How to Run 10 Production Software Systems for $825/Month

The Setup

The conventional wisdom in software is that more systems means more cost. Each application needs hosting. Each needs monitoring. Each needs maintenance. Scale up, and your infrastructure bill scales with you. AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud all price on usage, and the bill tends to only go in one direction.

For most businesses, operating even two or three production systems means $3,000 to $10,000 per month in combined SaaS subscriptions, hosting, and maintenance. A single Salesforce license runs $25 to $330 per user per month. HubSpot's enterprise tier starts at $3,600 per month. And these are individual tools, not portfolios.

According to Gartner's 2024 IT spending forecast, the average small business spends 6.9% of revenue on IT. Flexera's 2024 State of Tech Spend report puts the average at $13,000 per employee for mid-market companies. The assumption built into these numbers: operating production software is expensive.

That assumption is wrong if you own the infrastructure.

What the Data Shows

The Stealth Labz operation runs 10 production software systems across 7 verticals and 2 countries. The combined monthly operating cost: approximately $825 per month.

Here is what those 10 systems look like:

System	What It Does	Build Time
PRJ-01 (Internal Operations Platform)	Replaced 6 SaaS vendors — CRM, tracking, analytics, comms	74 active days
PRJ-06 (Seasonal E-commerce)	Personalized video products with 7 integrations	28 days
PRJ-08 (Insurance Lead Gen — Life)	Vertical-specific lead capture and routing	24 days
PRJ-09 (Insurance Lead Gen — Auto)	Vertical-specific lead capture and routing	23 days
PRJ-10 (Insurance Lead Gen — Annuities)	Vertical-specific lead capture and routing	25 days
PRJ-11 (Insurance Lead Gen — Financial)	Multi-vertical financial services platform	11 days
PRJ-05 (Insurance Quoting — South Africa)	Lead gen across 11 sub-verticals	20 days
PRJ-07 (Insurance Quoting — United States)	US market expansion	16 days
PRJ-03 (Legal Services Lead Gen)	Legal vertical lead capture	9 days
PRJ-04 (Business Reporting)	Customer report generation platform	5 days

Source: CS06. All build times are calendar days. Total portfolio: 596,903 lines of code, 2,561 commits.

The total build cost for the entire portfolio was $65,054. The market replacement value: $795,000 to $2,900,000.

Source: CS06, 28_month_financial. Build cost is QB-verified. Replacement value based on FullStack 2025, Keyhole Software 2026, Qubit Labs 2026 benchmarks.

The monthly operating cost breakdown is straightforward: hosting and AI tools. No SaaS subscriptions. No contractors. No vendor fees. Every system runs on owned infrastructure.

Before the portfolio was built:

• Monthly SaaS cost: $1,565/month
• Monthly contractor cost: up to $9,046/month at peak
• Average monthly burn: $6,312/month

After the portfolio was built (January 2026):

• Monthly operating cost: ~$825/month
• Monthly vendor dependency: $0
• Monthly contractor dependency: $0

Source: CS06, 28_month_financial. "Before" averages reflect April through September 2025 operating costs.

According to the 2024 Statista Cloud Infrastructure Report, the average small business pays $1,200 to $3,000 per month for cloud hosting alone. Running 10 production systems for $825 per month total — including hosting and AI tools — falls below the industry average for a single application.

How It Works

The cost model works because of ownership and reuse. When you own the code, you control the hosting. When you build systems using shared templates and architecture patterns, each additional system costs less to operate than the last.

The 10 systems share infrastructure: the same hosting environment, the same deployment pipeline, the same monitoring. They share code patterns: the same authentication system, the same design framework, the same database architecture. System number 10 inherits everything systems 1 through 9 already established.

The progression tells the story. The first project took 43 days and cost $7,995 in external support. The fourth project took 11 days and cost $1,680. The ninth project took 4 days and cost $90. The tenth project took 5 days and cost $0 in external support.

Source: CS06. External support costs represent sweep (contractor) costs per project.

Every system is built on standard, well-documented frameworks. Any competent developer could maintain them. The operator chose to build alone; the systems do not require it.

What This Means for Business Operators

If you are paying $5,000 or more per month to run your software stack, and that stack consists of rented SaaS platforms with contractor glue holding them together, there is a different model available. The infrastructure ownership model produces lower monthly costs, eliminates vendor dependency, and creates assets the business owns rather than expenses it pays.

The numbers are specific to this operation, but the principle is universal: owned infrastructure has a one-time build cost and a low ongoing operating cost. Rented infrastructure has no build cost and a permanent, escalating monthly cost. Over 28 months, the Stealth Labz operation would have paid $176,736 at the pre-build monthly burn rate ($6,312 times 28). Instead, the total build cost was $65,054, and the ongoing cost is $825 per month.

The break-even point was less than 12 months. Everything after that is permanent savings.

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Related: [C5_S101 — How We Replaced 6 SaaS Vendors with 1 Custom Platform] | [C5_S107 — When to Build Custom Software vs When to Keep Paying for SaaS] | [C5_S110 — How We Eliminated $19,909 in Annual SaaS Costs]

References

1. Gartner (2024). "IT Spending Forecast." Small business IT spending benchmarks (6.9% of revenue average).
2. Flexera (2024). "State of Tech Spend Report." Mid-market per-employee technology cost benchmarks ($13,000 average).
3. Statista (2024). "Cloud Infrastructure Report." Small business cloud hosting cost benchmarks ($1,200-$3,000/month average).
4. Keating, M.G. (2026). "Case Study: The Full Portfolio." Stealth Labz. Read case study