Greenhouse and BambooHR ATS add-ons run hundreds per month on annual contracts, priced for 200-person companies. Hirestack is the kanban board and resume folder a 5-20 person company actually needs — post jobs, get an instant careers page, and drag candidates through a pipeline. $49, once.
This is the full pricing breakdown: what Greenhouse / BambooHR actually costs over one, two and three years, what Hirestack gives you for $49 paid once, and the honest cases where the subscription is still the right call.
What Greenhouse / BambooHR actually costs you
At $100s/mo, one Greenhouse / BambooHR subscription adds up to $2,400 every year — $7,200 over a three-year window, for software you stop owning the day you cancel. Hirestack is $49 the day you buy it, and the meter never runs again.
| Hirestack | Greenhouse / BambooHR | |
|---|---|---|
| Sticker price | $49 once | $100s/mo |
| Cost after 1 year | $49 | $2,400 |
| Cost after 2 years | $49 | $4,800 |
| Cost after 3 years | $49 | $7,200 |
Three years in, the gap is $7,151 — and every year after that adds another $2,400 to the subscription side of the ledger.
Hirestack vs Greenhouse / BambooHR, feature by feature
Price is only half the story — here's how the two line up on the things that decide day-to-day use:
| Hirestack | Greenhouse / BambooHR | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $49 once | $100s/mo |
| Careers page + application form | Yes | Yes |
| Kanban pipeline | Yes | Yes |
| Resume storage | Yes (your disk) | Their cloud |
| Interview scorecards | Yes (simple rubric) | Yes (more complex) |
| Approval chains, HRIS, payroll | No | Yes |
| Candidate data ownership | Yes (SQLite file you can cp) | Vendor export |
| Self-hosted / offline | Yes | No |
What you get for $49, once
Self-hosted ATS: careers page, kanban pipeline and resumes stored on your own disk. The highlights:
- 📢 Job postings — Title, description, location and type; each gets a clean public URL the moment you publish.
- 🌐 Public careers page — Auto-generated at /careers, brandable, server-rendered and fully HTML-escaped.
- 📝 Application form — Name, email, phone, cover letter and a resume upload with a 10MB cap and file-type validation.
- 📋 Pipeline kanban — Drag candidate cards between applied, screening, interview, offer, hired and rejected.
One month of a big-name ATS add-on buys Hirestack outright, contract-free.
Switching is 3 steps
- Buy once on Whop. One payment of $49 gets you the packaged Windows installer with everything pre-wired, or clone the MIT source at github.com/bensblueprints/applicant-tracker-mvp and run it free.
- Run desktop or deploy. Run npm run desktop locally auto-logged-in, or docker compose onto a $5 VPS when you need the careers page public.
- Post a job. Publish a posting and your careers page and application form go live at /careers immediately.
When paying Greenhouse / BambooHR is still the right call
Being straight about it: the subscription earns its keep in three situations. If your team is large enough that Greenhouse / BambooHR's collaboration features, permissions and admin controls are genuinely load-bearing; if your workflow is built on its integrations and leaving means rebuilding that plumbing; or if you have enterprise requirements — SSO, audit logs, SLAs, a vendor to call — that a pay-once app doesn't come with. Everyone else is paying $100s/mo for a job that runs fine on hardware they already own.
If that's you, Hirestack is $49, once. For the deeper dive, read the Hirestack vs Greenhouse / BambooHR head-to-head.
Frequently asked questions
Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes — Hirestack is MIT-licensed at github.com/bensblueprints/applicant-tracker-mvp. The $49 buys the packaged Windows installer and updates; building from source is free.
Where do resumes and candidate data live?
In a SQLite file plus a plain uploads folder on your own disk — resumes never go in the DB. Back it all up with cp.
Is this a subscription in disguise?
No. $49 once, no renewal, no annual contract. Self-hosted or offline, your candidate data stays yours.
More on Greenhouse / BambooHR pricing
Hirestack — product page, demo & full feature list · All OneTimeSuite pricing breakdowns
Try Hirestack — $49, once
Self-hosted ATS: careers page, kanban pipeline and resumes stored on your own disk.