Three questions
- Does a product you can name do 90% of this today? If yes, buy it and spend the difference on adoption.
- Is the workflow your competitive advantage, or just your habit? Habits should bend to good software. Advantages should not.
- Does the data need to connect to something the vendor does not support? Integrations are where off-the-shelf tools quietly fail.
Where custom wins
- Quoting and estimating that depend on your price book and your history.
- Intake that has to route to the right person with the right information the first time.
- Portals where customers see exactly their status and nothing else.
- Anything that currently lives in three spreadsheets and a group text.
Where custom loses
- Accounting, payroll, email marketing, and calendars. Buy them.
- A CRM for a team under ten people that uses it the standard way.
- Anything you would be the only customer of and would not maintain.
What a small first build looks like
One workflow, one team, one month. An internal portal or dashboard runs $15,000–$25,000 and takes 4–6 weeks. A quoting tool with a customer link and e-signature runs $18,000–$35,000 over 6–8 weeks. The scope is fixed, the price is fixed, and you own the result.
On a discovery call we will tell you which of the three you are looking at, including when the answer is to buy something.