# This Is Not SaaS

Canonical HTML: https://www.praxis-agents.ai/articles/why-not-saas

No shared platform. No vendor lock-in. No black box. Praxis Agents are a dedicated AI system - deployed for you, under your control.

## What makes this different

Pick the tab that fits you and see how Praxis Agents compare to what you're used to.

### For Business Leaders

#### Your Data

- Typical SaaS: Buried in the terms. Often used for "product improvement."
- Praxis: Your data is yours - contractually. We can't use it to train models, sell insights, or share it across clients. Full export on request.

#### When You Leave

- Typical SaaS: Account closed. Data deleted eventually. Start from scratch.
- Praxis: 30-day data export window. After your initial term, you can pay a one-off conversion fee to keep running the last release independently - forever. The fee is fixed in your order form on day one.

#### What You Keep

- Typical SaaS: Nothing. You had access, not an asset.
- Praxis: All your data, prompts, agent instructions, knowledge base content, business rules, outputs, and configurations. Plus a contractual path to a perpetual run-right for the compiled software.

#### Branding

- Typical SaaS: Their logo, their domain, their UI. Maybe a colour tweak.
- Praxis: Your branding, your domain, your identity. White-labelled from day one.

#### Onboarding

- Typical SaaS: Self-serve sign-up. Figure it out.
- Praxis: Consultative implementation. We deploy your instance, configure up to three initial agents, and run remote training sessions with your team.

#### Pricing

- Typical SaaS: Monthly per-seat subscription. Costs scale unpredictably.
- Praxis: Annual platform licence with transparent consumption billing for AI and cloud usage. No per-seat surprises.

#### Relationship

- Typical SaaS: You're a row in their database. Support ticket #4,827.
- Praxis: Named implementation. Ongoing managed service with SLA-backed response times and service credits.

#### Customisation

- Typical SaaS: Limited to what their product team ships. Feature requests go into a backlog you don't control.
- Praxis: Your instance is configurable to your business - custom agents, skills, knowledge, workflows, and integrations scoped to your operations.

### For Technical Teams

#### Infrastructure

- Typical SaaS: Shared multi-tenant platform. Your data sits alongside every other customer's.
- Praxis: Dedicated, isolated single-tenant instance per client. Deploys to GCP, Azure, or AWS. No cross-tenant data by design.

#### Deployment

- Typical SaaS: Vendor-hosted only. Take it or leave it.
- Praxis: Self-hosted on your own cloud, or fully managed by us. Delivered as production-ready Docker containers (API + Web) with deployment scripts for GCP and Azure. Standard OCI images - compatible with any container orchestration.

#### AI Providers

- Typical SaaS: Locked to whatever the vendor chose.
- Praxis: Model-agnostic. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google (GenAI + Vertex), and Azure OpenAI confirmed and integrated. AWS Bedrock available. Ollama for local/air-gapped models. Swap providers without rebuilding workflows.

#### Authentication

- Typical SaaS: Dependent on Auth0, Okta, or similar - another vendor dependency to manage.
- Praxis: Custom-built auth layer with zero third-party platform dependencies. Session-based auth, OAuth 2.0 federation (Google, Microsoft, GitHub), email/password with bcrypt, and TOTP 2FA. CSRF protection, device tracking, API key support.

#### Logging

- Typical SaaS: Locked into their observability stack (Datadog, etc.).
- Praxis: Structured JSON logging with trace ID propagation. Logs to stdout, captured by cloud-native logging (Cloud Logging on GCP, Azure Monitor on Azure). No proprietary logging platform. Fully exportable.

#### Encryption

- Typical SaaS: Shared infrastructure means shared risk surface.
- Praxis: TLS 1.2+ in transit. AES-256 at rest (cloud provider). Fernet symmetric encryption for stored credentials with key rotation support. bcrypt password hashing. SHA-256 session tokens.

#### Data Residency

- Typical SaaS: Whatever region they chose for everyone.
- Praxis: Managed deployments available in any GCP or Azure region. Self-hosted customers choose any region on any supported cloud. Data residency requirement set per order form.

#### Updates

- Typical SaaS: Forced updates on their schedule.
- Praxis: Managed customers receive continuous zero-downtime rolling updates via Cloud Run revision management. Self-hosted customers receive new container images and Alembic migration scripts during their active term via private registry access.

#### Database

- Typical SaaS: Abstracted away. No visibility or control.
- Praxis: PostgreSQL 17 with pgvector extension. Cloud SQL (GCP) or Azure SQL. Your instance, your data, queryable and exportable.

#### Security Controls

- Typical SaaS: One-size-fits-all. Shared controls across all tenants.
- Praxis: Isolated infrastructure. Role-based access (Admin, Member, Read-Only). Granular tool permissions per agent. 2FA enforcement. Device management. Complete action audit trail with actor attribution.

## You can take it with you

With typical SaaS, the product stops when the subscription stops. Praxis Agents are different because they are part of a real, deployable system - not a shared service. You can take it with you.

- After your initial 12-month term, you can pay a one-off conversion fee to obtain a perpetual run-right for the last agreed release
- We deliver the production release as Docker containers with deployment instructions for GCP and Azure
- You continue running it in your own cloud, independently, with no ongoing fees to us
- The conversion fee is fixed in your order form on day one - no surprises later

## Two models, one principle

Either way, it's YOUR instance. Not a login to our platform.

### Self-Hosted

- Your cloud account on GCP, Azure, or AWS
- You manage hosting, backups, networking, security
- You supply your own AI API keys and pay providers directly
- We deliver Docker containers and deployment scripts, plus licence and support

### Fully Managed

- We deploy and operate your dedicated instance
- 99% monthly uptime SLA with tiered service credits
- Zero-downtime rolling updates, monitoring, and backups
- Transparent consumption pass-through (cloud + AI usage)

## What we keep, what you keep

Your business content is yours. Our engineering is ours. Clean separation, contractually enforced.

### You keep

All your data, prompts, agent instructions, knowledge base content, business rules, outputs, configurations, and API keys. Plus a contractual path to convert to a perpetual run-right for the compiled software.

### We keep

The source code, underlying platform architecture, generic tooling, and reusable libraries. We also retain the right to use anonymised, de-identified usage analytics for service improvement - never your data, never identifying.

## FAQ

### Is Praxis Agents a SaaS platform?

No. Praxis Agents are a dedicated, licensable AI system deployed as an isolated single-tenant instance for each client. It is not a shared multi-tenant SaaS platform. You can self-host it in your own cloud or have us manage a dedicated environment for you.

### Can I keep running Praxis Agents if I leave?

Yes. After your initial 12-month term, you can pay a one-off conversion fee to obtain a perpetual run-right for the last production release. You receive the software as Docker containers with deployment instructions and can continue running it independently with no ongoing fees to us. The conversion fee is fixed in your order form on day one.

### Who owns the data in Praxis Agents?

You do - contractually. We cannot use your data to train models, sell insights, or share across clients. You can request a full data export in standard format at any time, and you have a 30-day export window when you leave.

### What deployment options does Praxis Agents offer?

Praxis Agents offers two deployment models: self-hosted, where you run production-ready Docker containers on your own cloud infrastructure (GCP, Azure, or AWS); or fully managed, where we deploy and operate a dedicated instance for you with a 99% uptime SLA and service credits.

### What AI providers does Praxis Agents support?

Praxis Agents are model-agnostic. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google (GenAI and Vertex AI), and Azure OpenAI are fully integrated. AWS Bedrock is available. You can also bring your own local models via Ollama for air-gapped deployments. Swap providers without rebuilding workflows.

## Next step

### See the contract before the demo

We publish transparent terms because we have nothing to hide. Talk to us about a deployment model that works for your business.

[Get in touch](/contact.md)

## Next

### See the platform

Memory, approvals, execution, and audit - the four principles that make Praxis Agents trustworthy.

[Explore the platform](/platform.md)