“for the open core model our core software of Papermark is open source and self-hostable and then if you need advanced features you can acquire a license and still run it on your infrastructure as a self-hosted version but just with our enterprise license attached to it”

Open-core: free self-hosted tier plus enterprise license with advanced features

The open-core structure captures two distinct segments: cost-sensitive self-hosters who use the free tier and seed word-of-mouth, and enterprise buyers who pay for advanced features while keeping data on their own infrastructure. This let Papermark reach $75K MRR without locking out the developer community.