Your catalog data is
your most valuable
commercial asset.
The question is not whether to manage it carefully. The question is whether the platform you trust with it is actually on your side — or whether it has become a landlord holding leverage over the data your business depends on.
A vendor becomes a landlord the moment they hold something you cannot afford to lose.
SaaS catalog platforms are sold as convenience. The tradeoff is rarely stated plainly: when your catalog data lives on someone else's infrastructure, every commercial decision they make is made with your data as the context.
Pricing changes. Subscription tiers shift. Acquisitions happen and the acquiring company has different priorities. APIs get deprecated. Features get moved behind higher tiers. And every one of those decisions lands on your operation — without your input, on their timeline, with your data held in the balance.
This is not a theoretical risk. It is the documented history of SaaS software across every industry. The companies that recognized the dependency early and built on their own infrastructure are the ones who have never had to negotiate with their own data held hostage.
Auto Plus is customer-hosted automotive catalog software. Your data never leaves your environment. Rivers Edge builds and maintains the software. Where our relationship ends, your ownership begins — completely and permanently.
Pricing Changes
Subscription costs increase. Tiers are restructured. Features you depend on move to higher plans. You pay more for the same access to your own data.
Acquisitions & Ownership Changes
The company you chose gets acquired. New ownership has different priorities, different roadmaps, different pricing models. You had no vote.
API Deprecation
Integrations you have built around the platform break when APIs are deprecated or versioned out. Rebuilding on their schedule, at your cost.
You Leave With Nothing Usable
Many brands using SaaS or repository-based mapping services work through load sheets — Excel files submitted to the provider's system. The actual managed catalog lives in their database, not yours. When you decide to leave, you may receive your last ACES and PIES XML export — coded to the standard, machine-readable, and largely uninterpretable without the expertise to normalize it back into something you can work with. You contributed the load sheets. You depart with code-heavy XML and no practical way to see what was actually being managed on your behalf. That dependency — and the fear of leaving with nothing actionable — is exactly what keeps brands locked in long after they should have moved on.
Outages on Their Timeline
When the platform goes down, your catalog operations stop. You have no control over uptime, maintenance windows, or incident response priorities.
Your infrastructure. Your choice.
Customer-hosted does not mean hardware in a server room. It means your environment — however your business already runs. Auto Plus fits into the infrastructure you have without requiring you to build something new.
On-Premise Server
Install Auto Plus on your own physical or virtual server. Your IT environment, your security policies, your network — the platform operates entirely within your existing infrastructure without external dependencies.
Amazon Web Services
Deploy Auto Plus on AWS. Your account, your VPC, your security controls. The platform runs on cloud infrastructure you control — not infrastructure owned and operated by a catalog software vendor.
Microsoft Azure
Deploy on Azure within your existing Microsoft environment. Consistent with your organization's cloud strategy, security policies, and identity management — without introducing a new hosted dependency.
Remote Desktop (RDP)
Access Auto Plus through Remote Desktop Protocol on a server you control. Microsoft's current client is Windows App, which replaced the legacy Remote Desktop client in 2025. The underlying RDP protocol remains widely supported across Windows Server environments and third-party clients.
Citrix
Run Auto Plus through your Citrix environment for centralized access management and delivery. Fits naturally into organizations already using Citrix for application virtualization.
No New Architecture Required
Whatever infrastructure your organization already runs, Auto Plus is designed to fit into it — not to require you to build something new to accommodate the software. Your environment. Your terms.
The software is the interface. It was never meant to be the cage.
The Auto Plus database is Microsoft SQL Server — open, unencrypted, and fully accessible. This is a deliberate design decision, not an oversight. Your catalog data should be available to you in every context where you need it, not just within the software interface we built.
Smaller operations use the free Microsoft SQL Server Express edition at no additional cost. Larger customers who already own a licensed SQL Server instance simply script the Auto Plus database into their existing environment. Either way, the schema is yours to work with.
Query it directly. Connect your BI tools. Build custom integrations. Feed your ERP. Automate workflows against your catalog data. No permission required. No Rivers Edge in the middle. No additional licensing to access what you already own.
Most catalog platforms encrypt their database specifically to prevent this. The dependency it creates is the point. Auto Plus is built on the opposite premise — that the people who trust us with their catalog data should have complete, unrestricted access to it at all times.
"The software is your interface to the data. It was never meant to be your cage."
Microsoft SQL Server
The industry standard relational database. Well-documented, widely supported, and familiar to any DBA or developer who needs to work with it.
Free Express Edition Available
Smaller operations run Microsoft SQL Server Express at no additional cost. No database licensing required to get started with Auto Plus.
Script Into Existing Instances
Larger customers who already own a licensed SQL Server instance simply script the Auto Plus database into their existing environment. No new database infrastructure required.
Open, Unencrypted Schema
Direct query access, BI tool connectivity, custom integrations, ERP feeds — all available without permission, licensing, or intermediary. Your data, your access.
Build What You Need
Custom integrations, reporting layers, automation workflows — built against your own database, on your own timeline, without asking anyone's permission.
The brands who own their data today will own their shelf tomorrow.
As agentic commerce matures — AI systems querying product catalogs directly, making recommendations, processing fitment, driving purchasing decisions — the brands whose data is structured, enriched, and API-accessible on their own infrastructure will have a decisive advantage.
Auto Plus is already positioned for this. The Web API surfaces catalog data to any system that can make an HTTP request. The MCP layer built on top of it makes Auto Plus catalog data directly queryable by AI agents. The open database enables custom integrations that connect the catalog to whatever commerce platform emerges next.
And the data running on that infrastructure matters as much as the infrastructure itself. Proprietary descriptions, Markdown content regions, SEO metadata, category taxonomy, digital asset management, and more — a content layer the standard does not define and repositories cannot touch. The brands who have built it will have the advantage. The brands who haven't will be competing on the same standard PIES fields as everyone else.
None of this is possible if your data lives on someone else's infrastructure. A vendor who hosts your catalog controls your access to it, controls the APIs that expose it, and controls whether the next platform can connect to it. Customer-hosted is not just a deployment preference. It is an agentic commerce strategy.
Your Data, Always Accessible
On your infrastructure, in your database — accessible through the Auto Plus interface, directly via SQL, or through the Web API. No vendor controls your access.
Web API Included
HTTP-based services that surface catalog data to any platform, application, or integration layer — on your infrastructure, under your control.
MCP-Ready
Model Context Protocol support built on top of the Auto Plus API layer — making your catalog data directly queryable by AI agents and agentic commerce systems.
Future-Proof by Design
Open database, open API, open schema. Whatever commerce platform or AI system emerges next, you can connect to it — because your data is yours to connect.
Complete ownership. No conditions.
Data sovereignty is not a feature Rivers Edge offers. It is the fundamental premise Auto Plus is built on. Your catalog data lives in your environment and nowhere else — every ACES application, every PIES record, and the proprietary content layer the standard does not define and repositories cannot touch: descriptions, Markdown content regions, SEO metadata, category taxonomy, and digital asset management.
Rivers Edge does not host your data. We do not have access to it. We cannot change the terms under which you use it. We cannot export it, analyze it, or share it. We build the software that manages it. That is the entirety of our relationship with your catalog.
When you choose Auto Plus, you are not entering a landlord relationship with your catalog data. You are building an asset on infrastructure you control — permanently, completely, and without condition.
Rivers Edge Does Not Host Your Data
Your catalog never lives on our infrastructure. We have no access to your ACES applications, PIES records, proprietary content, or any other data Auto Plus manages.
No Subscription Leverage
Your catalog does not expire when a billing cycle ends. Your access to your own data is not contingent on a subscription relationship with Rivers Edge.
No Third-Party Data Exposure
Your catalog data — part numbers, pricing, fitment coverage, proprietary content — does not pass through our systems. It does not appear in our analytics. It is not visible to us.
Standards Always Current
Auto Plus users maintain their own Auto Care standard subscriptions — updates are delivered directly to your system, not through Rivers Edge. You validate against the current release. The standards stay current. Your data stays yours.
Own your catalog. Own your shelf.
Schedule a demo and see Auto Plus running on your terms — your data, your infrastructure, your control.