Custom Web Apps vs. Off-the-Shelf SaaS: Which Is Right for Your Business?
SaaS tools are fast to deploy, but they come with hidden costs. Here's how to honestly evaluate when to build versus buy.
The build vs buy question is one of the most consequential technology decisions a growing business makes. Get it wrong and you either haemorrhage subscription fees on tools that don't quite fit, or you over-engineer a custom solution.
If your operational process is largely standard — invoicing, CRM, project management, basic e-commerce — an off-the-shelf tool will almost always be faster and cheaper to deploy.
The calculation shifts dramatically when your operational processes are genuinely differentiated. If your competitive advantage lives inside a workflow, no SaaS will ever model it precisely.