Why Fortressa?

Why did we create Fortressa? Because Fortressa is the solution to a number of problems with how software is built and sold.

Software Is Expensive

If you are a three-person startup, buying a dozen software-as-a-service (SaaS) product subscriptions for $10–15 per seat could cost you as much as $6,500 per year. That’s a substantial amount of money to spend on software, but the real kicker is how much that number increases as you add new members to your team. What happens when you are a team of 20? Sure, hopefully by then you have some revenue to cover your expenses, but how will you feel when your annual SaaS budget explodes from $6,500 to over $43,000 and beyond?

Fortressa allows you to replace expensive SaaS products with open-source alternatives at a fraction of the cost, reducing your software expense so you can invest those funds in building your business.

Data Privacy

There are usually two ways for a software company to make money:

1. Charge a fee to use the product
2. Sell your data (you are the product)

In the worst cases, companies do both. After all, who actually reads privacy policies? Hardly anybody. Which is why some companies feel empowered to double-dip, selling your data to the highest bidder and charging you for the pleasure.

We don’t think that’s right.

Data Portability

Think about all the data you put into the web-based tools you use. How many of those tools allow you to export your data? Assuming that number is not zero (spoiler: it’s probably zero), how many of those data dumps would be useful to you? Could you actually import that data somewhere else and use it?

The answer is no. They have you. Vendor lock-in, at its finest.

We don’s believe in data silos. On the contrary, we strongly believe your data is your data. It should be available to you, at all times, without you having to ask, in a form that is actually useful to you. And it is, when you put into Fortressa-powered applications, because that’s one of our core values.

Software Is Hard

We love open source. We personally maintain a number of popular open-source projects because we believe in the collective power of our communities to make software free of the above exploitative practices: no data silos, no vendor lock-in, no selling your data to the highest bidder.

One of the problems with open source, however, is that you have to install and configure it yourself. Learning a new software stack, configuring some obscure database/persistence layer, deploying via a poorly-documented and convoluted process… Who wants to spend a weekend struggling with this? And that’s for one tool! Now imagine doing that for a dozen applications. Not a chance.

Software is hard. We built Fortressa to make it easy. Tap, wait for a bit, and you’re off to the races with a suite of productive applications at your fingertips.

Customization

Is there a feature you really want or a bug that badly needs fixing? With proprietary SaaS products, you are at the whim of your vendor. They could make that change in a few months, a few years, or never. With open source, you have agency: the source code is available to anyone who wants to modify it.

Security

When anyone can inspect and test the source code, security vulnerabilities and bugs are discovered and fixed at a more rapid pace — much more quickly than with proprietary, closed-source software.

Community

Most open-source projects are comprised of a vibrant community of maintainers and contributors. In addition to improving the software and helping newcomers, they also develop and maintain a set of core values to which the project should adhere. The interplay of ideas within open-source communities serves to foster innovation and ensure the software continues to meet the needs of its constituent members.

That’s Why

These are the reasons why we built Fortressa: to bring you all the benefits of open source without any of the hassle.