The service is free, why should i install my own?

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You’ve created the oss and you’ve created a free online service? Is it provided as demo or whats keeping me from just using that instead of installing a local?

Please position the online free? service.

thx
Jesper

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Hi Jesper. You’re right, we’ve developed Penpot as 100% open source software and we made sure that everyone who wants to deploy a Penpot server can do so easily, no strings attached. We could’ve stopped there but we’re also aware that a lot of people don’t actually need or want to self-host every bit of their software development pipeline (or they just want to try it out before committing to a self-managed option --your “demo” use case), hence the SaaS offer.

We could charge for the SaaS service but I don’t think it makes much sense right now, we need to prove much more before we go and ask for any money, and we have the resources to cover our server costs.

If you see us promoting the self-managed option is simply because it’s the only design & prototype tool in the world that gives you that and it turns out that is quite exciting for a lot people needing to have full control over their software and data, for instance. So, there’s not right or wrong here. You can decide on your own based on your needs. You could start self-hosting it and then decide it’s not worth it, export all your Penpot projects and re-import them on our SaaS or go the other way round; Start using the SaaS service and then export all your work and continue using your own Penpot server hosted any way you please.

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One usecase for self-hosting penpot is when you’re working with a client or company that needs complete discretion. I’m working for a company where every company piece of work needs to be kept inside our network, so hosting our own penpot instance would be a suitable solution.

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Exactly, that’s one of the most interesting use cases for self-hosting. Other include full integration with custom hacks and rest of design/dev pipeline.

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Hi Diacritica,

Thank you for answering. It’s an amazing service and software. And congrats with the funding :slight_smile:

BR
Jesper

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