What is your stack actually costing you?
Licences are the line everyone negotiates and the smallest of the five. This is the open model from our integration-tax post, with the assumptions left editable — put your own numbers in and the conclusion usually holds: the connective cost exceeds the licence cost.
What it costs
- Per month
- $9,244
- Per year
- $110,932
| Line | Monthly | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Licences | $2,816 | 30% |
| Connective software | $400 | 4% |
| Administration of the seams | $2,042 | 22% |
| Reconciliation and error | $2,947 | 32% |
| AI add-ons that see one silo | $1,040 | 11% |
Illustrative US dollar figures. The conclusion is not sensitive to being twenty per cent out on any single line.
Where these numbers come from
Every default here is an assumption stated openly in our write-up, not a figure chosen to flatter the argument. At those defaults the model lands on about $9,240 a month — roughly $111,000 a year — of which licences are under a third. The two lines most worth arguing with are the administration of the seams and the time lost to reconciliation, and in our experience both are more often set too low than too high.
Common questions
Is this based on a survey?
No. It is an open model with every assumption editable, which is why they are all on this page rather than behind it. Change any of them and the arithmetic changes in front of you.
Does consolidating really remove these lines?
Not all of them. Line 2 goes to zero because there are no seams to bridge. Line 3 collapses to ordinary administration. Line 4 shrinks to ordinary human error rather than disappearing. Line 5 changes character — one layer across everything rather than an add-on per silo. Licences do not vanish; they become one line instead of five.
What is the cost this model cannot show?
The questions nobody asks. "Which accounts are at risk this quarter, and why?" needs pipeline, tickets, delivery status and invoices together. In a five-tool stack that is a project, so it happens quarterly at best — usually after something has already gone wrong.