# Hosted or offline: which one IT should choose

SpecRun, ShiftHandover, RetainLog, PullPlan and CoverPlan come two ways:

- **Offline.** Single HTML files, sold on their own or together as the Alderworks Quality Suite. They run in Chrome or Edge on your own computers.
- **Hosted.** The same apps in the hosted Alderworks Quality Suite, with a shared team folder online.

Alderworks EMS is hosted only. This page compares the two honestly, as of 2026-09-28.

## Choose offline when

- **No data may leave your network.** The offline files make no network requests at all. Records stay on the computer, or in the folder you save them to, such as a share on your own file server. There is no vendor to assess, because nothing is sent to one.
- **The site is air-gapped or has no reliable internet.** The files open from disk and keep working offline.
- **You already govern shared folders well.** If your file server has managed permissions, backups and auditing, the offline apps inherit all of it. Their workbooks and handover files are ordinary files in your folder.
- **Your policy forbids new SaaS vendors** or requires a lengthy vendor review. The offline files are software you hold and can inspect. Each download's SHA-256 fingerprint is published, so you can confirm you have the genuine file.

## Choose hosted when

These are true of the hosted suite today, after the changes in this review:

- **Central access control and clean offboarding.** Everyone signs in with their own account. Removing a person from the workspace ends their access at once, from every computer. The database checks membership on every request. An offline file on a shared drive stays readable by anyone who can reach the folder, and by anyone who copied it.
- **Two-step sign-in you can require.** An admin can require an authenticator-app code for everyone. The database enforces it, and nobody without the second step can read the team's files. The offline apps have no sign-in at all; their admin pages are protected by a passcode, not a personal account.
- **An audit log you can export.** The hosted suite logs every save and removal in the team folder (who, when, which file, which version), each sign-in, people and role changes, and settings changes. Admins can filter it and export it as CSV. Nobody in the workspace can edit it. Offline, the only record is whatever your file server logs.
- **No unmanaged HTML files on desktops, USB sticks or email.** The hosted apps run from our site in the browser. Nobody has an app file to copy, forward or leave on a laptop, and every copy of a team file is in one controlled folder.
- **Always the current version.** Every user gets the latest release, including security fixes, the next time the page loads. Offline copies stay at whatever version was downloaded until someone replaces them on each machine.
- **Storage and backups held by the provider.** File contents sit in Supabase Storage, which is durable, replicated object storage. The folder's index and activity log are in the database, which is backed up daily. A restore test on 2026-08-24 recovered both records and a stored file. Offline, backups are whatever your file server does.
- **No overwritten work.** Two people saving the same file cannot silently overwrite each other. The second save is refused and asked to reload. On a shared drive, the last save wins.
- **Idle sign-out** after a period you choose, from 15 minutes to 8 hours.
- **Browser hardening.** An enforced Content Security Policy, HTTPS-only transport and the standard security headers apply to the hosted apps. A local HTML file opened from disk gets none of these.

## Where hosted does not beat offline (today)

- **Single sign-on.** No SAML or OIDC single sign-on with Entra ID or Google Workspace yet, and no SCIM. Accounts are email and password, with optional or required two-step sign-in.
- **Certifications.** No SOC 2 or ISO 27001 of our own. Our providers have theirs.
- **Region and residency.** One hosting region. You cannot choose where data is stored.
- **Uptime.** No contractual uptime commitment. If the internet or our providers are down, the hosted suite is unavailable, while offline files still open.
- **Bulk export.** A one-click download of the whole team folder is not built yet. Alderworks exports it on request.
- **Some app features are per browser in the hosted suite for now.** PullPlan's saved orders and RetainLog's staff queues live in each browser, as they do offline.

## A common arrangement

Many sites use both:
- the hosted suite for the shared, audited team folder and for people who move between computers;
- an offline copy on a controlled machine as a fallback for internet outages.

The file formats are the same, so a workbook moves between them unchanged.