Off-the-shelf or custom software?

For most common needs, someone has already built a good product. Accounting, payroll, point of sale, appointment booking, email marketing and online shops are all well served by subscription software. These products are tested by thousands of businesses, updated for you, and ready this week.

So the sensible default is to buy. Custom software earns its place when buying doesn’t fit, and it is worth being honest with yourself about when that is.

• Your process is standard. If you do accounting, payroll or bookings the way most businesses do, a product built for that will do it well.
• Compliance is handled for you. Tax rules, payroll changes and e-invoicing are the vendor’s job to keep up with, which is a real benefit.
• You need it now. A subscription can be running in days; even a small custom build takes longer.
• The need may change. If you are not sure the process will last, a monthly plan is easy to cancel.
• A product covers most of it. If a tool does most of what you need and your team can live with the rest, adapting a little is usually cheaper than building.

• The way you work is your advantage. Your pricing, your service or your workflow is why customers pick you, and a generic tool would flatten it.
• You are paying for several tools that don’t talk. Staff copy data between them, and the subscriptions keep adding up.
• The spreadsheet became the system. It works, but only one person understands it, and a wrong formula costs money.
• The product fights you. Your team keeps a side spreadsheet because the software can’t handle a step you need every day.
• Per-user pricing is punishing. A tool priced per seat gets expensive when everyone, including the field team, needs a login.
• You need to own it. You want the data, the code and the hosting in your own name, with no vendor able to change the terms.

The choice is rarely all or nothing. Many of the best setups keep good off-the-shelf products for the standard parts, and add a little custom work around them.

• Connect the tools you have. Orders flowing from the web shop into accounting, stock kept in step across channels. See system integration.
• Add a small tool on top. A dashboard, an approval screen or a phone form that reads and writes to the product you already use. See internal tools.
• Build only the part that is yours. Keep accounting and payroll in a product, and build the custom part, such as your job or order workflow, as its own system.

Off-the-shelf: subscriptions that rise as you add users or features, add-ons for the parts you assumed were included, time spent on workarounds, and the effort of moving out if the product changes or closes.

Custom: the build itself, hosting and the services it uses, keeping it updated and secure, and changes as the business grows. Our guide to what custom software costs covers what drives those.

Compare the two over the period you expect to use the system, including the time your staff spend, rather than one month’s subscription against one invoice.

• Which steps of our process are standard, and which are particular to us?
• What do staff currently do by hand to make the existing tools work?
• Who needs a login, and what would per-user pricing cost as we grow?
• What happens to our data if we stop paying, or the vendor changes its plans?
• Is there a product that does most of this, and could we connect or extend it instead?

If you tell us the problem, we will tell you honestly whether to buy, connect or build. If a product you already pay for can do the job, we will show you how. If custom work is worth it, we will suggest the smallest first version, built on accounts you own, with code that is yours. That advice is part of our IT consulting, and a first chat is free.

• What custom software costs What moves the number.
• System integration Buy, then connect.
• IT consulting A second opinion before you commit.
• Custom software When building is the answer.