Marketplace → custom Forge
Atlassian app cost reduction:
turn Marketplace spend into Forge apps you own.
Marketplace apps are pay-per-seat, forever. Custom Forge apps are pay-once, your-IP-forever, built only for the features your team actually uses, running inside the same Atlassian cloud security boundary as your Jira or Confluence instance.
The math
Why this works, in three numbers.
- Per-seat → flat
- Marketplace pricing scales with every new hire. A custom Forge app is a one-time build plus a small support retainer. The line stops going up.
- 12–24 months
- Typical break-even window for a mid-sized team replacing a major Marketplace app. After that, every month is pure savings, and the app keeps working forever.
- Same security
- Forge apps run inside Atlassian's infrastructure. Data stays in your tenancy, no third-party data egress, same compliance posture as the Marketplace app you are replacing.
How it works
Four steps from Marketplace bill to Forge app you own.
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01
Audit your app footprint
We pull real usage data from your instance: which apps, which features, by which users. We interview your power users. Two-to-four week engagement, written report.
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02
Find the actual 20%
Most Marketplace apps ship a hundred features. Teams use a handful. We identify the workflows you depend on and design a custom replacement scoped only to those.
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03
Build the Forge app
Native Atlassian Forge, UI Kit or Custom UI, hosted inside your tenancy. Same data boundary, same compliance posture, focused only on what you need.
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04
Parallel run, then decommission
Marketplace app stays live through testing and migration. When your team is fully on the custom app, you uninstall the Marketplace one and stop paying.
Why Forge
Custom, but inside Atlassian's security boundary.
Forge is Atlassian's Cloud-native app platform. It is what the Marketplace apps you would be replacing are already running on. The difference is yours is scoped only to what your team needs, owned by you, and not paid per-seat.
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Atlassian-hosted runtime
No servers to provision, no VPC to manage, no separate compliance scope.
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Sandboxed execution
Apps run inside Atlassian-controlled isolation, with explicit permission grants.
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Data stays in your tenant
No third-party data egress. Storage uses Forge KVS or SQL inside your boundary.
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Inherits your SSO and audit
Same identity, same access control, same audit log as the rest of your Atlassian instance.
FAQ
The questions we hear most often.
- Can custom Forge apps really replace ScriptRunner, Power Scripts, or other enterprise Marketplace apps?
- For most teams, the answer is yes, but only for the 20% of features you actually use. We start by auditing usage with real data, identify the workflows you depend on, and rebuild those as a focused Forge app you own. The remaining 80% of features in the Marketplace app are typically unused and not worth paying for.
- What is the typical break-even for a custom Forge app vs. a Marketplace subscription?
- It depends on seat count and Marketplace pricing tier. For mid-sized teams paying per-user pricing on a major Marketplace app, custom Forge replacements usually break even between 12 and 24 months. Beyond that, every month is pure savings, and you keep the app forever.
- Who owns the IP for the custom Forge app?
- You do. Engagements transfer ownership of the source code, the Atlassian developer account hosting it, and the right to modify or distribute it. We document the build and walk your team through it. If we ever stop working together, you keep the app and the keys.
- What if Atlassian deprecates a Forge API the custom app depends on?
- Atlassian gives developers months of notice for breaking API changes. We design custom apps with that in mind, including a short retainer option for API maintenance and migration work. The same risk applies to Marketplace apps, except you do not control whether the vendor invests in keeping their app current.
- How long does an app footprint audit take?
- Two to four weeks for a typical mid-sized Atlassian instance. We pull usage data from your instance, interview a handful of power users, and produce a written report: which apps are essential, which are duplicating each other, which features are actually used, and what the rebuild cost and break-even timeline look like for each rebuild candidate.
- Do we keep our existing Marketplace app while you build the replacement?
- Yes. We never recommend cutting off your team before the replacement ships. The Marketplace app stays in production through build, internal testing, and a parallel-run period. Once your team is fully migrated, you uninstall the Marketplace app and stop paying for it.
- Does the custom Forge app stay inside Atlassian cloud security?
- Yes. Forge apps run inside Atlassian-hosted infrastructure, in the same security boundary as your Jira or Confluence instance. Data never leaves Atlassian unless you explicitly add a third-party integration. That is the same compliance posture as the Marketplace apps you would be replacing, often with a stronger story since you control what data goes where.
- What is the smallest Atlassian footprint that makes this worth doing?
- It is rarely worth rebuilding when you have one Marketplace app, under 50 users, and that app does exactly what you need. It is almost always worth at least an audit when you have three or more paid apps, more than a few hundred users, or any single app where you only use a fraction of its features.
Curious what your Atlassian footprint looks like under audit?
Send us the rough shape: number of users, list of paid Marketplace apps, what's costing the most. We'll come back with whether an audit makes sense, and the rough rebuild and break-even economics if it does.
Start a footprint review