Your small business deserves the same cybersecurity infrastructure as a Fortune 500 company. We build it for you — using battle-tested open source tools — and keep it running for far less than commercial licensing will ever cost you.
The tools that protect large organizations are now accessible to everyone. We know how to deploy and maintain them — and you don't need to write a check to VMware to get there.
The same firewall policies, 802.1X network access control, intrusion detection, and zero-trust architecture used by school districts, hospitals, and government agencies — deployed for your business.
We build on Proxmox, Authentik, Traefik, CrowdSec, and dozens of other proven open source platforms. Rock-solid technology, no vendor lock-in, no annual license renegotiations.
Once it's built, it runs. We handle monitoring, updates, and incident response so you don't have to think about it. Our maintenance retainer costs less per month than a single commercial software seat.
VMware licensing alone can run $10,000+ per year for a small environment. Okta identity runs $8–15 per user per month. We replace both with open source equivalents — no ongoing licensing costs.
When VMware raised prices 300% after the Broadcom acquisition, customers were trapped. Open source doesn't work that way. Your infrastructure belongs to you — not a licensing agreement.
Many of the tools we use accept donations. We encourage our clients to contribute — but even donating $500/year to every tool in our stack costs less than one month of a VMware subscription.
We design, deploy, and maintain your infrastructure so you can focus on running your business — not your servers.
We audit your current environment, identify gaps, and design an architecture that fits your size, risk tolerance, and budget. No upselling. No unnecessary complexity.
We install and configure everything — hypervisor, firewall, identity provider, monitoring, backups, and secure remote access — documented and handed off to you cleanly.
We watch your stack 24/7, apply security patches, respond to alerts, and keep everything current. Minor maintenance. Major peace of mind. Flat monthly retainer — not per-seat licensing.
Here's a real-world comparison for a 25-person business running a basic commercial infrastructure stack vs. the HardenedHive open source equivalent.
| Category | Commercial Licensing | HardenedHive OSS | Annual Savings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hypervisor (VMware vSphere) | $8,400 / yr | $0 (Proxmox VE) | $8,400 |
| Identity / SSO (Okta) | $3,000 / yr (25 users) | $0 (Authentik) | $3,000 |
| Monitoring (Datadog) | $2,400 / yr | $0 (Prometheus + Grafana) | $2,400 |
| IDS / IPS (Commercial) | $2,000 / yr | $0 (CrowdSec) | $2,000 |
| Reverse Proxy / WAF | $1,800 / yr | $0 (Traefik + Cloudflare) | $1,800 |
| Total per year | $17,600 | ~$0* | $17,600+ |
*Open source software licensing cost. Hardware, our build fee, and optional maintenance retainer not included. Donations to OSS projects encouraged.
See Full Cost Breakdown →Free initial assessment. No obligation. We'll tell you exactly what you need — and what you don't.
[email protected] 414-202-6528