B2B SALES · DISPLACEMENT BRIEF
Open Design
vs. the closed cloud.
A side-by-side displacement case for the evaluation committee: control, cost under BYOK, and lock-in — Open Design against Sable Studio Cloud and every seat-metered cloud design suite.
Apache-2.0 · Self-hosted or local · BYOK licensing · github.com/nexu-io/open-design
GitHub Stars Apache-2.0
60K+
Active Contributors
300+
Ecosystem Plugins
217+
TCO vs. Cloud Suite
-80%
AGENDA

Where control, cost, and lock-in stand.

02 / 10
01

The lock-in

Every cloud-only design tool ties your roadmap to their servers, their pricing, and their outage windows. Sable Studio Cloud is no exception.

02

The cost

Seat licenses plus mandatory model credits compound fast — a 40-seat Sable Studio Cloud team runs near $20K a month before scaling.

03

The proof

Open Design already runs the same agent-native workflow in production, with 60K+ GitHub stars and 300+ contributors behind it.

04

The ask

A 2-week parallel pilot, BYOK licensing, and a migration path that keeps every existing file.

CURRENT STATE · CLOSED CLOUD COST

What Sable Studio Cloud is costing you

03 / 10
Annual Contract Cost ↑ 22% at last renewal
$240K/yr
Three renewals, three price increases — no seat flexibility
Seats Locked to Vendor ↑ Per-seat metering
142
Export Formats Supported ↑ Format lock
6of 40
Editable source stays inside their cloud — templates and history don't leave
Files Stored Off-Site
100%
Procurement Lock-in Score
8/10
Available Now: Cost Cut
-80%
THE PROPOSED CHANGE · WHAT MOVES
-80%
Total cost of ownership, versus Sable Studio Cloud.
Same 40-seat team, same output — from $20,000 a month down to about $4,000. Models, agents, and media providers run BYOK end to end, every file stays on your own infrastructure, and the renewal conversation stops being adversarial.
Sable Studio Cloud $20K/mo Open Design BYOK ~$4K/mo Self-hosted · No seat tax
PROOF · ADOPTION

An adoption curve the committee can verify.

05 / 10
GitHub Stars — public, verifiable adoption (illustrative trend) ↑ 60K+ · Zero vendor lock-in
8K
T1
16K
T2
28K
T3
44K
T4
60K+
NOW
Contributors ↑ Not a single vendor
300+
Apache-2.0 · Fork or self-host if we ever go quiet
Monthly Cost vs. Sable Studio Cloud ↓ 80%
$4K/mo
Was $20K/mo · BYOK end to end — no seat tax, ever
PROOF · FEATURE PARITY

Same outputs. No cloud tax.

06 / 10

Prototype & Live Artifact

High-fidelity prototypes, interactive dashboards, and ops briefs — generated locally and previewed instantly, with no round-trip to Sable Studio Cloud's render queue and no seat-gated preview links.

Real files · git-diffableInstant local preview

Slides

Decks like this one, and QBR-ready reports — templated, generated on your machine, exportable without a vendor watermark.

Decks · Reports217+ Plugins

Image

Posters and mockups styled to your brand system — no per-image credit meter running on someone else's cloud.

Posters · Mockups129 Design Systems

HyperFrames & Video

Design output becomes shippable marketing video in the same pipeline — no export to a third-party renderer, no separate line item on the invoice.

HTML → MP4One pipeline, one bill
PROOF · CHAMPION QUOTE

What the last committee said

07 / 10
We killed the Sable Studio Cloud renewal the week procurement saw the BYOK math — same output, no seat tax, no lock-in.
MK
Design Ops LeadMid-market SaaS, 140-seat migration
Built-in Design Systems
129
Import from GitHub / Figma / local — no migration tool needed
Coding Agents
21
Auto-detects PATH · Works with agents you already pay for
THE ASK

What we're proposing to the committee.

08 / 10
Pilot Scope · Zero-risk parallel run No procurement cycle
10seats
Contract Term · No annual trap Cancel anytime
0mo lock-in
License · Apache-2.0, source available Security review ready
100% auditable
Commercial Terms · BYOK vs. Sable Studio Cloud $20K → $4K/mo
-80%
ROLLOUT

Retire the renewal in three sprints

09 / 10
WEEK 1-2 · PILOT

Stand up a parallel pilot

  • 10 seats onboarded alongside the existing Sable Studio Cloud licenses
  • Design systems imported from Figma / GitHub — no data migration required
  • Security review runs in parallel against the Apache-2.0 source
Input: 10 seats, zero downtime
WEEK 3-4 · VALIDATE

Match the cloud suite output 1:1

  • Pilot team reproduces its last quarter of deliverables on Open Design
  • Agent-native workflow reviewed side by side with the committee
  • Cost, control, and export freedom scored against the current vendor
Output: signed-off parity report
WEEK 5-6 · CUTOVER

Retire the Sable Studio Cloud seats

  • Remaining 30 seats migrated, non-renewal notice sent to the vendor
  • BYOK spend replaces the seat-metered invoice
  • Savings booked and reported back to procurement
Savings: $16K/mo booked from week 6
NEXT STEP · DECISION NEEDED BEFORE RENEWAL
Approve the pilot.
Keep the savings.
10-seat parallel pilot · 2 weeks · zero disruption to current Sable Studio Cloud seats until cutover is signed off
-80%
Cost vs. Sable Studio Cloud, BYOK
0
Migration lock-in · Apache-2.0
2wk
Time to pilot signal
PREPARED FOR: EVALUATION COMMITTEE CONTACT: DESIGN OPS · GITHUB.COM/NEXU-IO/OPEN-DESIGN
← → / SPACE
01 / 10