[ivan_gammel]

In corporate environment paying for Confluence Cloud subscription can be cheaper than having even a part time admin to install and maintain self-hosted solution (proper security, backups, handling compatibility issues on updates etc etc). It may not be the best solution, but it is good enough.

[jfrunyon]

In corporate environment how do you not already have an admin who can handle this just like they handle any of your other self-hosted needs? I've never worked for a single company that didn't have something hosted internally.

[ivan_gammel]

Regardless of whether a company has an admin with necessary qualifications or not, their time is not free and can be used elsewhere.

In the company where I work we do not have anything but network equipment in the server room (500 employees distributed across Europe). All „self-hosted“ solutions are on AWS instances behind VPN, and there are only four 3rd party systems of this kind, where investment in self-hosted setup did make sense at some point (two of them will be replaced with commercial SaaS soon). We of course have a devops team capable of maintaining those systems, but this is not given that it worth it.

When talking about „self-hosted“ solutions it is important to consider all factors that contribute to TCO. It is not as simple as getting some hardware and running an installer.

[jfrunyon]

Of course their time is not free. Neither is the time of the SaaS provider's employees. What's your point?

Of course it's important to consider all the factors. That's important no matter what. The point is that people aren't considering all the factors because the reality is, the costs of SaaS are almost always higher.

You don't have any local backup, by the way? Oof.