Your own server, or your own instance?
On-premise practice software has one honest advantage: the data sits in a machine you can point at. It also has a cost that rarely appears in the proposal — the patching, the backups, the failed upgrades and the call to an IT person at 06:00 on a filing deadline.
Separation, without the server room
Firms do not choose on-premise software because they enjoy maintaining servers. They choose it because they want to know where their data is, and because someone once told them the cloud means giving up control.
OpenLPM separates those two ideas. You still get a deployment that belongs to your firm — its own database, its own storage, its own credentials — but you do not get a machine to patch, a backup tape to rotate, or a version upgrade that turns into a weekend project.
If you want the operational work as well, you can have it: the software is open source, so a firm with strong IT can run its own deployment and treat it like any other system it operates.
The honest comparison is therefore not “cloud versus on-premise”. It is: who does the operations, and what do you get in return for the hours?
How the two approaches score
Scored on the things a firm lives with after the demo: separation of firm data, updates, operational burden, exit, and cost predictability.
Our own assessment of the approaches, not a vendor’s marketing claim. Disagree in the demo — that is what it is for.
Cost of ownership, line by line
| What is being compared | On-premise / desktop software | OpenLPM |
|---|---|---|
| Where the software runs | A server in your office, maintained by your firm or a contractor | A private instance per firm, operated by us or by your IT team |
| Patching and security updates | Your responsibility, on your timetable | Applied for you, verified before release, reversible |
| Backups and restores | Your routine; tested when something goes wrong | Scheduled exports, rehearsed restores, targets in writing |
| Remote and mobile working | VPN or remote desktop, and the performance that comes with it | Browser-based from anywhere, including the client’s side through the portal |
| Upgrades | A project: downtime, data migration, user retraining | Delivered per firm, with rollback for that firm alone |
| Hardware and licences | Server, storage, licences, and the refresh cycle | No server to buy; software under Apache 2.0, so no per-seat licence for the code |
| If hardware fails | Recovery depends on your last backup and your patience | The instance is restored from scheduled exports; the office PC is not the system of record |
What this approach is genuinely good at
- Physical locality. Some firms genuinely need to point at a machine and know where the data lives; some regulators or insurers ask.
- Works without reliable internet. In locations where connectivity is genuinely poor, a local system has a real advantage.
- Familiarity and sunk cost. Staff know it, the procedures were built around it, and it is paid for.
- Firm control of release timing. Nobody updates your system without your say-so — and nobody fixes it either.
When this is the right choice — and we are not
- Your firm has no reliable way to patch, back up and monitor a server, and no appetite to acquire one.
- Your fee-earners need to work from court, from home or from a client’s office without a VPN.
- You want clients to see progress without phoning the office, which a desktop system rarely offers well.
- You have been through one too many failed upgrades and would rather not do another.
We would rather lose a deal than win a firm that should have stayed where it was.
Moving off an on-premise system
The archive is the delicate part. Everything else is a change of habit.
Keep the old system readable
It stays installed and readable while the new one takes over, so nothing is lost in the switch.
Move clients, matters and documents across
Batched, with your review, and mapped to the firm’s procedures as they arrive.
Rebuild the firm’s know-how
Procedure blueprints, templates and rate cards are set up once in the new system.
Retire the server when you are ready
Not on a deadline we set. When the last open matter has moved and your team is comfortable.
Questions from firms with a server
You can run it wherever you prefer, including a server you already own — that is what the Apache 2.0 licence is for. What you cannot do is expect us to operate hardware we cannot reach.
Staff work is browser-based, so a local outage stops work until connectivity returns. The client portal is unaffected — it helps if you think of it as the office gaining a second door rather than losing the first.
Yes. In a self-hosted deployment it is on your hardware; in a managed deployment it is exported on a schedule to storage you can access, and returned in full if you leave.
Bring your server invoice
Add up the hardware, the licences, the support contract and the hours spent patching — then compare it with a managed deployment. We will do the arithmetic with you.