Quick answer
Yes — Hirestack is a one-time-purchase alternative to Greenhouse. It costs $49 once, while Greenhouse runs $100s/mo — about $2,400 per year, every year. Self-hosted ATS: careers page, kanban pipeline and resumes stored on your own disk. It is for people who want the job done on their own hardware without a renewal date — not for teams that live inside Greenhouse's ecosystem.
The verdict
Switch to Hirestack if you are an individual or small team paying Greenhouse $100s/mo for work your own machine can do. One month of a big-name ATS add-on buys Hirestack outright, contract-free.
Stay with Greenhouse if your workflow depends on its integrations, you need enterprise features (SSO, admin controls, SLAs), or your team is large enough that per-seat collaboration tooling is worth the bill. Hirestack does not try to replicate those.
Head to head
| Hirestack | Greenhouse | |
|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| 5-year cost | $49 | $12,000 |
Where Greenhouse still wins
- Ecosystem and integrations. Established tools accumulate years of third-party integrations, templates and add-ons. If your workflow is wired into Greenhouse's ecosystem, switching means rebuilding that plumbing — a real cost.
- Team and enterprise features. Shared workspaces, granular permissions, SSO, audit logs and a vendor to call when something breaks — that is what the higher subscription tiers actually buy, and a pay-once app does not come with it.
- Familiarity and hiring. Greenhouse is the name people already know. Onboarding a team onto a tool nobody has used before takes time the subscription never charges for.
Where Hirestack wins
- Price, permanently. $49 once versus $2,400/yr for as long as you use it. There is no renewal, no seat count and no tier gate.
- 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.
The math
One month of a big-name ATS add-on buys Hirestack outright, contract-free.
- After 1 year: Hirestack has cost you $49 total — Greenhouse / BambooHR has cost $2,400.
- After 3 years: Hirestack is still $49 — the subscription is at $7,200.
- After 5 years: Hirestack is still $49 — the subscription is at $12,000.
Common 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.
Try Hirestack — $49, one time
Or get Hirestack plus every other app in the suite: the OneTimeSuite bundle is currently $97, one time.