Sonoran CAD has the largest install base in the FiveM ecosystem. They have been shipping for years, they have mobile apps, and they have built a real customer footprint.
They also have a pricing model that nobody can read until they start a checkout, an API tier system that moves features behind paywalls, and a stack of separate products that get more expensive the more of them you actually need.
This post is why Sovura is the better long-term call for communities that want a modern, transparent, bundled platform.
The Sonoran model in plain English
Sonoran sells four products that overlap with what most communities actually need:
- Sonoran CAD. The dispatch and MDT system.
- Sonoran CMS. A separate product for community management, applications, and member rosters.
- Sonoran Radio. Voice for in-game.
- Sonoran One. A bundle that pulls them together at a higher price.
Each one is sold separately. Each one has tiers. Tier prices are not on a public page; they appear inside a Stripe checkout. The CAD’s API has a tier gate. Some endpoints, including /calls, require Plus or higher. The exact gate has shifted over the years.
If you want the full breakdown, we wrote it here.
What this costs you in practice
Three real failure modes:
- You can’t budget. Pricing changes are not announced on the public site because the public site doesn’t show prices. Tier shifts and API gate moves can quietly raise your bill.
- You’re paying for products you don’t fully use. Once you outgrow CAD, the upsell path pushes CMS and Radio. Sonoran One is the bundle answer. The bundle is expensive.
- You’re locked in by data. Your characters, calls, and configs live in their schema. Switching means exporting and re-mapping.
What Sovura ships instead
One product. One bill. One login.
Sovura Pro at $29 a month annual ($348 a year) gives you the equivalent of Sonoran CAD plus Sonoran CMS plus a real helpdesk plus a community website builder plus a department roster system. Every module ships in every plan. We never gate features. We gate scale.
- Computer aided dispatch with realtime live map
- A real helpdesk with SLAs, satisfaction ratings, agent presence
- Whitelist applications with eleven field types
- A block-based community site on your custom domain
- Department roster, duty sessions, ranks, callsigns, badges
- 46 scoped capabilities, signed webhooks with delivery logs
The pricing math, side by side
For a community that wants CAD plus a community site plus applications:
- Sonoran: CAD tier plus CMS tier plus integrations. Community reports place a working bundle at $35 to $50 a month, $420 to $600 a year. Add Dispatch AI separately if you want it.
- Sovura Pro: $29 a month annual, $348 a year, every module included.
- Sovura Founding Membership: $299 once, lifetime Pro.
We are cheaper at every comparable tier. We include a real helpdesk that Sonoran does not ship. Our pricing is on the pricing page and it does not move.
The modern stack difference
Sovura is built on Convex with React 19. Live map updates, duty session sync, and helpdesk presence are subscription-based, not polling. Updates land sub-second without page refresh.
Sonoran’s stack has been iterating since the late 2010s. That comes with breadth. It also comes with the realtime gaps you only feel when you sit in front of both at the same time.
When a customer reports a bug to us, the team that built the live map fixes it. The team that built the live map also built the helpdesk and the applications and the community sites. There is one team, one codebase, one roadmap.
Migrating off Sonoran
Your characters, calls, civilians, and audit log are in Sonoran’s schema. We are building a migration path. We will publish tooling and guides when it is ready.
In the meantime, the free tier on Sovura is genuinely usable. Stand up a parallel community in 5 minutes. See how it feels. Switch when you’re ready.
What if Sovura ever sunsets
Sonoran’s pricing has shifted over the years. Tier gates have moved. Endpoints have been re-tiered. Customers have no contractual exit.
We took the opposite stance. Sovura ships a written Continuity Promise: if we ever sunset, you get six months notice, full data export, and either a successor operator, an open-source self-host edition, or a free self-host license with source code. Founding Members get this in their purchase agreement.
You’re not betting on us staying alive forever. You’re betting on a written exit path.
The bottom line
If you are running a community that only needs the CAD, has no need for a helpdesk or a community site, and is happy with opaque pricing and per-API gating, Sonoran works.
If you want one product, public prices, every module included, modern realtime, and a team building everything in one place with a written exit path, that’s what Sovura is.
Start free → — every module unlocked, no card required.