Cost: Acquisition vs. Ownership
Whenever you consider making a large, either personal or business, purchase it is important to look beyond the cost of acquisition to the total cost of ownership. Often times you will discover that the low cost of acquisition option will cost far more, over the life of the product, than its higher priced cousin. Take a look at things like reliability, ongoing operating cost and usability as you make your initial decisions. You may be able to buy on the cheap but if your purchase ultimately doesn’t meet your needs, costs more to operate and breaks down on a regular basis (sounds like my first car) you’ll soon forget how much money you saved to begin with.
Here are some specific questions to ask yourself if you are considering free, near free or very inexpensive software:
Whenever you consider making a large, either personal or business, purchase it is important to look beyond the cost of acquisition to the total cost of ownership. Often times you will discover that the low cost of acquisition option will cost far more, over the life of the product, than its higher priced cousin. Take a look at things like reliability, ongoing operating cost and usability as you make your initial decisions. You may be able to buy on the cheap but if your purchase ultimately doesn’t meet your needs, costs more to operate and breaks down on a regular basis (sounds like my first car) you’ll soon forget how much money you saved to begin with.
Here are some specific questions to ask yourself if you are considering free, near free or very inexpensive software:
- Why is it free, or so cheap? Will the vendor gain something from your use of the tool that you’d prefer not to give?
- Is there any danger that it contains spyware of adware? If so, it’s almost certainly not worth using.
- Does it really meet your needs? Or are you compromising so much to get a low-cost solution that it’s not worth the implementation and learning-curve costs?
- Is it a scalable and strategic solution? Avoid investing your time and money in something that won’t have the flexibility to support your mission in the long run.
- How much time and money will it take to implement or migrate to this solution? Is it worth it?
- What is other provider’s experience with it? If you can’t find other happy customer, that’s a substantial sign that it may not be the right choice for you.
- What kind of support is available? Will you be able to get answers to your questions, or help from consultants?
- How likely is it to stick around? Who owns it, if anyone? If it is open-source software, how vibrant is the community of users and developers? If it were no longer developed or maintained, how would that affect you?
Cost: Acquisition vs Ownership
