all your employees emails, now you have to make sure only administrators have read access and avoid ever exposing that system to the internet and prevent exfil. I’m thinking of how to do this for a friends company and the amount of stuff that a SaaS takes care of is staggering. Right now I’m stuck on learning to be my own root CA to distribute client certificates for mTLS so I can avoid relying on third party SSO/auth.
raxxor 2y ago
You absolutely can host your own mail server. Or use one of your IT partner of choice. Out business still has an exchange. Today you have to jump through some hurdles with SPIF/DKIM, but it is still very possible.
- arielcostas 2y ago
  You can also send out your emails via a relay, like Amazon SES, right? Host an email server (like opensmtd + Dovecot, or with Postfix+Dovecot), and forward external emails through SES.
achrono 2y ago
>but wages are like 50x that these days How is that even comparable? Said wage earners aren't even getting to choose which tool they use; let alone those two expenses being remotely comparable in qualitative terms.
- arielcostas 2y ago
  They are compared regarding "cost to the company". A median salary in Spain is 24k€/year, plus social security, which makes it around 31k/yr per employee. Yet I've seen several companies using crappy services' free tier (definitely not targeted for businesses) because paying 140€/yr for MS365 Business Standard and 85€/yr for 1Password was too much when "we can use Google Drive [with 'personal' Google Accounts not controlled by the organisation in any way] for free, and KeePassXC synced through Drive". Now, compare 250-300€/employee/year with how much you spend on salaries, and think how much it's hurting productivity to have these weird (and probably against TOS) arrangements, compared to just paying a few bucks for software.

formerphotoj 2y ago

This. Should be a long German word for the unaccountable cost delta/savings?/increase? from digitizing and then maintaining APIs and such into at least 2038. Maybe AI knows what it is; I'll ask and get back to y'allz!

croemer 2y ago
Digitalisierungsschattenpreise
- Terr_ 2y ago
  To save some folks a few clicks, "Digitization Shadow Prices".
  - croemer 2y ago
    This isn't a real word (yet) of course (at least no Google hits). Just made it up on the spot.
    - valenterry 2y ago
      I'm German and I wasn't sure if you made it up or if it existed before. :)
- cookiengineer 2y ago
  As a German, I approve this wording. Basically, it's a Digitalisierungsschattenwucherbepreisungsskandal
  - formerphotoj 2y ago
    I'm having fun sounding this one out for myself! I like how it audibly bounces along via -ung -en -er -ei(eye) -ung and -al. Makes me wanna say, "Now That's Fahrvergnügen!" Or rather, Sprechenvergnügen?
junto 2y ago
Softwarelizenzverschlimmbesserung “Verschlimmbesserung” is a great German word that describes “an attempted improvement that actually makes things worse”.

ajb 2y ago

I remember the days before SaaS. Sure we paid only once and self hosted services with open source, but we also needed a full time sysadmin/IT person for a 12 person startup. I'm not sure it worked out cheaper.

dijit 2y ago
Out of interest, who's managing your mail, accounts, purchasing and computer setup now?
- cadamsau 2y ago
  What I’ve observed is it becomes part of the job of the office admin person. So not zero headcount maybe 0.1 or 0.2 but that’s pretty good if the SaaS bill is another 0.2 headcount.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- scarface_74 2y ago
  You pay $25 a seat to either Google (GSuite) or Microsoft. There is nothing to manage but signing into the account. As far as computer purchasing, my latest employer had my computer shipped directly from Apple. Once I got it, I installed the mandated MDM software.
  - zie 2y ago
    You clearly have never dealt with their support system(s). You still need a geek or geek adjacent person. Their stuff breaks all the time in weird and wonderful ways and someone local has to figure that out and send trouble tickets in to the vendor(s). With Google, you pretty much can't get support, even if you are a paying customer, so you absolutely have to have your own human, if only to tell you: You can't use Google that way... With MS you can get support, but you pay extra for it, and it's hit and miss as to how useful it is. With Apple, you get support. It's generally pretty good, but can occasionally fail.

esperent 2y ago

> it's cost competitive with all the other email providers Have you looked at MXRoute? We pay $65 per year for unlimited domains and addresses. Not a huge amount of storage space so there's a bit of education in getting people to share large files using another service, but otherwise it's great value.

scarface_74 2y ago
No serious company is going to go that route instead of using GSuite or O365. It doesn’t even offer an SSO solution that you can link to all of their other SaaS products. And now they have to use another solution for file sharing?
- esperent 2y ago
  I run a serious company and we have found MXRoute to be a great fit. The main alternative that we could budget for (since we're an F&B business in Vietnam and many options are too expensive) is the Google Workspace lowest tier. That only gives 30gb per user which is shared between email and everything else, so it's not that different really. We'd still have to be making sure people were not sharing huge files by email.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    It’s different because you also get the complete office suite from Google. Are you really saying the difference between $6/month for the lowest tier that you said is affordable and $12/month for a shared 2TB pool of storage would break the bank?
    - jazzyjackson 2y ago
      In think they said even $6 per month per user was a bum deal next to $65/year flat for unlimited.

zx8080 2y ago

> you can't self-hosted email because sender reputation is too important in business. Email saas vendor only lock-in seem to be the root of some vendor lock-ins.

graemep 2y ago

> and you can't self-hosted email because sender reputation is too important in business. You can self-host and use a delivery service for outgoing. > I think what it would take to escape SaaS is to go back to paper filing Why not self-hosted alternatives? > Manually backing-up everything probably costs more in external hard drives and time than it saves in SaaS fees. I find that hard to believe. Even cloud backup services are not that expensive.

redserk 2y ago
> You can self-host and use a delivery service for outgoing. Going from relying on a subscription SaaS service to…still relying on a subscription *aaS service. And you still have the cost of keeping someone on staff to maintain the server and be available at 3am and 3pm.

sam_lowry_ 2y ago

> I write this while holding back tears (:/) Dunno about all other things, but it's totally possible to self-host email. I do it for myself, and I did it when running the IT of a media company. I now work for the government, and I know that sensitive mails go through foreign entities and none can do anything about it because we lost not only the skills but the understanding that mail can be self-hosted.

baobun 2y ago

> and you can't self-hosted email because sender reputation is too important in business. It is not uncommon to self-host everything except the outgoing sending. So you can mostly bring it all home without tackling sender reputation. > Freshdesk. Can't exit because: we could get off the ticketing system, but the knowledge base is hosted here as well, and that's publicly accessible. This can be done. The knowledge base sounds like some of the easier things to migrate tbh. Why the need to go to paper filing? Airgapped servers are a middle ground. But I guess your deeper issue is one of organizational culture norms, not of technical limitations or challenges... Which I hope can be encouraging. It's all doable if you (plural) actually want it. One path is to start with setting up contingency systems. Continously sync all mail to your own infra so you can access mailboxes even if o365 is unavailable. Mirror the knowledge base. Forward ticket mails to a duplicate archive (obviously potential caveats around PII and security here).

jazzyjackson 2y ago
I’m on Team Airgap but I would expect that bringing on dedicated devops staff to maintain internal systems would blow away any cost savings and leave you at higher risk for downtime if the one Linux Wizard you hired to set it all up leaves for greener pastures. At least the SaaSs have a higher bus factor. And then you have your security risks of duplicating your access control. So you mirror all your employees emails, now you have to make sure only administrators have read access and avoid ever exposing that system to the internet and prevent exfil. I’m thinking of how to do this for a friends company and the amount of stuff that a SaaS takes care of is staggering. Right now I’m stuck on learning to be my own root CA to distribute client certificates for mTLS so I can avoid relying on third party SSO/auth.

raxxor 2y ago

You absolutely can host your own mail server. Or use one of your IT partner of choice. Out business still has an exchange. Today you have to jump through some hurdles with SPIF/DKIM, but it is still very possible.

arielcostas 2y ago
You can also send out your emails via a relay, like Amazon SES, right? Host an email server (like opensmtd + Dovecot, or with Postfix+Dovecot), and forward external emails through SES.

achrono 2y ago

>but wages are like 50x that these days How is that even comparable? Said wage earners aren't even getting to choose which tool they use; let alone those two expenses being remotely comparable in qualitative terms.

arielcostas 2y ago
They are compared regarding "cost to the company". A median salary in Spain is 24k€/year, plus social security, which makes it around 31k/yr per employee. Yet I've seen several companies using crappy services' free tier (definitely not targeted for businesses) because paying 140€/yr for MS365 Business Standard and 85€/yr for 1Password was too much when "we can use Google Drive [with 'personal' Google Accounts not controlled by the organisation in any way] for free, and KeePassXC synced through Drive". Now, compare 250-300€/employee/year with how much you spend on salaries, and think how much it's hurting productivity to have these weird (and probably against TOS) arrangements, compared to just paying a few bucks for software.