Decision brief
Custom software vs. off-the-shelf SaaS
Off-the-shelf SaaS wins whenever your process looks like everyone else. Custom software starts paying for itself once the thing that makes you different has to be worked around by hand every month. The deciding number is the cost of that workaround. It is almost never the licence fee.
Five questions that settle it
- 1How far your process sits from what everyone else in your field does
- 2How many people touch it daily
- 3How many hours a month currently go into manual workarounds
- 4Who runs it two years from now
- 5Whether the data is allowed to leave your company
Side by side
| Five questions that settle it | Custom software | Off-the-shelf SaaS |
|---|---|---|
| Time to first use | Six to twelve weeks after a pilot | Hours to days |
| Upfront cost | Higher, you pay for the build | Low or none |
| Cost after three years | Flat, and only moves when you add features | Grows with every seat and module |
| Changing the process | You change the software | You change how you work |
| Who owns the data and code | Yours, source code included | Data yours, platform theirs |
| Leaving the vendor | You take the code and another team picks it up | Export the data, the features stay behind |
When your own software genuinely pays off
- The thing you actually get paid for has to leave the tool and land in a spreadsheet.
- Three systems do not talk to each other and somebody reconciles them by hand every week.
- Seat licences climb faster than the value you get back from the tool.
- A regulator or a client requires the data to stay on infrastructure you control.
When we will tell you to stay on the off-the-shelf tool
- Accounting, payroll, email, and ordinary sales CRM. These are solved problems and rebuilding them wastes your money.
- The process works and the workaround costs you under an hour a week.
- You need it next week. A custom build cannot do that and we will not pretend otherwise.
- You do not yet know what the process should be. Run it on a cheap tool first and measure.
What it costs with us
Engineering is 45 €/h + VAT. Marketing work is 35 €/h + VAT.
We start with a paid pilot on one process instead of a whole system. After it you know the real number and whether it works, and you are free to stop.
The source code is yours from the first commit. We do not keep it as a bargaining chip.
What buyers ask us
How long before custom software pays for itself?
Count the hours that currently go into manual work around your existing tool and multiply them by the wage of whoever does it. Under a few hours a month, leave it alone. Our calculator does the arithmetic for your own numbers.
Can the two be combined?
Most of our projects end up here. Accounting and payroll stay in the tool that already handles them, and only the one process that sets you apart gets built and wired in over an API.
What happens if we stop working with Rise.sk?
You take the repository, the documentation, and the access, and another team continues. We build on ordinary technology like TypeScript, Next.js, and PostgreSQL precisely so that anyone can pick it up.
Off-the-shelf SaaS wins whenever your process looks like everyone else. Custom software starts paying for itself once the thing that makes you different has to be worked around by hand every month. The deciding number is the cost of that workaround. It is almost never the licence fee.
Decision brief