Self-Hosted CRM (Twenty): owning the tool instead of renting a seat
Per-seat pricing is fine until you hire. Then it quietly becomes one of your larger bills, for software you do not own and cannot change.
Indicative. The point is the shape: one line scales with headcount, the other barely moves.
What it actually does
An open-source platform is deployed on infrastructure you own, branded, integrated with your other systems, then backed up, updated and monitored on a schedule.
Booking, shared inbox, e-signature, forms, CRM and analytics on open-source platforms you own, at a fraction of per-seat pricing. In practice, Self-Hosted CRM (Twenty) is the version of that we deploy when a business needs the result rather than a project. Twenty under AGPL-3.0, an open alternative to per-seat CRM, on your own database.
Why businesses ask for this
Per-seat SaaS is fine until you have staff. Self-hosting the same capability turns a growing monthly bill into a fixed one, and the data stays yours.
The people who get the most out of it: growing teams whose CRM bill scales faster than their revenue.
- Per-seat costs that stop scaling with headcount
- Customer data on infrastructure you control
- Tools branded as yours rather than as somebody's trial
How we build it, step by step
The sequence below is the one we follow on every platform operation build. It is deliberately boring, because the interesting version is the one that breaks in month three.
- Deploy on your own account so the data and the bill are yours
- Brand it and integrate it before anyone is asked to use it
- Automate backups and prove a restore actually works
- Patch on a schedule with a rollback path
What we change before it goes live
A reference implementation is a starting line, not a product. Every one we deploy gets the same treatment:
- Your numbers, your sender identity and your wording, so nothing reads as generic
- Secrets moved out of the code and into managed configuration
- Retries, rate limits and idempotency, so a hiccup never sends twice
- Structured logging and alerting, so a failure is noticed by us and not by a customer
- Consent, opt-out and record-keeping built in rather than bolted on
- Source control, a staging environment and a rollback that takes a minute
Compliance and risk
Self-hosting is only cheaper if someone maintains it. That is the service: updates, backups, restores tested, and an upgrade path that does not eat a weekend.
The technical foundation
A managed VPS or your own cloud account, containerised deployments, automated backups, and monitoring we watch.
References worth reading before you buy this from anyone:
What it costs
Three ways to buy this, and the honest recommendation is usually the middle one:
- OpenHandoff, ~$2,500 — we build it, hand it over and warrant it for 30 days. Suits a business with someone technical in-house.
- OpenManaged, ~$390/mo — we build it and then own it: monitoring, changes, compliance upkeep and a monthly report. Suits everyone else.
- Enterprise, Let's talk — when this is one of several systems and you want them designed as one layer instead of five.
Platform usage is billed at cost on top and itemised on the invoice. There is no margin on it and no minimum spend.
Common questions
How long does Self-Hosted CRM (Twenty) take to build?
About a week to a working, branded, integrated instance on your own infrastructure, plus a few days of migration if you are moving off an existing tool.
What does it cost to run each month?
Two lines: OpenManaged at ~$390/mo, and platform usage billed at cost. Usage for this kind of system usually lands between $30 and $300 a month depending on volume. You see both itemised, and the platform account stays in your name.
Do we own it, or are we locked in?
You own it. The account, the numbers, the phone history and the source code are yours, and the foundation is open source. If you take it in-house, we hand over the repository and the runbook and that is the end of the conversation.
What if it breaks at 6pm on a Friday?
It is monitored. Failures raise an alert, the system degrades to something safe rather than silent, and hello@betr.agency is the inbox that answers. That is what the managed plan buys.
Can it work with the systems we already use?
Usually yes. A managed VPS or your own cloud account, containerised deployments, automated backups, and monitoring we watch. Where a system has no API, we look at whether an export, a shared inbox or a scheduled sync gets you 90 percent of the value for 10 percent of the cost.
Where to next
The product page for this build lists the specification, the timeline and what is included: Self-Hosted CRM (Twenty). If you want to talk it through against your actual process, a 30-minute call costs nothing.