Analysis · Build vs. Buy

Glass vs. the commercial giants

I benchmarked Glass against the five major MSP platforms — ConnectWise, Kaseya/Datto, NinjaOne, SuperOps, and HaloPSA — across 20 feature domains and three years of total cost. The result: matching or exceeding them on 19 of 20 domains, at a fraction of the price.

$999
Pro / mo · flat all-in (or perpetual)
97%
Feature parity
7/10
Domains at 100% parity
89%
Max 3-yr savings vs Kaseya
Total Cost of Ownership

3-year cost — 5 techs, 300 endpoints

Same workload — and commercial platforms still require separate add-ons for SIEM, local AI, and endpoint security that Glass bundles. Whether self-hosted or licensed commercially, Glass beats every alternative on the board.

Glass Self-Hosted
$5,400
Glass Perpetual
$15,880
Glass Sub (Pro)
$29,970
SuperOps + AV
$49,000
NinjaOne + AV
$59,000
HaloPSA + RMM
$83,200
ConnectWise + AV
$106,000
Kaseya/Datto + AV
$314,000

Commercial totals include basic endpoint AV/EDR add-ons (~$2/endpoint/mo). Glass saves $22,000 to $287,000+ over three years — while bundling SIEM, XDR, RustDesk remote access, Strix pentesting, and local zero-leakage AI the others charge extra for or don't offer at all.

Feature Parity

Coverage by domain

Measured against the combined feature set of the commercial platforms. Seven of ten domains hit 100%, and all remaining domains hit 94% (~97% overall).

Security / SIEM / XDR100%
Asset Management100%
Email & Communications100%
AI & Automation100%
Reporting & Analytics100%
Administration100%
Deployment Flexibility100%
RMM / Remote Access94%
Ticketing / PSA94%
Integrations94%
The Bill

Monthly & 3-year cost breakdown

PlatformPlatform / mo+ Basic AV / mo*3-Year (incl. AV)Glass advantage
Glass (Self-Hosted Internal)$0 licenseIncluded$5,400All-in: ~$150/mo infra (saves $43K–$308K)
Glass (Perpetual Pro License)$9,950 one-timeIncluded$15,880Breaks even in 14 mo ($1,990/yr SA + infra)
Glass (Subscription Pro)$999 / moIncluded$29,970Billed annually ($9,990/yr · saves $19K–$284K)
SuperOps$645–895+$600~$49,000Glass saves $19,000–$43,600 · 39–89%
NinjaOne$750–1,350++$600~$59,000Glass saves $29,000–$53,600 · 49–91%
ConnectWise$1,700–2,700++$600~$106,000Glass saves $76,000–$100,600 · 72–95%
Kaseya/Datto$1,650–2,225++$600~$314,000Glass saves $284,000–$308,600 · 90–98%

Based on a 5-technician, 300-endpoint MSP. * Basic endpoint AV ≈ $2/endpoint/mo (~$600/mo, $21,600 over 3 years) — commercial PSA/RMM platforms don't include it; Glass does, via Wazuh SIEM/EDR, ClamAV on-access scanning, and multi-AV forwarding. Glass Perpetual Pro breaks even against commercial SaaS in ~14 months. Glass pricing is preliminary and subject to change at any time.

Differentiators

What Glass has that nobody else does

Capabilities with no commercial equivalent — or that cost five figures a year elsewhere.

Dual Remote Desktop & Terminal

Integrated MeshCentral + RustDesk OSS dual remote access with auto-checkin tokens and an interactive multi-shell terminal (CMD/PowerShell/Bash).

Dual-LLM AI sandbox

Screens every AI input through a guardian model before the privileged model acts. No commercial equivalent exists.

Android Call & Audio Diarization

Full UniFi Talk telephony ingestion plus Android meeting audio processing via local Whisper ASR and Pyannote speaker diarization.

Integrated SIEM + Go XDR

Full Wazuh SIEM/EDR/FIM on the DMZ plus a Go XDR engine included — versus Splunk ($200K+/yr) or CrowdStrike as separate spend.

Glass Strix Pentesting

Automated penetration testing and vulnerability mapping directly inside the platform — safe, continuous security verification.

Native Invoicing Engine

SolidInvoice-powered PostgreSQL billing engine (glass-invoice) replaces SaaS billing platforms with zero ongoing per-seat fees.

110x Catalog Search Speed

Native SQL indexing drops catalog search latency from 3,429 ms down to 30.5 ms — replacing legacy SuperOps in production.

3D facility viewer

Interactive Three.js floorplan mapping physical assets to live health. No commercial MSP platform offers this.

Zero vendor lock-in

Full source across PHP 8.3, Go, Python, and TypeScript — self-hosted, no contracts. Every commercial platform locks you in.

Build vs. Buy

The scope, in numbers.

Independent of the licensing savings, the platform itself represents a substantial engineering effort — the kind of scope a commercial vendor staffs a team and years against.

  • 25+ microservices & daemons across PHP 8.3, Go, and Python.
  • ~160,000+ lines of code · 80+ PostgreSQL tables · 75+ API endpoints.
  • $2.5M–$4.5M estimated build-from-scratch cost over 24+ months.
  • $50K–$120K/yr equivalent in replaced commercial licensing.

5 techs, 300 endpoints · Glass vs. best alternatives

MetricGlassSuperOpsConnectWise
3-Year cost (incl. AV)$5.4K–$30K$49K$106K
Feature coverage97%85%95%
Endpoint AV✅ Included❌ Separate⚠️ Add-on
Local AI✅ Best-in-class⚠️ Cloud⚠️ Cloud
SIEM / XDR✅ Included❌ None⚠️ Add-on
Data sovereignty✅ 100%❌ Cloud❌ Cloud
Vendor lock-in✅ Zero🟡 Medium🔴 Very high
Flexible Licensing

Predictable Subscription or True Perpetual Ownership

Commercial vendors lock MSPs into 3-year predatory contracts with 10% annual price hikes. Glass offers two clean purchasing pathways: an all-inclusive modern subscription or a perpetual license where you own your software forever.

Option 1 · Modern Subscription (OpEx)

Includes continuous updates, all 25+ microservices, and standard support. 2 months free with annual billing.

Starter Fleet
Starter Subscription
$499 / mo
Billed annually ($4,990/yr) or $599/mo
  • Up to 3 Technicians & 150 Endpoints
  • Core PSA, RMM, RustDesk/MeshCentral
  • Native glass-invoice billing engine
  • Local AI assistant & community support
  • Overage: $1.50/endpoint/mo
Get Started

Ideal for boutique IT consultancies & startups.

Enterprise Fleet
Enterprise Fleet
$1,899 / mo
Billed annually ($18,990/yr) or $2,299/mo
  • Up to 20 Technicians & 1,500 Endpoints
  • All 25+ microservices & compiled Go daemons
  • Multi-server & high-availability clustering support
  • 3D Facility Viewer & custom report builder
  • Priority Support (4-hour SLA response)
Contact Enterprise

Designed for established MSPs & internal IT fleets.

Option 2 · Perpetual License (CapEx) — True Ownership

Pay once, own the software forever. No kill-switches. Includes Year 1 of Software Assurance (Updates & Signatures).

The Unbeatable Differentiator
Pro Perpetual License
$9,950 one-time
Own the platform forever · Breaks even in 14 months
  • Includes up to 15 Technicians & 750 Managed Endpoints
  • Full 25+ microservice suite: PSA, RMM, RustDesk, SIEM, Pentesting, SolidInvoice
  • Year 1 Software Assurance Included: updates, container patches, and CVE feeds
  • Software Assurance (Year 2+): $1,990/year (20%/yr) — completely optional
  • Perpetual Guarantee: If assurance lapses, your stack never stops working
Inquire About Perpetual Ownership

Starter Perpetual ($4,950 / 250 ep) and Enterprise Perpetual ($19,500 / 2,000 ep) also available.

Active Support Plans & Incident Services

Because Glass is self-hosted on your hardware, technical support is transparent and modular.

Priority Operational Support

$350 / mo

4-hour response SLA, remote screen-share triage, monthly health-check reviews, and database upgrade assistance.

Mission-Critical 24/7

$850 / mo

1-hour critical response SLA (P1 outages), 24/7 emergency hotline, dedicated Slack/Teams bridge, and standby disaster recovery.

5-Incident Support Pack

$1,000 one-time

Valid for 12 months ($200/incident). Pre-purchased emergency engineering tickets for unusual anomalies or Docker upgrades.

Turnkey White-Glove Onboarding

$1,950 one-time

Complete end-to-end setup by Glass engineers: Docker stack initialization, SSL, Tailscale mesh, Wazuh SIEM, RustDesk relay, and admin walkthrough.

What you'll need to run it: Glass is self-hosted on your own hardware — from a ~$2–3K build, or GPU-free with a frontier-model subscription.

Hardware requirements →
Pricing in Active Beta

Glass is in active Beta — all pricing shown is preliminary and subject to change. Custom deployments, co-managed plans, and utility rate models ($3.50/ep/mo) are available upon request.

Analysis, architecture, and execution.

Building Glass meant not just writing the code, but understanding the market it competes in. That product thinking travels to any team.