6 min read
Off-the-shelf software is almost always cheaper to start and cheaper to maintain. It should be the default for functions where your business is not distinctive: accounting, payroll, email, general document storage.
Custom software earns its cost where the process itself is the advantage, where no product models your domain, or where integration between systems is the actual product.
Before committing, price the total: build, hosting, support, and the internal time to specify and test. Then compare it against the cost of adapting your process to a product.
A common middle path works well: buy the commodity systems, then build a thin integration and workflow layer that connects them to how you actually operate.