Migration to cloud costs significantly more for same functionality

[Andrew Stickler]

I am planning to migrate my on-premise Jira Software server to the cloud and am surprised by the significant increase in costs.

We currently have a 10-user license which was $10/year, and while I know there is a free cloud edition, it doesn't support permissions. To get that, I need to move to the Standard Edition, which will be $790/year.

Why is migrating to the cloud so expensive just to maintain the same functionality? I am wondering if there is any value in migrating at all, as I don't need new features.

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Andrew Stickler 

When factoring in the costs of migrating from a self host product to a SaaS product you need to consider not only the license cost of the product but also the hosting and maintenance cost of the product.

You no longer have to maintain 1..n servers on which the product is installed.

You no longer have to manage the version upgrades for the product.

You no longer have to pay for the database license to for the database that is used by Jira.

You no longer have to manage the database version upgrades.

Your company is no longer having to devote person hours to doing any of the above, freeing them to devote that time to the actual work/services your company provides.

I can't speak to the cost of each of those in your specific situation and how that compares to the total cost of the SaaS product, but those are other costs you should be considering when evaluating the cost of a SaaS product vs. a self-hosted product.

I am not well-versed in the self-hosted pricing model, but I found a reference from 2021 that seems to indicate that a 10 user / $10/year license is actually only supposed to be used for development purposes. If that is what you have, I hope you have adhered to the licensing terms.

[Andrew Stickler]

Hi Trudy, thanks for your response.

I hear your point about the hosting and maintenance costs, but the benefits of cloud-based applications are that such costs are massively reduced as are shared across a lot of customers. An increase of $780 seems excessive for that.

WRT your 'you no longer' comments, those are trivial for me anyway, and yes, I am using the 10-user license for development purposes.

I think I will just stick with my on-premise system.

Andrew