Why does software keep getting more expensive?

There is something I have been wondering about for years.

Why is it that every time technology promises to make software simpler, businesses end up paying more?

When cloud became mainstream, we were told infrastructure would become cheaper. It did. At least for the providers.

When APIs became the standard, integration would supposedly become easy. Instead, an entirely new industry emerged around connecting APIs.

Then came low-code, no-code, workflow automation, event streaming, customer data platforms, server-side tracking, AI orchestration, agent frameworks. Each solving a specific problem, each introducing another subscription, another dashboard and another dependency.

None of these technologies are inherently bad. Many are genuinely clever. We use some of them ourselves. The problem is that they all assume the same architecture: keep adding another layer.

Fifteen years of looking at the same landscape differently

For almost fifteen years we have been looking at the same landscape from a different perspective.

Back then we were not building an AI platform. We were not trying to replace ERP systems or CRM systems. We simply kept asking ourselves a question that, surprisingly, very few people seemed to ask.

What is actually happening inside a business?

Not inside the software.

Inside the business.

• An order arrives.
• A customer sends a message.
• A payment is received.
• A delivery fails.
• A contract expires.
• A machine reports an error.
• Someone approves an invoice.
• Someone rejects a quotation.
• An AI agent asks for information.

If you forget the applications for a moment, every organisation is simply reacting to an endless stream of business messages.

A runtime designed around business messages

That observation completely changed how we started designing software.

Instead of building applications that needed integrations, we started building a runtime that understands business messages.

Instead of moving data from system to system, we let the business message become the centre of the architecture.

Instead of creating another integration pipeline every time a department bought new software, we wanted one place where communication, validation, routing, decisions and context naturally come together.

At the time, this was not a fashionable idea.

Today, with AI entering almost every organisation, it suddenly becomes obvious why it matters.

AI does not care about applications.

AI cares about context.

AI needs to understand what happened, what changed, what should happen next and who is responsible.

Those are business messages.

The market is moving in the opposite direction

Yet the market is moving in almost the opposite direction.

• Another AI wrapper appears.
• Another orchestration platform.
• Another agent framework.
• Another workflow engine.
• Another event platform.
• Another observability platform.
• Another connector marketplace.
• Another monthly invoice.

Sometimes I wonder whether we are solving business problems or simply creating software that manages other software.

The strange part is that almost all of these platforms ultimately process the same thing.

Messages.

Sometimes they are called events. Sometimes they are API requests. Sometimes they are tickets. Sometimes they are prompts. Sometimes they are notifications. The terminology changes. The underlying concept does not.

Why should innovation become more expensive?

Once you recognise that, you also start looking differently at pricing.

Why should innovation become more expensive simply because more messages flow through your business?

Why should every new employee require another licence?

Why should every automation, API call, workflow execution or AI request create another line on the monthly invoice?

We have accepted these pricing models because that is how the SaaS industry evolved, not because they make sense. Most of these platforms are themselves built on top of big-tech cloud dependencies, and every layer above passes its metering downward until the customer pays for all of them.

Our conclusion was different.

If the runtime is designed around business messages from the beginning, much of the surrounding complexity simply disappears. You do not need separate platforms to validate, route, monitor, enrich and distribute communication when those capabilities already belong to the runtime itself.

What that means for DataInbox pricing

That is why DataInbox is priced the way it is.

Not because we are trying to undercut the market. Not because we are running a temporary promotion. But because we believe software should become simpler as technology advances, not more expensive.

For 295 euro per month, a company receives its own dedicated DataInbox workspace, unlimited users, unlimited inboxes, unlimited rules and validations, full API access and one million business messages every month.

Some people ask how that is possible.

Our answer is usually another question.

How many layers are you paying for today that exist only because the software underneath was never designed around business communication in the first place?

Perhaps the real innovation is not building yet another platform.

Perhaps it is removing the need for several of them.

That has been our belief for almost fifteen years. AI simply made the rest of the world arrive at the same question.

See how the pricing works