The Hidden Costs of Cloud Remote Desktop Subscriptions

For many SMB IT managers, a cloud subscription for remote desktop software seems like the easiest way to go. You pay a monthly fee, and everything “just works.” However, a closer look at the balance sheet often reveals a more expensive reality.

The Scalability Tax

Commercial software often bills per technician or per concurrent session. As your IT team grows from 2 to 10 members, your costs don’t just grow—they multiply. In 2025, many companies are finding that their bill for remote access has doubled without a significant change in service quality.

The Feature Gatekeeping

Need to integrate with your existing directory? That’s the “Enterprise” tier. Want custom branding? That’s another tier. These “add-ons” can increase your cost per seat by up to 50%.

The Opportunity Cost of Downtime

When a third-party service goes down, you are at the mercy of their support ticket queue. You cannot fix their infrastructure. For a service provider, every hour of downtime is an hour of lost revenue and damaged reputation.

The Alternative: Self-Hosted ROI

By moving to a self-hosted relay like RustDesk, you trade a variable, increasing cost for a fixed, predictable infrastructure cost. The hardware required is minimal, and with automation tools, the management overhead is virtually zero.

In the long run, self-hosting isn’t just about privacy—it’s about financial sanity.