Replace your SaaS stack
with software you own.
Once your network's in place, the next sensible move is to bring the rest of your tools in-house. A practical Microsoft 365 alternative for small UK businesses: self-hosted Nextcloud, Bitwarden, backup and on-site video, designed and installed on hardware you buy once. No per-user licensing. No third party owning your data. Optional monthly managed support means you get the SaaS experience without the SaaS bill.
self-host?
Nextcloud: your Dropbox, OneDrive and Google Drive replaced.
Self-hosted file storage and sync, on a NAS (a small storage server) in your office. Desktop sync clients for Windows / Mac / Linux. Mobile apps for iOS and Android. Office file collaboration. Calendar and contact sync. The same daily-driver experience your team has on M365, just without the per-seat fee.
- Replaces: Microsoft 365 OneDrive (~£9.40/user/month), Dropbox Business (~£15/user/month), Google Workspace Drive (~£9.20/user/month).
- Office files inside the browser. Edit Word, Excel, PowerPoint and the OpenDocument equivalents directly in Nextcloud Office (Collabora). Real-time co-editing on the same document, like Google Docs but on your hardware.
- Calendar and contacts. Standards-based sync to every modern calendar app: Apple Calendar, Outlook, Thunderbird, Android. Replaces what Microsoft Exchange covers for most small offices, without the licence fee.
- External shares with expiry and password protection. Send a link to a client, set it to expire in 7 days, password-gate it, get a notification when they download.
- Versioning and trash. Every file keeps a 30-day version history. Deleted files sit in trash for 30 days before purge.
Self-hosted Bitwarden: team passwords without the per-user bill.
Self-hosted via Vaultwarden (a lightweight, fully-compatible Bitwarden server) running on the same NAS as your file storage. Teams share passwords through proper vault collections, every login is end-to-end encrypted, and the per-user fee that LastPass and 1Password charge disappears entirely.
- Replaces: 1Password Business (£6.40/user/mo), Bitwarden Cloud Business (£4/user/mo), LastPass Business (£5.50/user/mo).
- Browser extensions and mobile apps. Same official Bitwarden clients on every platform, just pointed at your server instead of Bitwarden's. Autofill, password generator, biometric unlock, all included.
- Vault sharing for teams. Create collections per department, share specific credentials with specific people, full audit log of who accessed what and when.
- Two-factor authentication built in. TOTP codes generated inside the vault, hardware key (YubiKey, FIDO2) support, breach monitoring against Have I Been Pwned.
- Emergency access. Designate a trusted contact who can request emergency access with a configurable wait period. The "what if our IT person gets hit by a bus" scenario, solved.
Tested, restorable backups, not just hope.
A real 3-2-1 backup strategy (three copies of the data, on two different media, with one off-site) on hardware you own: every workstation, server and Nextcloud volume backed up to your NAS, then encrypted off-site to a second location. Restore-tested monthly, so you know the backups actually work. That's the difference between "we have a backup" and "we actually got our data back".
- Replaces: Datto SIRIS, Veeam Cloud Connect, Backblaze Business (£6-15/device/mo), Microsoft 365 Backup add-ons.
- 3-2-1 by default. Three copies of every important file, on at least two different media, with at least one off-site. Industry-standard, properly implemented.
- Restore-tested monthly. A real file restored to a real laptop on the first of every month. You receive a written summary. If a restore ever fails, we tell you immediately and fix it.
- Image-level backup of Windows / macOS workstations. Bare-metal restore to a replacement machine in under an hour, not a week of trying to remember what was installed.
- Encrypted off-site copy. A second NAS at a partner site, over an encrypted tunnel. Encrypted on disk and in transit using the standards your bank uses. Keys stay in your building.
- Retention you choose. Daily snapshots for 30 days, weekly for 12 weeks, monthly for 12 months. Fit to your accountant's record-keeping requirements.
UniFi Protect: cameras without the cloud subscription.
Same UniFi ecosystem as your network. Cameras record to a UniFi NVR (network video recorder) or UNAS Pro on your premises, not to a Verkada / Rhombus / Ring cloud server somewhere in California. Live and recorded footage accessible from the same dashboard as your WiFi, no per-camera monthly fee, footage you can hand to the police on a USB stick if you need to.
- Replaces: Verkada (£30-80/camera/mo licensing), Rhombus, Ring for Business, traditional NVR systems with monthly viewer apps.
- Wide camera range. Indoor, outdoor, doorbell, AI-vision, 4K, low-light, vehicle-recognition variants. Mix and match to the building.
- AI motion + smart detection. Filter the timeline by "person walked past door", "vehicle entered car park", "package delivered". All processed on your recorder, not uploaded to a cloud.
- 30+ days of continuous recording. Storage sized to the install. Most small-business deployments hold 30-90 days at full quality.
- Mobile and desktop apps. Live view, playback, time-lapse and clip sharing from anywhere, over an encrypted tunnel back to your recorder. No third-party server in the middle.
- Door access ready. UniFi Access door controllers integrate into the same dashboard if you want to add badge-entry or mobile-key entry later.
You own the hardware. We keep it running.
Self-hosted apps need someone to apply updates, restore-test backups, monitor disk health, and pick up the phone when something needs adjusting. We do all of that on a fixed monthly fee that's a fraction of what the SaaS subscriptions you're replacing would cost.
From £25/month
One self-hosted service maintained on your behalf (e.g. just Nextcloud, just Bitwarden, or just backup). Scheduled updates, monitoring, monthly health email.
- Updates applied during quiet hours.
- Monitoring with alerts to us before you notice.
- Monthly summary email.
- Cancel any time. You keep running the system.
From £75/month
Three services on one NAS, fully managed. The typical "Nextcloud + Bitwarden + Backup" SMB suite. Replaces around £200-300/month of SaaS.
- Everything in Single, plus:
- Restore-tested backups on the first of every month.
- Quarterly capacity review with disk-growth projection.
- Priority response on your tickets.
From £150/month
Files + passwords + backup + cameras + identity + signing + wiki on one stack. Replaces six or more separate SaaS products. Typical replaced spend: £400-800/month.
- Everything in Stack, plus:
- UniFi Protect cameras monitoring & firmware.
- UniFi Identity SSO integration.
- Quarterly on-site visit for hardware health.
Three reference builds. Pick the right one.
Hardware is bought once and amortises across years. We size it to the team and the workload, not the largest possible NAS the salesperson would like to sell you.
Small: 5-15 users
UniFi UNAS Pro 8-bay, 32TB raw / 16TB usable with RAID 6 (disks set up so one can fail without losing data), two network connections. Comfortable for files + passwords + backup for a typical small office.
Hardware: ~£1,400. Optional UPS & cabinet add £500.
Medium: 15-40 users
UNAS Pro 8-bay with larger drives + dedicated UniFi NVR for cameras. Splits storage and video onto separate appliances so neither bottlenecks the other.
Hardware: ~£2,800. Cabinet & UPS £700.
Large: 40-100 users
Mini-server (Intel N100 or similar) running Proxmox + dedicated UNAS Pro for storage + dedicated NVR for cameras. Fully redundant where it matters.
Hardware: ~£4,500. Cabinet, UPS & redundant PSU £1,200.
Multi-site / 100+ users
Custom design. Typically pairs an HQ stack with a redundant satellite-site stack for off-site backup, with replication over a Cloudflare-tunnelled VPN.
Hardware: custom. Quoted after site survey.
Free site survey, written summary, no pitch.
The first conversation is just a conversation. Tell us what SaaS subscriptions you're paying today. We'll come and design the on-prem replacement for free, with a written quote inside three working days.