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QAD Subscription vs Perpetual License TCO Calculator

Moving QAD to a subscription changes the shape of spend, not just the amount. This calculator lays a perpetual license with maintenance next to a subscription so a controller or CIO can see where the lines cross.

Your numbers

Named users

users

Users you would license in either model.

Perpetual license price per user

One-time price from your quote or last purchase.

Annual maintenance rate

% of license

Yearly support and maintenance as a percent of license value.

On-premise infrastructure per year

Servers, storage, backup, database licences and hosting you pay for yourself.

In-house admin and DBA effort

FTE

Fraction of a person spent keeping the platform running.

Loaded cost per admin FTE

$ per year

Subscription price per user per month

From the subscription quote. Illustrative default only.

Other subscription-side costs per year

Integration hosting, extra environments, sandbox add-ons.

Time horizon

5 years

Your results

Perpetual total over horizon

$1,200,000

Subscription total over horizon

$1,155,000

Perpetual license purchase

$450,000

Perpetual yearly run cost

$150,000

Maintenance plus infrastructure plus admin effort.

Subscription yearly cost

$231,000

Perpetual minus subscription

$45,000

Positive means subscription is cheaper over the horizon.

Break-even year

5.6 years

Years until perpetual becomes cheaper. 0 means subscription is cheaper every year, so there is no break-even.

Illustrative model only. Use figures from your own QAD quote and contract. Excludes implementation, upgrade projects, taxes and discounts.

Save results:

Cumulative cost by horizon

Sweeps Time horizon from 1 to 10, holding your other inputs fixed.

ERP cost model review

Share your inputs and get an expert sanity check on the assumptions, including infrastructure and admin effort.

Optional. The tool and every export work without this. No spam.

How to use it

Enter the user count and the two price points from your quotes. For the perpetual side, include what you really pay to run it: infrastructure, database licences and the share of an administrator who patches and monitors the system. For the subscription side, add costs the vendor does not bundle, such as extra non-production environments or integration hosting. Move the time horizon slider to see how the answer changes at three, five and ten years. The chart plots both cumulative totals against years so the crossover is visible.

Use the same user count on both sides
Take maintenance percent from your last renewal invoice
Include admin time even if it is nobody's full-time job
Test a discount case and a list-price case

The maths behind it

Perpetual total equals the up-front license plus yearly run cost multiplied by years. Yearly run cost is maintenance rate times license value, plus infrastructure, plus admin FTE times loaded cost. Subscription total equals users times monthly price times twelve, plus other yearly costs, times years. Break-even is the license purchase divided by the yearly gap between subscription and perpetual run cost. If the subscription is cheaper every year, the break-even shows zero because the lines never cross.

Reading the result

A short break-even, say under three years, favours subscription for a business that expects to change ERP or shrink. A long break-even favours owning if you plan to run the same release for a decade. Cost is only half the story: subscription typically bundles upgrades and hosting, while a perpetual estate keeps control of upgrade timing and data location, which matters for regulated or air-gapped sites. Treat the difference as one input beside risk, capability and exit terms.

Common mistakes

The most frequent error is comparing a subscription quote with license price alone and ignoring infrastructure and admin cost. The second is forgetting that maintenance usually rises with license additions. The third is ignoring one-time migration to the cloud edition, which belongs in a separate project budget. Also check whether the subscription price escalates yearly; if it does, raise the monthly price to the average over the horizon.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does this use real QAD prices?

No. Defaults are placeholders so the tool works on first load. QAD pricing varies by contract, volume and region, so replace every figure with those from your own quote or renewal invoice before relying on the result.

Why include infrastructure and admin time?

Because a perpetual license runs on hardware and people you pay for separately. Leaving them out understates the cost of owning and makes the subscription look dearer than it is, which is the most common bias in these comparisons.

What if the subscription price rises each year?

Estimate the average monthly price across the horizon and enter that figure. For a rough check, run the calculator twice with the starting and ending prices and compare the totals to see the sensitivity.

Can I use it for other ERPs?

Yes. The model is generic: a one-time license with percentage maintenance versus a per-user subscription. Replace the inputs with figures from any vendor, though terms such as bundled hosting differ between vendors.

If you are weighing a move and want the numbers tied to your real user, transaction and customization footprint, Netray can review the inputs with you. No obligation.

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