Platform Environments (SaaS/Private Cloud/On-Premises)

Platform environment comparison：differences in privacy, cost, and scalability across SaaS, private cloud, and on-premises deployments, and feature differences between private cloud and on-premises dep

MaiAgent offers multiple deployment environments to meet different customer needs. With SaaS on a public cloud, customers can get started quickly and benefit from maximum scalability with lower upfront costs. Customers who handle sensitive data can choose a dedicated private cloud deployment, which offers high privacy and a customizable environment. For greater security requirements, customers can choose an on-premises deployment. Although deployment is more complex and costly, it provides the highest privacy and a solution that accommodates regulatory restrictions.

	Public Cloud (SaaS)	Private Cloud	On-Premises
Platform location	MaiAgent Cloud	Customer cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP, Oracle)	Customer data center
Large language models	All models GPT series, Claude, Gemini, etc.	Cloud models and self-hosted models GPT series, Claude, Gemini, etc. (connected using the customer's own cloud API keys)	Open-weight models gpt-oss, Gemma, Qwen, etc. Can also connect to cloud models such as the GPT series, Claude, and Gemini (connections from the host to cloud services must be allowed)
Response quality	Best	Best	Good (can be best, depending on the model used)
Deployment complexity	Standard	Medium	High
Upfront cost	Low	Medium	High
Usage cost	Usage-based	Usage-based	Fixed
Time to launch	Fast	Standard	High
Scalability	Highest	High	Low
Maintenance difficulty	Standard	High	Highest
Privacy	Standard	High	Highest
Use cases	General-purpose	Sensitive data, specific industries	Highly confidential data, regulatory restrictions
Pricing	Fixed price	Fixed price	Project-based quote

Feature Differences Between Private Cloud and On-Premises

Private cloud and on-premises environments use the same deployment package. The difference is the deployment category configured during installation:

• Private cloud: The host can connect to cloud services. Voice Agents, the call center, cloud speech recognition, and cloud connectors can be enabled as needed.

• On-premises: The environment is treated as unable to connect to cloud services, so all four features above are disabled. Speech-to-text uses offline speech recognition deployed on the host instead.

Compared with SaaS, private cloud and on-premises deployments share these differences:

• Version: Private cloud and on-premises deployments use quarterly releases (such as 2026.Q3). New SaaS features are included in later quarterly releases. For example, Office online editing is currently available only in SaaS. For versions and upgrade procedures, see Versions and Upgrades.

• Models: Customers host their own model services or connect to cloud models using their own API keys. See Connecting Model Services for On-Premises Deployments.

For the complete feature comparison and how to choose a deployment type (single-host Docker, distributed Docker, or Kubernetes), see Deployment Types and Feature Comparison.

Can You Switch Environments Later?

Changing model compute (from cloud models to on-premises models, or vice versa) does not mean migrating the platform. You can change models at any time (except Embedding models; see Connecting Model Services for On-Premises Deployments), while migrating the platform itself depends on the situation:

From → To	Support
Private cloud ↔ On-premises (same deployment package)	The host's location does not matter. The only difference is the deployment category in the configuration, which is set during the first installation. To change it later, contact MaiAgent. See Deployment Types and Feature Comparison
Single-host/distributed Docker → Kubernetes	The deployment package provides a migration procedure. First set up the Kubernetes cluster and data services, then migrate PostgreSQL, uploaded files, and search indexes (the cache is not migrated). Downtime is required during migration; schedule it with MaiAgent
Change hosts (same deployment type)	Restore a built-in backup on the new host. See Operations Essentials: Backup and Restore
SaaS → Private cloud or on-premises	There is no one-click migration for an entire organization. Skills can be exported as skill packages and imported into the new environment. Knowledge base documents must be uploaded again, and Agent settings, conversation history, member accounts, and conversation platform integrations must be recreated. The scope and approach are assessed per project; contact MaiAgent
Private cloud or on-premises → SaaS	Same as above

Before migrating, confirm the feature differences in the target environment (for example, on-premises deployments do not have Voice Agents, a call center, or cloud connectors). See Feature Differences Between Private Cloud and On-Premises.