Leverage — Where Your Effort Pays
What You Bought: Where It Runs, What Stays Yours, and How You Leave
There are two ways to have this system. What is yours, and how you leave, are the same in both, and it is worth knowing before it matters. Here is how to tell which one you have, in one question.
One question tells you which one you have
Is anyone else's business running on the same system as yours?
If the answer is *yes, kept separate from mine* — you have a tenancy.
If the answer is *no, the whole instance is mine alone* — you have dedicated.
Either way, it runs on our infrastructure and we run it. The difference is whether you share the platform or have one to yourself. That changes less than you might expect, because what is yours, and how you leave, are the same in both.
What is always yours
Your data. Your content. Your configuration. Your domain.
They are in your name, and you can export them any day you like — not just on the way out. Most software treats your customer records as the thing you cannot take with you. We built this so there is nothing to hold you with.
The tenancy
You subscribe, and your business runs on our managed platform, alongside other businesses. Each business is kept apart from the others by access rules, and hosting, upkeep and keeping it running are ours to worry about.
- Improvements come to you. When we release something to your plan, it reaches your system as part of the service. Nothing to install, no developer to hire.
- If you leave, we export your data, content and configuration to you, in your name, and the managed service ends. You do not keep a running copy, because the thing that was running was ours.
That is the honest version and it is worth saying plainly, because the opposite is easy to assume and expensive to assume wrongly.
Dedicated
Dedicated is the same system on a single-tenant instance: its own database and its own application, on our infrastructure, with nobody else's business in it. We still run it for you. What you are paying for is control of the operation — isolation from everyone else, and a longer runway if anything ever changes.
- The same exit. Your data, content and configuration are exported to you, in your name.
- Longer notice. At least 12 months if we ever stop, where a tenancy gets 180 days — see below.
An earlier version of this lesson described a third, one-time arrangement. It has been retired as a product, and dedicated replaces it. If you signed for it before it was retired, your agreement stands as written.
How leaving works
Leaving should be boring, so it is written down before you sign.
- Export, any time. Your data, content and configuration, in your name, whenever you ask — including on the way out.
- Notice if we ever stop. If we ever discontinue your arrangement, you get at least 180 days' notice on a tenancy and 12 months on dedicated. Prepaid time you have not used is refunded pro-rata.
- Continuity if we cannot. The platform's source code is held in escrow with an independent agent, and it is released only if a trigger written into the agreement fires — for example, if we stop operating — so the service you depend on can be continued. It is not a copy handed to you: no customer receives the code, and none needs to.
What neither of them means
Neither arrangement means you own the software.
You own your data, your content, your configuration and your domain. The engine underneath — the part that is shared, maintained and improved for everyone running it — is licensed to you, not sold. That is as true on dedicated as it is on a tenancy.
If a vendor ever tells you that you own their platform outright, ask them what happens to your copy when they stop shipping updates, and who fixes it when it breaks. The answer is usually closer to ours than the pitch suggests; the difference is whether they said so before you asked.
Something for being early
When the SQUEIL marketplace opens, the earliest providers who meet its listing bar will be offered founding terms that later providers will not get. Who qualifies, and exactly what the terms are, is set out in writing before anyone signs. It is a future offer, not part of what you have today — we would rather tell you it is coming than let you assume it is included.
Why this is lesson thirteen and not lesson one
Because for the first twelve lessons it does not change anything you do. The ops panel is the ops panel, the change loop is the change loop, and the work is identical either way.
It changes a few things, and all of them are things you plan around rather than operate around:
| Tenancy | Dedicated | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | our managed platform, shared, each business kept separate | its own instance on our infrastructure |
| Who runs it | we do | we do |
| Always yours | data, content, configuration, domain | data, content, configuration, domain |
| If you leave | data, content and configuration exported to you | data, content and configuration exported to you |
| Notice if we ever stop | at least 180 days | at least 12 months |
| The code | licensed to you, held in escrow | licensed to you, held in escrow |
Know which one you have before you need to know.
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*Not sure which you have? It is named on the first page of your agreement. If it is not clear there, ask us — it is a question we should be able to answer in one sentence.*