$1.3M Smartsheet contract replaced for $375k

A contractor in Texas was looking at a five-year Smartsheet agreement worth $1.3 million.

Signing it would have kept the company on the platform for the five-year term. The company chose to have the system it actually needed built instead.

Black Badger rebuilt what the contractor needed as a system in the company's own name. It replaced the Smartsheet contract rather than sitting alongside it.

The build took 16 weeks and cost the client $375,000.

The comparison is the contract value against the build price. The Smartsheet agreement was $1.3 million over five years, an average of $260,000 a year. The build was a one-time $375,000, which is $925,000 less than the contract over the same five years.

That $925,000 is before running costs. Once the system was live the license bill went to zero, and what remains is hosting and service bills paid to the providers directly. This client's own running cost is not part of the published figure.

As a general range, after launch a system like this costs roughly $100 to $200 a month to run for a smaller company, and $2,000 to $3,000 a month at enterprise scale, with no license and no per-user fee.

The software is theirs. It was built in the company's name, so there is no license to renew and no renewal date attached to it.

The client is not named here, and this study leaves out the detail that would identify the company.