Own your data: the clause to find before you sign any software contract
Switching practice-management software can cost $15,000–$45,000 — much of it just to get your own records back. Here's the contract language that decides whether you own your data or rent it.
Here is a number that should bother every practice owner: when a 34-operatory dental group left their incumbent software, they were charged $8,000 just to export their own patient data. Not to build anything new. Just to get back the records they'd entered themselves, for years.
That's not an edge case. Vendors routinely charge $500–$1,000 per operatory to release records. All-in, switching practice-management systems runs $15,000 to $45,000 — and a meaningful chunk of it is ransom on data you created.
Renting vs. owning, defined
Most software contracts quietly put you in one of two positions:
- You rent your data. It lives in the vendor's database. You can see it through their app. Getting it out — in a usable form — is slow, expensive, or both. Your leverage to ever leave is near zero, which is exactly how the pricing creeps up year after year.
- You own your data. It lives in a database that is yours. You can query it, export it, back it up, and walk away with it whole, any time, at no charge.
The difference doesn't show up in the demo. It shows up the day you want to leave — and by then it's too late to negotiate.
The clause to look for
Before you sign anything, find the language about data portability and exit. Ask for it in writing if it isn't there:
If the contract is silent on this — or names a per-record or per-seat export fee — you are renting. Assume the cost to leave is high and the incentive to keep raising your price is built in.
Why we build the other way
Every Auzi system runs on a database the client owns. Your records are yours from day one. Export everything, anytime, at no charge — because the alternative is a business model built on holding your own information hostage, and we think that's a choice you shouldn't have to accept.
You own your building. You own your equipment. You should own the software your business runs on, too.
Ownership isn't a feature we added. It's the reason we exist.
See how ownership works
Ike Castillo
Founder of Auzi and builder of WellState, an AI-native operations platform for upstream oil & gas. Ike builds the complete operating system businesses run on — and hands them the keys.
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Own your operations
Stop renting the software your business runs on.
If this resonated, let's talk about the operating system we'd build for you — and how you'd own it outright.