Why I Built Erlangly

I built Erlangly because I believe contact centers deserve a real choice in how they manage their workforce.

Over the years, I've watched the workforce management (WFM) software market move increasingly toward cloud-only solutions and subscription-based pricing. Almost every major vendor seems to be pushing customers toward SaaS, recurring per-agent fees, and infrastructure they don't control.

Want to host the software on your own servers? Good luck. Want to buy a perpetual license instead of paying forever? Those options have practically disappeared.

I don't think that's progress. I think it's a loss of choice.

Not every business wants to move everything to the cloud. Some organizations have strict data residency requirements, existing infrastructure investments, security policies, or simply prefer to keep their operational data under their own control. Others are tired of watching software costs grow every time they add another agent.

Yet the industry increasingly treats self-hosting and perpetual licensing as outdated concepts rather than legitimate business requirements.

That's why I built Erlangly.

I wanted to create a modern, full-featured workforce management platform that gives contact centers back the flexibility they've been losing.

Erlangly handles the essential WFM functions: contact volume forecasting, staffing calculations, automated scheduling, break optimization, time-off management, real-time adherence, and more. But unlike the direction much of the industry has taken, it's designed to run on your own infrastructure, with a licensing model that doesn't force you into endless subscriptions.

Built for Performance, Not Bloat

I also wanted to challenge another assumption: that sophisticated enterprise software has to be slow, resource-hungry, and unnecessarily complicated.

At the heart of Erlangly is a high-performance core written in Rust.

Rust gives Erlangly exceptional speed, memory efficiency, and reliability. Workforce management involves computationally intensive problems, particularly when forecasting demand, calculating staffing requirements, and optimizing schedules across hundreds or thousands of agents.

I wanted those operations to be fast. Really fast.

Rather than throwing more cloud infrastructure at performance problems, I wanted to build software that makes efficient use of the hardware you already have. The result is a platform designed to deliver serious workforce management capabilities without requiring an enormous infrastructure footprint.

Ownership Should Still Be an Option

There's nothing inherently wrong with cloud software or subscriptions. They work well for many organizations.

What bothers me is when they become the only option.

Businesses should be able to decide where their software runs, where their data lives, and how they pay for the tools they depend on.

With Erlangly, self-hosting isn't an afterthought or an expensive enterprise exception. It's fundamental to the product.

And perpetual licensing isn't some relic of the past. It's a perfectly reasonable alternative for businesses that want predictable, long-term software costs.

Powerful WFM Should Be Accessible

I also believe smaller contact centers shouldn't have to choose between expensive enterprise software and spreadsheets.

That's why Erlangly is free for up to 25 agents.

It's an opportunity for smaller teams to use real workforce management tools without a major financial commitment, and for larger organizations to evaluate the platform before investing.

A Different Direction for WFM

I'm not trying to build another cloud subscription service.

I'm building the kind of workforce management software I believe should still exist: fast, efficient, capable, affordable, and under the customer's control.

Modern technology doesn't have to mean surrendering ownership. And powerful enterprise software doesn't have to mean perpetual monthly bills.

Erlangly is my attempt to prove both points.

If you believe businesses should have more choice in how they deploy and own their software, I'd love for you to check it out.

https://erlangly.com