What may really blow their mind is that there are open source tools that cost even less. Zoho is a good choice though, their CRM was not the best but got the job done. Has a good API. Haven’t tried their other tools like docs or mail.
You are right - open source requires more work. My response related to open source was responding to the article's tone that it was surprising that anything could be cheaper than Google or Microsoft :) Which is silly.
I read the question earlier about email deliverability and black list management as being rhetorical in that those services are usually performed by a centralized service provider.
Glad someone was able to respond with some examples.
A few employees have problem syncing calendar to their phone or outlook but it's less than 1% users.
Since Zoho is trying to attract small business, support is something they can beat open source one. (I don't know if they do, just that they can)