Every tool you run is a choice. Make it on purpose.
Most organizations never chose their technology. It piled up: a free trial that became a subscription, a tool a volunteer set up years ago, a bundle that came with the email. Each piece decides where your records live, what it costs next year, and whether you can leave.
Below is everything a business, council or post runs on, layer by layer, built from open source you can host and control. Swap in the Microsoft, Google or Oracle version of each layer and see what changes. Some layers may be worth renting for now. Some are worth owning. The choice is yours, one layer at a time.
Find yours
Pick your kind of organization and its size.
Where you stand
How much of your stack is under your control, section by section.
Your stack, owned
What's next for this stack
A new location, a new rule, a vendor that changes its terms, a volunteer who moves on. Organizations that come through those changes well decided in advance which layers they own, which they rent, and what would make them switch. Pick what would help most.
What counts as owned here
Every tool on the Own side is open source you can run, inspect, export from and move to another provider. We leave out "open core" products whose free edition exists mainly to sell the paid one, and we flag licenses we are watching.
The Rent side names the real Microsoft, Google and Oracle products for each layer, so the comparison is fair. Some layers may be worth renting for now. The point is to choose.
Hosted, privacy-first is the middle ground: you do not run it, but the provider's business is your subscription, not your data, and everything exports. It includes the open source above run for you by Sterling Solutions, LLC on a server in your name, and providers such as Proton, Tuta, mailbox.org, Infomaniak and RabbitSign. Owning later is a move of the server, not of the software.
Before you move any layer
- Know which rules apply to your data (privilege, HIPAA, donor confidentiality, state privacy law).
- Decide who operates it. A stack you own is a stack someone has to look after.
- Rehearse a restore. The backup is only proven when you have brought it back.
This is the part we do with you: map what you run today, check the rules that apply, and put the moves in order.