[redwood]

What's this type of calculator often misses is how nuanced and complex is to estimate the cost of employee time.

It's not just the cost of an employee salary per hour... Is the opportunity cost of everything that employee could have instead done.

After all it isn't as though with more money you can just immediately get more fully ramped sophisticated employees to add value... All of that is complex.

[bluGill]

There is also the cost of not understanding details that you left to someone else. If you save time but no longer know what is happening you can get into big trouble when those details matter.

[femto]

And the related, more general, risk of an additional external dependency: what happens if the service disappears, changes or goes wrong?