[SKU-11 / BREAK-EVEN]
SaaS vs on-premise WMS break-even
At a $125/user/mo SaaS midpoint and a $1,800/user perpetual + 18% maintenance, SaaS wins under ~30 users and on-prem wins past ~200 users on a 5-year horizon. Below is the live model.
[INPUTS]
75
125 USD
1,800 USD
[5-YEAR COST]
SaaS, 5 years
$562,500
On-prem perpetual + 18% maintenance, 5 years
$232,200
Cheaper at this user count: ON-PREM
[SKU-12 / RULES OF THUMB]
When each model wins
- Perpetual-license maintenance follows the enterprise-software convention of about 17-22% of list per year (Oracle's standard support is 22% of net license fees); we model 18%.
- We budget a 5-7% annual SaaS uplift on existing customers, more on net-new tiering (vendors do not publish renewal caps).
- The break-even ignores implementation, which adds ~1.5x to ~3x the year-one license either way.
- If your user count grows, SaaS becomes more expensive faster. If it shrinks, on-prem traps you in unused seats.
[SKU-13 / FAQ]
Break-even questions
Why include implementation in the TCO but not the break-even?
Because implementation is the largest single line item and it differs less between SaaS and on-prem than people assume. Holding it equal isolates the recurring-cost crossover.
What about hybrid hosted-private-cloud?
Hybrid lands between the two lines. Vendors do not publish the uplift; as a planning estimate we model a 15-30% premium over multi-tenant SaaS for a hosted-private deployment. See /deploy/private-cloud-wms.