Side-by-side comparison
| Factor | Local office server | Tally on Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| Upfront cost | Rs 40,000 to 1,00,000+ for hardware | Rs 0 |
| Monthly cost | Electricity, UPS, AMC, IT visits | From Rs 999/mo, all-inclusive |
| Remote access | VPN setup, port forwarding, static IP | Built in: RDP from any device |
| Power cuts | Work stops; risk of data corruption | Unaffected; data center power is redundant |
| Backups | Manual, usually on the same machine | Automated daily or hourly, stored offsite |
| Maintenance | Your problem (updates, antivirus, hardware) | Handled by the provider |
| Scaling users | Buy more hardware | Upgrade the plan in minutes |
| Security | Depends on your office IT | Server-level protection, monitored 24/7 |
The 5-year cost nobody calculates
A local server looks cheap because the money leaves in one payment. Over five years, the honest bill includes the hardware, a UPS and its replaced batteries, annual maintenance visits, the electricity of a machine running all day, and at least one emergency (a failed disk, a virus, a theft). Most businesses land between Rs 1.5 and 3 lakh over five years, with zero remote access.
Tally on Cloud on the Solo plan costs Rs 999 x 60 months, about Rs 60,000 over the same five years, with remote access, hourly or daily backups, and no emergencies that are your problem. The full pricing breakdown is here.
When a local server still makes sense
Honesty matters more than a sale. A local machine is genuinely fine if all of these are true:
- Exactly one person uses Tally, in one office, and never needs it elsewhere
- Your internet is unreliable for most of the working day
- Someone actually takes a backup off-site every single day, without fail
If even one of those is false (a second user, a CA who needs access, a laptop at home during tax season), the cloud setup pays for itself in convenience alone.
Common questions
Is Tally on Cloud faster than a local server?
For users inside one office on a LAN, a local server can feel marginally faster. For anyone outside the office, cloud wins by a wide margin: a Mumbai data center connection is far faster and more reliable than reaching an office PC over a home broadband VPN.
What happens to Tally on Cloud when my internet goes down?
You cannot access the server until connectivity returns, but your data and any work saved is untouched, and colleagues in other locations keep working. Compare that with a local server during a power cut: nobody works, and an abrupt shutdown can corrupt the data file.
Is my Tally data safer on cloud or on a local server?
Statistically, cloud. Office servers fail through theft, hardware death, ransomware, and fire, usually with backups sitting on the same machine. A proper cloud setup gives you hourly or daily automated backups stored in geographically separate locations.
Can I move from my local server to cloud without losing data?
Yes. Migration copies your existing company data files onto the cloud server; nothing is re-entered and license continuity is preserved. CloudFigma engineers do this for you at no charge, typically in under a day.
Can I move back from cloud to a local server later?
Yes. Your company data files can be exported at any time and restored onto any machine running your Tally license. You are never locked in.