At first glance, tools like Zabbix and Grafana may seem like cost-effective or even free solutions for monitoring your infrastructure. But do they really come with no cost? The concept of TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) reveals the opposite.
WHERE ARE THE HIDDEN COSTS?
While Zabbix and Grafana don’t have an initial licensing cost, they hide a series of expenses that, in practice, become substantial:
- Dedicated infrastructure: Own servers or paid cloud services, backups, storage space, and redundancy.
- Specialized labor costs: Administrators and analysts dedicated exclusively to maintaining, configuring, and troubleshooting these tools. Example: A professional dedicated to Zabbix/Grafana costs, on average, between R$ 6,000 and R$ 12,000 per month in Brazil (considering salary, benefits, and labor charges).
- Implementation and customizations: Months of configuration, adjustments, custom scripts, manual integrations, and performance tests before the actual operation.
- Training and learning curve: Teams spending weeks or months learning, taking courses, and reading documentation.
- Ongoing maintenance and updates: Periodic updates, bug fixes, plugin management, and dependencies.
- Operational risks: Indirect costs from technical failures, lack of immediate official support, and slow response times during critical situations — which are common with free tools.
PRACTICAL EXAMPLE: SIMPLIFIED TCO ESTIMATE
Here’s a practical annual estimate to maintain Zabbix or Grafana — free tools — in an average company:
| TCO Item | Annual Estimate (R$) |
|---|---|
| Infrastructure (cloud/servers/storage) | ~R$ 12,000 (R$ 1,000/month) |
| Dedicated professional salary | ~R$ 96,000 (R$ 8,000/month) |
| Team training and certification | ~R$ 5,000 (annual) |
| Updates and maintenance (technical hours) | ~R$ 10,000 (annual) |
| Total Estimated (Annual) | R$ 123,000/year |
Note that, in practice, this number can easily increase as the complexity of the operation grows.
WHY IS FLIGHTDECK ONE MORE ADVANTAGEOUS IN THIS SCENARIO?
With a ready-to-use SaaS product like Flightdeck ONE, you eliminate most of these hidden costs:
- No additional infrastructure needed.
- Teams focused on the core business, not on software maintenance.
- Transparent, predictable, and controlled costs.
- No hidden operational risks or unexpected downtime.
In practice, Flightdeck ONE offers a significant reduction in TCO, even when compared to free tools, allowing your company to invest time and money in what really matters: growing your business.
STRATEGIC CONCLUSION
Free tools aren’t always the most economical. The real Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is the key to making the right decision. With Flightdeck ONE, you transform hidden costs into real savings, financial predictability, and operational efficiency.
“Free isn’t always free. The real cost shows up later.”
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