Custom vs off-the-shelf software: how to choose

Custom vs off-the-shelf software comes down to one question: is your process standard for your industry? If it is, choose an off-the-shelf product. This applies to accounting, HR, email, a standard CRM and medical records. Custom software makes sense when the process is unusual or sets you apart from competitors. It also makes sense when you are building a product you want to sell yourself. Often the best answer combines both: your own system handles what is unique, and ready-made services (payments, email, SMS) handle the rest. These are the criteria we use ourselves in the first conversation with a client.

When is off-the-shelf software the better choice?

Off-the-shelf software wins in a few situations.

• The process is shared by thousands of companies. Invoices, payroll, calendars and email look much the same everywhere. The vendor develops the product for all its customers, so you get features you would never have ordered yourself.
• Regulations change often. When software has to keep up with changes in the law (accounting, HR, medical records), a vendor with many customers does it more cheaply than one company with its own system.
• You need something right away. Configuring a ready-made product takes less time than building a new one.
• Nobody on your side can work on the project. A custom system needs a person who knows the process and answers the team’s questions.

An example from our group: we do not suggest that hospitals and clinics build their own medical records system. Such a system has to keep up with changing regulations and is complex, so building one from scratch rarely makes sense. Conetso Healthcare, another brand of Conetso Group, implements off-the-shelf practice management systems such as Optimed NXT. We build custom software where the off-the-shelf system falls short. That is how we built an MRI booking system for a private clinic.

When should you commission custom software?

Custom software pays off in four situations.

• The process is unusual and ready-made products force workarounds. If staff keep a parallel spreadsheet because the program lacks a field they need, you pay for the licence and for the manual work.
• The process is your advantage. If the way you serve clients sets you apart, adapting to an off-the-shelf product means giving that advantage away.
• You are building your own product. A platform you want to sell to customers does not exist as a ready-made program, by definition.
• You need to connect several systems. When data is retyped by hand between programs, the simplest answer is sometimes an application that ties them into one process.

Our custom web applications page shows how we build such systems.

Two examples from our projects

Service Quotes supports a service company that works for business clients under contract. A client raises an order for a given address, and a manager assigns staff with the required specialisms. Staff record the job in the field, and the client sees the itemised bills and pays online. Each of these elements exists in some off-the-shelf program. What is specific to this company is how they fit together: three account types, staff specialisms and payments in one process.

Offer Exchange is a different case. It is a SaaS (software as a service) platform that companies use for requests for quotation and purchasing. Here the custom software is the product itself. At the same time, Offer Exchange does not handle payments on its own; it uses Stripe. It is a good example of the mixed approach: you build the part that is your product and take the rest from ready-made services.

How do you compare the costs?

Compare the cost over several years. The first invoice shows only part of the spending.

Item	Off-the-shelf software	Custom system
Start	implementation and configuration, data migration	analysis, design, development, deployment
Fixed fees	licences or a subscription, usually per user	maintenance and hosting
Changes	up to the vendor; you may wait for them or never get them	you order them when you need them
Team growth	more licences	usually no extra per-user fees
Work around the system	workarounds, spreadsheets, retyping	as much as the design allows

Licence fees grow with every new user. You pay for building a custom system mostly at the start. The last row of the table is the one most comparisons leave out. An hour of staff time spent every week copying data from one program to another is also a cost of the off-the-shelf option. Our article on how much a custom web application costs explains what drives the price of a custom system.

The risks of each option

Both options make you dependent on a supplier, just in different ways.

With off-the-shelf software, the vendor decides on the price and the direction of development. It also decides whether the product will be developed at all. Your data is in its format, and export is sometimes limited.

With a custom system, you depend on the team that built it. Before you sign a contract, ask about the source code, the documentation and whether another team could take the system over. We build in widely used technologies: Next.js, React, TypeScript, .NET Core and PostgreSQL. This reduces the risk that only one company on the market will understand your system.

Five questions before you decide

1. Do you know an off-the-shelf product that supports your process without workarounds? Have you checked at least two?
2. Does this process set you apart from competitors, or is it the same as everyone else’s?
3. How much time a week do staff lose today on workarounds and retyping data?
4. Do you have someone who can work on the project and make decisions?
5. Are you ready to maintain the system after launch, yourself or with an external company?

If your answer to the first question is yes, start with an off-the-shelf product. If it is no, and the answers to the second and third are serious, a custom system is worth discussing. You can also start with a small first version, as described in our article on what to include in an MVP.

Describe your process to us, and we will tell you plainly whether to build your own system or look for a ready-made one.