If you work in SaaS sales, marketing, product management, or IT, the question of whether DemoGo is truly self-hosted comes up a lot. In the landscape of interactive demo builders, the answer isn’t just a minor technical detail—it’s core to how your organization manages security, compliance, autonomy, and customer experience. We built DemoGo to give SaaS teams complete control and flexibility, without trading away ease of use. In this guide, we’ll break down exactly what “self-hosted” means in DemoGo’s context, how it impacts your security posture, and what to expect if you put self-hosted interactive walkthroughs at the heart of your SaaS motion.
Why Self-Hosting Matters: Security, Autonomy, and a Clear Chain of Trust
When evaluating tools for your SaaS org, you probably hear a lot of talk about cloud, hybrid, and self-hosting. But with interactive demos—those step-by-step product walkthroughs you embed across your marketing site, docs, onboarding flows, and sales enablement—self-hosting means three things for your organization:
- Data never leaves your infrastructure. You keep sensitive product information, screenshots, and demo logic inside your chosen environment—on-premise, behind a firewall, or on a private cloud.
- No unknown dependencies. Because DemoGo is a desktop app, there are zero browser plugins, background scripts, or cloud API calls that could become attack vectors or compatibility problems later.
- Full compliance and audit trails. For SaaS organizations operating in regulated environments (think GDPR, HIPAA, SOC 2), being able to host everything yourself means easier IT sign-off and reduced vendor risk.
The DemoGo Self-Hosting Model—A Closer Look
We designed DemoGo from the ground up as the desktop interactive demo builder for SaaS teams who truly need full control. Here’s what that means in practice:
- No admin needs to approve browser extensions or install plugins on company machines.
- All demo-building happens entirely on your desktop (Windows, Mac, Linux all supported). Zero code.
- Once created, your interactive tours are exported as static HTML and JavaScript files—lightweight, self-contained, no hidden telemetries.
- Those files can be deployed wherever you want: your own servers, CDNs, S3 buckets, internal networks, or even air-gapped environments for maximum isolation.
This makes DemoGo uniquely suited for companies that simply can’t risk letting product demos live on a third-party cloud or embedded iframes hosted elsewhere. Several of the world’s most security-conscious SaaS organizations (including household names in financial services, technology, and education) use DemoGo to deploy internal training, partner enablement, and public-facing product tours with zero friction for their IT and compliance teams.
DemoGo Self-Hosting: Five Steps, No Barriers
Here’s how you can go from idea to a live, self-hosted SaaS demo in under an hour—even if you’ve never built an interactive walkthrough before:
- Download and install the free DemoGo desktop app. No signup required for the freemium tier. Get it directly here.
- Open your SaaS app and hit record. DemoGo captures screens, clicks, and tooltips as you go through a user flow such as signup, onboarding, or reporting.
- Add interactive steps and branding. Insert call-outs, hotspots, questions, and your color scheme—all with zero code needed.
- Export your demo project. The result is a folder of static assets you can audit and version-control if you wish.
- Upload to your server or documentation site. Paste a single
<script>tag into any page (Marketing, Sales, Docs, CRM, etc). That’s it. Your interactive tour is instantly live, fully under your control, and never dependent on any outside vendor.
Security and IT Benefits: What Our Customers Say
In conversations with SaaS IT, security, and compliance teams, three friction points come up again and again. Here’s how the DemoGo self-hosting model tackles each—based on explicit feedback from our user base and direct support experience:
- No security reviews needed for browser plugins. Since DemoGo never asks users to install extensions, your IT risk assessment process is much more straightforward.
- Auditable and versionable deployments. You can keep a full copy of every demo as a static asset, check it into source control alongside your documentation or training materials, and roll updates out at your own schedule—no unexpected changes.
- Works in fully isolated, air-gapped, and offline environments. Especially useful for enterprise training and internal support where demonstration data must never leave your perimeter.
- No dependency on vendor APIs. If you’re blocking external services for privacy or regulatory reasons, your demos work without issue.
Addressing the Real-World Objections
- Is self-hosting complex to maintain? Not with DemoGo. Each self-hosted demo is a static asset. If you want to update, simply export a new file and replace your old one—no patching, database migrations, or server-side code required.
- Will performance suffer? Not at all. Modern CDNs and even basic web servers can deliver statically-hosted DemoGo tours at sub 2-second load times, worldwide. Because there’s no plugin or background cloud logic, demos load quickly even with heavy network policies in place.
- What about ongoing costs? We believe in transparency. Our free plan includes unlimited demos up to 10 steps and no cloud requirement. Teams that need unlimited steps, enterprise support, or exclusive branding can start from $49/month. You’ll never pay extra per view or per seat for static hosting, and can switch tiers at your own pace.
Who Benefits Most from a Self-Hosted Interactive Demo Approach?
As SaaS organizations move toward product-led growth, self-serve onboarding, and zero-trust network policies, self-hosted interactive tours become essential for:
- Security-focused SaaS vendors who need demos that can pass stringent IT, legal, and privacy reviews without sending data outside their infrastructure.
- Enterprise sales teams embedding product tours inside gated environments (CRMs, customer portals, partner centers) where third-party scripts are restricted.
- Support and enablement teams looking for zero-friction training, onboarding, or “show instead of tell” answers deep inside their own helpdesk and documentation stack.
- SaaS marketers who care about SEO, control, and never want to be locked out of their demos by a vendor outage or pricing change.
If you want to explore advanced use cases like embedding self-hosted demos at different stages of your SaaS funnel, our guide on mapping demos to your buyers’ journey covers this in detail.
Practical Tips: How to Get Started with DemoGo’s Freemium Self-Hosting
- Experiment risk-free. Download DemoGo today and try building a short demo (up to 10 steps) without even creating an account.
- Test internally. Many teams start by creating interactive tutorials for onboarding or support, then gradually expand to customer-facing or sales demos.
- Integrate everywhere. Your static DemoGo demo can be embedded on any web property where a <script> tag is allowed—from your homepage to the help desk to product documentation and CRM environments.
For further reading on interactive demo strategy, we encourage you to check out the key questions to answer before you build a self‑service product demo and our take on Demogo vs plugin-based tours for in-depth IT and security review discussion.
Summary and Next Steps
Self-hosting isn’t just a technical checkbox—it’s peace of mind for SaaS leaders who care about security, compliance, and resilience. With DemoGo, you get a desktop-first interactive demo builder where every walkthrough is yours to own, control, and deploy exactly how you want. No plugins, no forced cloud, no compromises. Whether you’re trialing, training, selling, or onboarding, you can be confident that DemoGo will pass even the strictest IT and infosec review.
Start with our freemium version to see how fast and frictionless self-hosted demos can be. For more advanced use cases or enterprise-scale rollouts, reach out to us anytime. Discover how the freedom to self-host can accelerate your SaaS workflow with DemoGo.