We canceled a SaaS before lunch.
One of our products used a $29/mo feedback tool: the board where customers post ideas, vote, and watch the roadmap. Good tool. But it was rented, on someone else's domain, holding our customers' words. In one working day we replaced it with software we own. This page is the receipt.
Every number on this page is real: the invoice, the code, the cancellation.
The receipt
Rented, versus owned.
| Before | After | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | $29 | ~$0 |
| Products covered | 1 | every product we run |
| The data | theirs | ours |
| The branding | theirs | none |
| A new feature | a request in a queue | an afternoon |
Renewal was due the same day. We canceled it that evening.
One working day
Feature for feature, then past it.
And because it was built multi-tenant from the first hour, a second business of ours started collecting feedback on it the same afternoon. On its own domain. For free.
How
A founder directing, an AI building.
Nobody typed 4,900 lines by hand. The build was directed: a founder deciding what matters, an AI doing the labor, every piece tested before it shipped.
The judgment calls stayed human. Which features earn their place. What the widget should feel like to a customer mid-task. Where the data lives, and who can see it.
That is the actual lesson, and it is bigger than feedback boards: a whole category of small software subscriptions now costs less to own than to rent. Most owners have not re-run that math since AI changed it.
For your business
Re-run your math.
You are probably not itching to replace a feedback tool. But you are paying for something every month that mostly moves your own information around, and someone on your team spends hours every week on work a directed build could do on your domain, under your control. That is what we do:
Find it
We audit the monthly line items and the repetitive hours for the ones worth owning.
Build it
On infrastructure you own, at running costs that round to zero, tested before it ships.
Hand it over
Your domain, your data, documented. Yours whether or not we ever work together again.