Almost every buying guide reduces this to hosted versus installed, then hands "reach it from anywhere" to the hosted column by default. That default is years out of date. What follows is a straight accounting of where hosted products genuinely win, what the repeating arrangement costs you, and the middle path nobody bothers to mention.
Full disclosure before you read on: we make locally installed accounting software, so we are hardly neutral. We have still tried to write the page we would have wanted while shopping — including the passages where a hosted product is simply the better buy.
These strengths are real. Any comparison that glosses over them is a sales pitch wearing a lab coat.
Nothing to install, no patches to apply, no computer that has to remain powered on. The supplier absorbs all of it.
Duplicated, stored off-site, entirely automatic. Plenty of small firms never manage a dependable backup themselves, and this quietly removes that danger.
Any browser, any hardware, any location, working from the moment you register. No networking decisions to make.
Bringing in a remote bookkeeper or an external accountant takes moments, with no shared network to organise first.
We would sooner you landed on the correct tool than on ours. Where you have no appetite for running any part of the arrangement yourself, and the repeating cost sits comfortably in your budget, a hosted package is a sound decision and we will not pretend it is a mistake.
What you give up is easy to miss, largely because almost none of it lands during the first month.
This is neither speculation nor a swipe at one particular supplier — we worked through the sums in The Hidden Costs of Cloud Accounting Software.
This is what the two-way framing conceals. "Sits on your own computer" and "answers your phone from a café" have not been contradictory for a long time.
Kantivo installs onto a machine of your choosing and then publishes its interface across the network, exactly as any web application does. Your remaining devices simply open it in a browser. No companion app to fetch, no charge per handset, no additional subscription stacked underneath.
Every phone, tablet and laptop on the network reaches it at a local address, with no configuration whatsoever.
Add the free Tailscale client and the same installation responds from a customer's premises, a departure lounge or your accountant's office across an encrypted private tunnel.
Pin it to a home screen and it launches into its own clean window, with no browser furniture around it.
All of those routes finish at your own computer. Your ledger is not resting on a supplier's server at any point.
The reach that persuades people to rent hosted software is available without the accompanying arrangement in which a supplier keeps your accounts and periodically re-prices your route to them. This is not a halfway house between hosted and installed — on reach it equals the hosted option, and on custody and long-run cost it equals the installed one.
Tables in this category almost always run to two columns. The third is the interesting one.
| Hosted (QBO, Xero) | Conventional desktop | Kantivo (self-hosted) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Usable from any hardware | ✓ Yes | ✗ A single machine | ✓ Yes, through a browser |
| Works away from base | ✓ Anywhere | ✗ No | ✓ Anywhere, over Tailscale |
| Custody of the database | ✗ The supplier | ✓ You | ✓ You |
| How you are charged | ✗ Monthly, per person | ~ Inconsistent | ✓ A single yearly licence |
| Price of one more user | ✗ Increases the bill | ~ Frequently another licence | ✓ Covered |
| Survives an outage | ✗ No | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes, on the host machine |
| Backups taken for you | ✓ Automatic | ✗ Down to you | ~ Tools provided, schedule is yours |
| Nothing to administer | ✓ Nothing at all | ~ The odd update | ~ A machine must stay on to serve others |
| When payment stops | ✗ Entry ends | ✓ Files persist | ✓ Database remains on your drive |
Notice the two amber marks sitting in our own column. Self-hosting does ask that a computer stay awake for other devices to find it, and it hands you the backup routine instead of a supplier. Those are genuine commitments, and for some businesses they settle the matter.
To put figures against that first question, our five-year cost calculator sets a repeating per-person subscription against a flat yearly licence at whatever headcount you actually have.
Debating software is a poor substitute for handling it. Kantivo loads in a browser tab with a worked-up sample business already in place — no installer, no registration, no card. If the screens feel like somewhere you could spend a working week, the rest of this page deserves your attention. If they do not, you are ninety seconds down and nothing else.
It refers to bookkeeping software living on the supplier's machines and operated through a browser. You never install the program and never hold the database. In exchange for the supplier carrying that load, you pay on a repeating cycle — usually monthly, usually scaled by how many people need access.
It follows from which risk troubles you more. Hosted removes maintenance entirely, backs itself up and needs no setup to reach. Installed costs less over several years, keeps your records in your possession and carries on working through an outage. The assumption that has genuinely expired is that remote access belongs to hosted products alone.
Yes — that is what self-hosting describes. Kantivo runs on a computer you control and serves its screens to your other devices across your own network, or through an encrypted Tailscale tunnel from elsewhere. Identical convenience, different custody.
With a hosted product, entry usually ceases when the paid period ends. A download window is normally provided, but what emerges tends to be summaries rather than a working file, so detail and audit history may not survive. A local installation keeps its database on your own drive, readable regardless.
Differently safe rather than less so. A hosting supplier patches for you but gathers thousands of businesses into one appealing target; keeping records locally means someone else's breach never touches your ledger. In return, the machine and its backups become yours to look after. Tailscale connections are encrypted end to end and never sit exposed on the open internet.
No more than for any program you install. Access across your own network requires no setup at all; remote access means installing a free app at both ends and signing in. Our walkthrough covers every step.
For other devices to find it, yes — as with any server. Most businesses simply leave it running through the working day. If nobody at your company wants that commitment, that is a legitimate reason to favour a hosted product instead.
It carries an annual licence, priced as one figure rather than a per-person monthly charge, and reaching your books from further devices is not billed on top.
The demo is the complete application, live in your browser, with sample books already loaded.