The short answer
Removing the licence fee moves cost rather than removing it. Somebody hosts it, patches it, upgrades it and fixes it when it breaks. Where you already have that capability, free is often the better deal. Where you do not, you are buying yourself a job.
The honest comparison is total cost over a few years, including the hours, against the paid alternative at your actual usage.
Where the cost goes
| Cost | Free tool | Paid service |
|---|---|---|
| Licence | None | Per user or usage |
| Hosting | Yours | Included |
| Setup | Yours, sometimes substantial | Usually quick |
| Upgrades | Yours, on your schedule | Done for you |
| Security patching | Yours, and urgent | Theirs |
| Support when stuck | Community and your own time | Contracted |
| Someone who owns it | Required | Required, but lighter |
The security row is the one that changes the calculation. A self-hosted tool with a known vulnerability is your problem, at the pace the vulnerability demands rather than the pace that suits you.
Where free genuinely wins
- You already run infrastructure and have people who maintain it
- The paid pricing model punishes your usage pattern, such as per-seat when you have many light users
- You need to modify it in ways a vendor will not
- Data residency or control requirements rule out the hosted option
- It is a tool for your technical team who will maintain it anyway
The second point is the most common and the most quantifiable. Per-seat pricing at an organisation with hundreds of occasional users gets expensive quickly.
Where it usually does not
Business-critical systems with no internal capability to maintain them. Anything where downtime costs more than the licence. Tools that only one person understands.
The failure pattern is consistent: it is set up by someone enthusiastic, works well, and then that person changes role and nobody upgrades it for two years.
Name an owner before you adopt
The single best predictor of whether a free tool works out is whether one named person is responsible for keeping it running, with time allocated.
If that question has no answer, the honest choice is the paid option, because the cost you are avoiding is the cost you are not able to carry.