Most training companies reach a point where their platform stops being “the place courses live” and starts becoming part of how the business functions. It shapes revenue, margins, client delivery, analytics, product development, and even how the company is valued. That’s when the old SaaS-versus-custom conversation changes. What used to be a simple subscription decision becomes a strategic one.

Over the past year, we’ve seen more CEOs and product leaders question whether a SaaS LMS still fits the needs of a mature training organisation. Not because SaaS is bad software, but because the economic and operational realities look different once you’re serving thousands of learners, selling to enterprise clients, or planning what the next three to five years should look like.

This shift is the focus of our new whitepaper on platform ownership, total cost of ownership, and the long-term impact of SaaS dependencies. It brings together market data, real cost comparisons, and the patterns we’ve observed across dozens of high-growth training companies.

Here are a few of the signals we unpack.

The cost profile of SaaS has changed

SaaS used to be the “safe” option. Predictable pricing. No maintenance. Low risk.

That narrative doesn’t hold up anymore.

Pricing across the industry rose by an average of 11.4 percent in 2025, with some platforms increasing fees by over 300 percent following acquisitions. Pair that with per-user billing, and the cost curve starts to look less like operational convenience and more like a tax on growth.

In the whitepaper, we break down a five-year comparison between SaaS and owned platforms at higher user volumes. The numbers are often surprising to teams who still see SaaS as the cheaper option.

Control matters more as you grow

Fast-growing training providers tend to outgrow the constraints of shared platforms. You can feel it when:

• product ideas get shaped by a vendor roadmap

• reporting isn’t flexible enough for enterprise clients

• personalisation or automation hits a wall

• data exports don’t give you the full picture

• commercial models require workarounds

None of these challenges appear when you’re small. They emerge as the business matures.

Control isn’t about owning every line of code. It’s about being able to adapt, build, and improve without waiting for a release cycle designed for someone else’s customer.

The whitepaper explains why control becomes a strategic asset, not a technical preference, and how leading training providers are handling this transition.

Ownership impacts valuation

This won’t apply to everyone today, but it matters more than most teams expect.

Buyers discount businesses that depend heavily on third-party platforms because they inherit the same limitations and risks. We’ve seen companies trapped in the 3–5x EBITDA range primarily because the buyer assumed they’d need to rebuild the LMS post-acquisition.

Companies that own their platform and can demonstrate stable, transferable infrastructure often land in the 8–15x range. Ownership doesn’t guarantee the uplift, but it removes one of the biggest reasons buyers hold back.

The whitepaper unpacks how this works in practice and why the LMS becomes part of the value story rather than something a buyer has to work around.

Why we published this paper

Many teams come to us asking whether SaaS or custom is “better.” The real question is different. It’s about which model fits the stage, scale, and ambitions of the business. And that requires a clearer understanding of the real economics and the long-term implications of each path.

This paper distils:

• cost modelling

• data implications

• operational constraints

• valuation impact

• control trade-offs

• migration and readiness factors

It’s written for CEOs, founders, and technical leaders who want to make a decision based on evidence, not assumptions.

Download the whitepaper

If you’re weighing the next stage of your platform, or you’ve started to feel the cost or control limits of SaaS, this whitepaper will help clarify where you stand and what options are available.

Download: Owning Your Platform vs SaaS: The Financial and Strategic Case for Control

It’s not a sales pitch. It’s a framework for thinking about one of the most important decisions a training company makes as it grows.