"Should we build custom or buy a SaaS?" is almost always answered badly because it gets framed as a price question. License price is only part of the real cost.
When off-the-shelf wins
- The process you need to cover is standard in your industry (accounting, generic CRM, invoicing).
- There's no competitive advantage in doing it differently from everyone else.
- You need to launch in weeks, not months.
When custom software wins
- Your process is exactly what sets you apart from competitors.
- You're forcing a generic SaaS to do something it wasn't designed for, patched together with spreadsheets around it.
- License cost scales badly with your volume (per user, per record, per transaction).
- You need to integrate legacy systems no standard SaaS accounts for.
The question that actually matters
It isn't "how much does it cost to build?", it's "how much does it cost us every year not to have it, in manual work hours, errors and missed opportunities?" That's why at Nortex every project starts with an audit of the real process — not the ideal one — before we propose building anything.