We sell both ready platforms and custom software, so we have no reason to push you toward one. The right choice depends less on your budget than on one thing: how different your way of working is from everyone else's in your industry.
The two options
A ready platform is a product that already exists and already works. The vendor puts your brand on it, configures it for your market and runs it for you, or installs it on your servers. You pay a setup fee and a subscription, or a license.
Custom software is designed and built for you from your requirements. You pay for the work, and the code is yours.
Five questions
1. Is this process how you compete, or just how you operate?
Taking orders, booking appointments and collecting rent work in much the same way in every business of your kind. A ready platform has already solved them. If the process is the thing customers choose you for, something competitors cannot copy by buying the same product, that is the part worth building.
2. How soon do you need to be live?
A ready platform is configured and branded. Custom software is designed, built and tested. If a season, a lease or a competitor sets your date, that difference may decide the question by itself.
3. How sure are you of what you need?
Custom software needs requirements, and requirements need experience. If you are entering a new market or a new kind of business, a ready platform is the cheaper way to learn what you actually need. You can build later, knowing much more.
4. What does it have to connect to?
An accounting system, a warehouse, a payment provider, a system you already depend on. Ready platforms connect to other systems too, so ask exactly which ones, and how. The more your business depends on systems that are unusual or old, the more custom work you will need, whichever route you start on.
5. Who will run it?
With a managed platform the vendor hosts it, updates it and fixes it. With custom software you need a team, yours or a supplier's, for as long as the software lives. Count that cost for every year, not just the first.
Side by side
| Ready platform | Custom software | |
|---|---|---|
| Before launch | Configuration and branding | Design, build and testing |
| What you pay first | A setup fee or a license | The whole build |
| What you pay later | A subscription or a support plan | Hosting, maintenance and every change |
| Fit | The usual way of working in your industry | Exactly your way of working |
| What you see before you pay | The working product | Designs and a plan |
| Ownership | Your brand, your data and your accounts | All of that, plus the code |
The option in between
The choice is not always one or the other. You can start on a ready platform and change the parts that matter to you:
- Configuration. Languages, currencies, payment providers, fees and rules are settings, not development.
- Custom work on top. An integration or a workflow built for you, added to the platform.
- Your own copy. Some platforms can be licensed to run on your servers, or handed over with the source code so your own team can extend them.
Ask about the third one early. It decides whether a ready platform is a starting point or a limit.
Two mistakes, one in each direction
- Building what already exists. Months of work and budget go into a login, a cart and an admin panel that a platform would have provided on the first day, and little is left for the part that was special.
- Forcing a platform onto a process it does not fit. Staff keep a spreadsheet beside the system for everything it cannot do, and after a year the spreadsheet is the real system.
Both come from deciding before looking closely at the process.
How to test a ready platform in one meeting
Bring one real case: one order, one booking, one lease, with all its awkward details. Ask the vendor to take it through the product from start to finish while you watch. Write down every point where your case did not fit.
If the list is short and the items are small, a ready platform fits. If the list contains the core of your business, you need custom software, or a platform you are allowed to change.
We build both. Our six ready platforms cover online stores, restaurant ordering, digital signage, ride-hailing, property management and clinics, and our team builds custom software around the workflows they do not cover. Tell us how you work and we will say which one fits, including when the answer is neither.