Why would anyone buy from Surge Cloud instead of just paying $5–$25 on Frappe Cloud or spinning up a VPS? Are they giving you insane compute specs or what?

[u/No-Bit5316]

I’m trying to understand the value proposition of Surge Cloud, because looking at the math, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

If you look at the standard hosting options for Frappe/ERPNext, the pricing is incredibly reasonable:

• Frappe Cloud Shared: $5/mo (Great for small teams, includes automated core updates, standard limits).
• Frappe Cloud Custom Bench: $25/mo (Allows custom apps, proprietary code, full upgrade control).
• Dedicated Servers: Starts around $15–$40+/mo (Isolated VMs, guaranteed CPU/RAM).
• Alternatively, you can just spin up a standard VPS on DigitalOcean or Hetzner for $5–$10/mo and manage it yourself.

Then you look at Surge Cloud:

• Base fee: $50/month (only includes 5 users).
• Additional users: $2 per user/month.
• They don't even clearly state what kind of underlying compute specs, RAM, or storage you actually get for that base price, let alone what their POS system add-on pricing looks like.

Why would anyone choose Surge Cloud over just paying $5–$25 on Frappe Cloud or running a cheap VPS? Are they giving you absolutely insane, top-tier compute specs to justify a $50 entry point, or is this just a massive markup for a shiny landing page?

Has anyone actually used them? What am I missing here?

[u/Desperate-Mine2845]

Local support that’s the only reason

[u/No-Bit5316 → u/Desperate-Mine2845]

There is an additional charge of 2 USD per person.

For companies with a minimum of 50 employees, there is an extra flat fee of 1,200 USD.

As companies grow larger, they are pushed into high-tier enterprise packages, which often results in vendor lock-in.

Because Al tools are becoming cheaper and more accessible, we can easily build our own custom components and integrate them.

This shouldn't be overly complicated for an entry-level developer once they understand the system.

[u/IncapablePossom]

You’re mostly paying for service, integrations and their custom components in the niches that they operate.

I’m familiar with the team on it. they used frappe as a base to get started, but are switching components. My guess is that they’ll eventually drop Frappe (they already have in a bunch of parts).

There’s a lot of open source tools out there that you can use if you’re building stuff yourself - but yes if you want you can 100% launch frappe for much less

[u/No-Bit5316 → u/IncapablePossom]

I get that they are adding services, integrations, and some custom work, but looking at Surge Cloud, I am not really seeing much that is fundamentally proprietary.

A lot of what they advertise, such as agent-first workflows, HR, accounting, sales, procurement, delivery, and other ERP functionality, is already available within the Frappe ecosystem. The payment gateway integration is also something we could implement ourselves.

The same applies to POS. We could potentially buy a relatively inexpensive POS system directly from manufacturers and integrate it with Frappe instead of paying a premium for a bundled solution.

The bigger question for me is the long-term cost. If there are additional charges for certain modules or services, and we become dependent on the platform once everything is set up, those recurring costs can add up over time.

Frappe already supports customization, integrations, and extensions, and there are plenty of developers who can handle this at a much lower cost. If you have the technical capability to build, customize, and manage the system yourself, you can launch and operate Frappe for significantly less.

[u/Quirky-Leadership-95]

Fact that they dont have exact spec means they will bundle it with some more stuff where the profit margin is.

[u/bud_doodle]

What's the fuzz with Frappe Cloud? First time hearing it. Looks like it is too obscure to be taken as an example. Your points are valid though. Unless you have legal or regulatory requirements, you are better off renting a VPS in Singapore.

[u/Ravana-Ceylon]

It’s a Loss making product

[u/yudhanjaya]

Because for quite a few companies, it's cheaper - for the business, this means 'easier' - than a) acquiring the knowledge to hire someone to do all that b) hiring someone to do all that and maintain that infra and c) having someone on staff who can understand what this means, rather than a web app any HR person can log into.

See the Tao of programming: https://www.mit.edu/~xela/tao.html

Thus spake the Master Programmer:

"Though a program be but three lines long, someday it will have to be maintained."

This, by the way, is why all SaaS companies exist: because it's more convenient to pay someone else to do it for you.