What to check before you buy software you mean to own.

The seven

• Does the handover include the database schema, or only the application? Without the schema you own a program you cannot migrate.
• What stack is it written in, and can you hire for that stack locally without paying a specialist premium?
• Where does the repository end up? It should move to your organisation, not sit in a shared account you are granted access to.
• Can you deploy it anywhere, or only somewhere the vendor blesses?
• What exactly do updates cover, and what happens the day they stop?
• Is there a licence server, a key, a seat count or a phone-home check anywhere in the code?
• For a mobile build, whose name is on the App Store and Play accounts?

Why each one matters

The schema question is the one most often skipped and the most expensive to get wrong. Software without its data model is not portable, so a vendor who hands you source but not schema has handed you something you cannot leave with. Ours transfers both, which is set out in what you own.

The stack question is about your options in year three. Mainstream technology means any competent developer can pick it up, including one who is not us. An unusual framework quietly narrows your choice of who can maintain it, which is lock-in wearing a different coat.

The update question matters because renewal pressure usually hides there. Updates should be improvements you can decline, not a licence that expires. When our twelve months end the software carries on exactly as before, because support was never what made it run. The detail is in support and updates.

The test that settles it

Ask what happens if you never speak to the vendor again. If the honest answer is that everything keeps working, you are buying software. If anything stops, degrades, or needs a key reissued, you are renting it however the invoice is worded.

The vocabulary around this is deliberately slippery, so we wrote down what we mean by each term in the glossary. If a vendor uses one of them differently, that difference is worth an email before you sign.