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Managed hosting

Everything else in these docs describes running the guide yourself, which is free and stays free. If you would rather not, SmartCompanion offers hosting with a content management system on top.

This page exists so the option is visible. It is not a requirement, and the self-hosted path is not a lesser version of the product — the demo apps and the customers' apps run the same code.

The plans​

Current pricing is on smartcompanion.app; this is a summary.

Community Edition — free. The open-source version, which is what these docs are about.

  • Entirely self-managed and self-maintained
  • Fully customizable at the source level
  • Community support through GitHub

Managed Plan — €599 per year. Hosting and support for an organisation.

  • Content management system
  • Hosting, maintenance and support
  • Individual branding
  • Starts immediately

Custom Plan — individual pricing. For requirements the standard product does not cover.

  • Custom features and design
  • App store publication
  • Personal support and training
  • Content production
  • Support for large visitor numbers

What the CMS changes​

The substantial difference is content editing. Self-hosted, your content is a data.json file you edit and publish; the managed plan puts an editor in front of it, so stations, translations and media are managed in a browser by people who do not want to see JSON.

Everything else — the app, the data format, the features — is the same code.

When self-hosting is the right call​

  • You have someone comfortable with git and a build step
  • Your content changes rarely, or is produced in bulk and published at once
  • You already have hosting and a domain
  • You want the deployment inside your own infrastructure
  • The budget is zero

When the managed plan is​

  • Nobody on staff wants to own a build pipeline
  • Content is edited often, by people who are not developers
  • You want someone to call when it breaks on the morning of an opening
  • You need app store publication, which a PWA does not give you

Moving between them​

Both directions are practical, because the data format is the same either way and the app is open source.

Self-hosted → managed. Your data.json and media come across as they are, and your branding is a values file.

Managed → self-hosted. The content exports in the same format, and you run it yourself. There is no proprietary content format and no lock-in.

Contact​