Own it like your truck — or rent until it’s yours.
We’ll tell you the truth about both. Owning the box is the whole point; the hosted plan is just financing toward that box. Here’s exactly where they differ.
| What you feel | Owned box | Rented / hosted |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Pay once (~$8,500 ⚗️ + your own API fuel ~$75/mo ⚗️) | Recurring monthly — reported $79–$3,500/mo, forever [inferred] |
| Who owns the hardware | You — a Mac mini titled to you in a bill of sale | The vendor's cloud; you own nothing |
| Where the data lives | Your own Tailscale network / LAN — logs, contacts, invoices stay on the box | The vendor's servers, in the vendor's region |
| If the vendor disappears | The box keeps working — it degrades to a still-running local machine | The service stops; data export is at the vendor's mercy |
| Lock-in / migration cost | None — you already hold the machine and the data | High — cancelling means migrating everything off |
| Customization | Fixed v1 roster, owner-modifiable on your own box | Vendor-gated feature tiers |
While you’re on the managed rent-to-own plan you’re hosted, which breaks the data-on-your-network and Helm-survivability promises — so we don’t make them yet. Those begin at physical delivery. Half of every payment credits the box (capped at six months); you stay hosted and the physical box ships at payoff, so there’s nothing to repossess and no lock-in leash.
Pay once. You own the hardware, the code, and the data outright — no subscription, ever.
You open your own Twilio and AI accounts; we never hold your keys. You own the plane and buy the gas.
Your call logs, contacts, and invoices live on your own box, on your own Tailscale network — not on a server you rent.
If we disappear tomorrow, your box still answers the phone. It degrades to a still-running local machine — no remote kill switch.