We hear this question at least once a week, and usually in the wrong form: "should we buy a product or have one written from scratch?" The real decision is about knowing which part of the business actually distinguishes you from a competitor.
Buy off-the-shelf for accounting, email, calendars and payment rails. Commission custom software for the process that sits at the exact centre of the promise you make to your customers. The six questions below make that line unusually clear.
Software your competitors also use cannot give you an advantage. It can, however, give you time.
01Does this process differentiate you, and how many people touch it?
First question: why does your customer choose you? Whatever process appears in that answer is a strong candidate for custom software. For a furniture maker, that is the measurement-to-production-plan flow; it is not their payroll.
The second question is headcount. Custom software rarely pays off for a task three people do once a week — a spreadsheet and some discipline will do. When thirty people live inside it daily, every small mismatch in an off-the-shelf tool is multiplied by thirty.
02Where does your data sit, and what does the law say?
Third question: can you get your data out? If a SaaS has no export, or exports only PDFs, every record you put into it is a debt. Run a real export test before you sign anything.
The fourth is regulation. Under GDPR and Türkiye's KVKK, where data is processed, who the sub-processors are and how long records are kept is your responsibility, not the vendor's. In some sectors that single point decides the matter in favour of custom software on your own infrastructure.
03The five-year cost, and when do you need it?
The fifth is comparing a one-off build against a monthly subscription — but across five years, and with per-seat pricing multiplied by your growth plan. A tool that looks cheap at thirty seats often costs more than a custom build at a hundred.
The sixth is time, and it usually settles the matter. If you need something working in six weeks, start with an off-the-shelf product and design the custom system in a second phase, using real usage data. That hybrid is what we most often recommend: accounting and payments stay bought, the client portal and the operational flow get built for you.
Written by
The Paradigma7 team
Product, engineering and operations
We are an Ankara-based team building software for Europe. Nothing here is theory: these are the processes we actually run on client projects.
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