I'm one person. One person can get hit by a bus. So here's the actual plan — five layers, roughly in the order of how quickly each one kicks in. Any one alone is meaningful. All five together, your shop doesn't notice I'm gone.

1. You own the server

   From day one, your VPS lives in your Hetzner / DigitalOcean / etc. account, on your card, with your domain pointing at it. The CRM is installed there. If I disappear tomorrow, the system keeps running — you just stop getting updates from me. There's no vendor that can pull the plug, because there's no vendor holding the plug.

2. Anytime export, from inside the CRM

   An Import / Export page in your settings — same place you imported your starting data — lets you download your full database any moment you want it. Two formats: a .sql file (a plain-text SQL dump of your whole database — restorable into any Postgres install, or readable as text in any editor) and a .csv bundle (every table, zipped). Both are open formats. Any developer can read them. You're never holding a file you can only open with my software.

3. Monthly export, automatically emailed to you

   Once a month, an email lands in your inbox with secure links to your latest .sql + .csv bundle. One click and the file is yours — save it wherever you keep your other business records. Links rotate every 7 days, and Layer 2 above means you can grab a fresh copy any time you want one. The monthly email is the nudge; you owning the file is the point.

4. The retainer is optional, always

   The $99/mo retainer covers monitoring, off-site backups, and patches to the stock release. It is never the thing keeping your software alive. Cancel it on a Tuesday and on Wednesday your CRM is still running, your data is still yours, your shop doesn't notice. The retainer buys you me — not your software.

5. Source code, with a dead-man's switch

   When you own Fieldamigo, you get the full source code — deployed right on your own server, with access to the private source repository on top of that. That's the whole point of owning it: your shop is never hostage to my subscription, my prices, or whether I'm still around. The license lets you — or a freelancer, or your nephew — read it, run it, and change it to fit your shop; it only stops someone reselling it as a SaaS. One fair-trade note so there are no surprises: my security patches and updates are for the stock release, so if you do change the code, that copy becomes yours to maintain — it keeps running forever either way, you just own what you touch. In practice almost nobody opens a file: nearly everything you'd want to change is a setting, not code. On top of all that, your CRM checks a public heartbeat once a week — a timestamp I refresh every time I push code. If it goes 90 days stale, your CRM emails you automatically — note, recovery guide, path forward. The code is already yours; the dead-man's check-in is so you don't have to be the one who notices first.

I'd rather over-build for this and never need it than wave my hands at it. The whole pitch of Fieldamigo is that you own the thing. Ownership has to mean ownership in the worst case too — otherwise it's just a longer leash on the same collar.

And if you're on a managed plan? Same promise, reached a different way. Your data exports are yours on demand and emailed monthly (Layers 2–3), and the same weekly dead-man's check-in runs (Layer 5). You don't hold the source while you're renting — but that's exactly what buying in gives you, and if I disappear you're not stranded on my server: you get the keys — your latest dump, source access, and the same migration I used to move my own business onto its own box. Renting the convenience never means renting the exit.

"If I get hit by a bus tomorrow, your shop runs Wednesday."

Status, May 2026: All five layers are live as of 2026-05-07. This page updates as anything material changes.