As a family company, we offered stability and continuity in an industry where even major players flame out, go bankrupt, or get acquired. In turn, a customer base that knows us and trusts us is the only reason we have survived crashes, recessions, and multiple upheavals in the software business. In 1989, we released version 1.0 of RESUMate, a database program for recruiters and our mainstay product. In 2023, it reached version 17, and is such a workhorse that we had people who kept using the DOS version (on Windows!) deep into the 2000s.

We've had to update ourselves over the years as well, including adapting to what were originally called "web based" applications before someone realized "cloud" was a friendlier term. Anywhere/anytime access is a killer feature, and removing the administrative burden of backups and updates from end users was a real improvement. But it also placed us, the small software company, at the whim of giants who have now gobbled up their rivals and no longer face meaningful competition. Rates have crept up while reliability has gone down and we came to realize that, one way or another, they were gonna put us out of business.

TableOS began as a way for us to make RESUMate available without paying that ever increasing highway tax. A few months into development, we started to make it "modular", and from there we swiftly realized we were building something that wanted to do a lot more than we had originally intended. In addressing our problem, we had inadvertently solved a bigger one, creating an alternative to data center cloud infrastructure, one that's scaled to the needs of people, families, and small organizations.

We understand nobody wants another subscription, but keeping TableOS going requires fresh work every day and that requires steady income, for us and the developers. But look on the bright side: not only is your subscription supporting the software you're using, it might also let you cancel some other subscriptions as well.

Currently three generations strong, our plan is to keep doing what we've been doing for nearly forty years, writing quality code and building tools that people want to stick with for years on end.

Further Reading

Why Self Host? - A brief essay on the importance of self hosting in today's world.

Self Hosting Simplified - An illustrated guide to how self hosting works.