You could make it *more* expensive to use the self hosted version. I don't see why offering a self hosted solution has to somehow mean less profit, or to the extent of non-profitability for that matter. I don't see how or why these things have to be related in any way whatsoever? Atlassian offers self hosted solutions and presumably do so because it's profitable.

If the choice is between a profitable, popular company buried in tech debt, or the perfect stack with no customers, I’ll take the debt. It’s maybe also a cautionary tale about what happens when you dismiss too many early decisions as “premature optimization.” You ship fast in the beginning but a few years later you’re buried in all the debt you generated. Hopefully it’s growing pains and they’re sorting it out, but it doesn’t make me feel confident about the security of my (most sensitive) data. If true, combined with the fact that this API took so long to ship, I have to assume that there is a crippling amount of tech debt in their stack. In fact I heard a rumor that the entirety of Notion runs on a single unsharded database. AFAICT they offer no “dedicated storage” or “on premise” plan, even if you want to pay for it. But I really wish Notion gave me more options for how to host my data. So I’m willing to forego the open source alternatives. For tools like this, SaaS will almost always beat open source just by virtue of elbow grease and a product direction. Not a fan of the data lock-in or haphazard security.

Notion todoist api