What a Free ERP Cost Calculator Is Really Selling

A slick, free ERP cost calculator showed up in our feed recently. Three minutes, no email required, promising to reveal what a company’s broken software is really costing them. We ran it. Here’s the trick: no matter what you enter, the math walks you to the same door — build something custom, anchored around $150,000–$250,000, framed as a bargain next to the big off-the-shelf names. It conveniently leaves out every mid-market platform that would actually fit a $20 million shop.

The tool isn’t dumb. It’s a sales funnel wearing a lab coat. It’s free because you’re not the customer — you’re the lead. And what it’s quietly selling is the riskiest option on the board.

Custom ERP runs great, right up until the shop that built it folds, or you outgrow them, or the one developer who understood the system takes another job. At that point you own software nobody can support — the exact legacy risk these tools love to warn you about, except this time you paid to build it yourself. We’ve seen this movie before, usually ending in a six-figure write-down and a slow crawl back to duct tape and prayer.

Here’s what a checkbox can’t do: the real assessment isn’t the form, it’s the conversation. The moment someone says ‘well, that’s just how we’ve always done it’ is the moment costing a company fifty grand a year. A calculator can’t hear that. Someone who’s stood on the floor can. If a tool is free, ask what it’s actually selling. If an assessment costs money, ask whether that’s because someone is finally sitting on your side of the table.

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Lee Stout