Glossary
The words this business is argued in.
Software procurement carries a lot of vocabulary, some of it deliberately slippery. These are the terms that come up when you are deciding between renting a system and owning one, defined the way we use them on this site.
Fixed price, in writing
Want one fitted to your process?
Tell us what you run today. You get a written scope and a fixed price back, not a discovery retainer.
The vocabulary
Not alphabetical. They run roughly in the order they come up when you are weighing renting a system against owning one.
Per-seat pricing
A charge that scales with headcount rather than usage. Ten people cost ten times one person, whether or not the software is doing ten times the work. It is the model every application in this catalogue is sold against.
One-time purchase
A single payment that transfers the software outright. There is no renewal date, so the total cost of year five is known on day one: it is zero.
Source code
The human-readable instructions a program is written in, before it is compiled or deployed. Holding it is the difference between owning software and renting access to it.
Self-hosting
Running an application on infrastructure you control, whether a cloud account in your name or a server in your building. Your data stays inside your boundary and your costs are your hosting bill.
Fitted build
A catalogue application adjusted to a particular process: different fields, stages, roles or integrations. Cheaper than building from nothing because the foundation already works.
Custom build
Software written for one organisation from the ground up, where nothing in the catalogue is close enough to adapt. Quoted per project after scoping.
Role-based access control
Permissions attached to a role rather than a person, so what someone can see follows their job. Enforced on the server in every application here, not by hiding buttons in the browser.
Audit log
An append-only record of who changed what, when, and from where. It cannot be edited after the fact, which is the only property that makes it worth keeping.
Multi-tenant
One running instance serving many separate organisations, with their data divided logically. How most SaaS works, and why your data sits beside a stranger’s.
Single-tenant
One instance serving one organisation. Every deployment of these applications is single-tenant by construction, because it runs on your own infrastructure.
Vendor lock-in
The cost of leaving a supplier: exports that lose structure, formats nobody else reads, integrations that must be rebuilt. Holding the source and the schema removes most of it.
Database schema
The structure of the stored data: tables, columns, types and the relationships between them. Delivered with every application, which is what makes the data genuinely portable.
Migration
A versioned, repeatable change to the database structure. Migrations let a schema evolve without anyone editing a live database by hand.
Seed data
Realistic starting records shipped with an application so a fresh install is usable immediately rather than an empty shell.
Deployment
Putting the application somewhere it can run and be reached. Configuration for a container host or a plain server is included with every purchase.
Environment
A separate copy of the application for a separate purpose, typically development, staging and production. One licence covers as many as you need.
API
A defined way for one system to call another. Every application here exposes one, so the thing you buy next can talk to the thing you bought first.
Webhook
A message your application sends to another system the moment something happens, rather than that system asking repeatedly whether anything has.
SSO, single sign-on
Signing in once with your organisation’s identity provider instead of holding another password. Available as part of a fitted build.
Two-factor authentication
A second proof of identity beyond a password, usually a code from a phone. Available on every application in the catalogue.
Escrow
Holding money or code with a neutral third party until conditions are met. Software escrow is a partial answer to a vendor failing; owning the source is the complete one.
Perpetual licence
A right to use software that does not expire. Ours goes further and transfers the code itself, so there is no licence to honour after the sale.
Open source dependency
A public library an application is built on, under its own licence. Every delivery lists each one with its version and terms.
Total cost of ownership
What software costs over its life rather than in its first month: licences, hosting, people, migration and the price of leaving. It is the comparison per-seat pricing tends to lose.
Start here
Terms are easier with the software in front of you.
Every application in the catalogue runs in full, with every role, before you spend anything at all.
- No sign-up to open one
- One-time price, no seats
- Source code transferred on delivery