I’ve watched a $180 million company spend $1.3 million on a platform migration they now consider a mistake. Here’s what nobody tells you about enterprise software costs.
The license fee is just the beginning.
Enterprise platforms sell you the entry price, then make their real money on implementation, customization, and years of consulting fees. By the time you’ve finished customizing the platform to fit your actual workflows, you’ve often spent more than a custom system would have cost — and you still don’t own what you built.
A $25 million company spending $5 million on software better be certain that investment turns them into a $100 million company. Most of the time, it doesn’t. It just makes them look like an enterprise company while bleeding them on fees they didn’t see coming.