For most small and mid-sized companies, off-the-shelf SaaS is the right choice for the first few years. Gartner flags vendor lock-in as the leading long-term cost risk. Custom software pays off in three scenarios: your process differs materially from off-the-shelf tools, monthly subscriptions exceed €500-€1,000 for tools covering only part of your needs, or your competitive edge lives inside a process you do not want to bend to someone else’s tool.
The decision in one sentence
If SaaS covers 80%+ of what you need at a reasonable price, stay on SaaS. If it covers under 70%, or your subscription grows faster than your business, or your process is a differentiator, consider custom.
What SaaS wins on
- Instant availability. Open an account and you are productive today.
- Low upfront cost. €20-€200 per user per month.
- Professional support. 24/7 chat, docs, tutorials.
- Regular upgrades. New features monthly, automatically.
- Security and compliance. Big vendors invest millions in security.
- Integrations. Most tools ship prebuilt connectors.
For most growing companies, SaaS is optimal for the first three to five years.
What SaaS loses on
Process forced into a template. SaaS has its own way of working. If your process does not fit, you adapt the process or live with a half-solution.
Exponentially growing costs. Per-user or per-volume billing means three users at €60/month can become 30 users x five tools = €4,500/month a few years in.
Vendor lock-in. Prices jump, features get killed, the service can be acquired and pivoted. Your data sits inside their system. The same GDPR requirements apply.
Real five-year cost comparison
For an order management tool:
SaaS (Shopify Plus or similar):
- Year 1: €300/month = €3,600
- Years 2-3: €600/month = €7,200/year
- Years 4-5: €1,200/month = €14,400/year
- Five-year total: ~€50,000, plus 10-20% of team time spent on workarounds
Custom:
- Initial: €30,000
- Maintenance: 15% = €4,500/year
- Hosting: €2,400/year
- Five-year total: ~€60,000
Comparable totals, but custom does exactly what you need with no process adaptation and no price-jump risk. For detailed benchmarks, see custom software cost in Croatia. SaaS and custom can also be combined.
Five signs it is time for custom
- You pay over €1,000/month for tools that still do not cover your process.
- Your best people spend time “fixing” SaaS - manual patches, missing reports.
- Your process is part of what differentiates you from competitors.
- You need integrations off-the-shelf tools do not support. See how API integrations work.
- You are growing faster than the SaaS plan and entering Enterprise tier pricing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can we start with SaaS and move to custom later? Yes, the most common path. SaaS helps validate the process before custom investment. Many teams build an MVP in 12 weeks as the transition step.
Who owns the data? In SaaS it depends on the contract; most vendors guarantee export but the tech is theirs. In custom, everything is yours - code, database, infrastructure.
How quickly does custom pay back through savings? Typically 18-36 months. If monthly SaaS savings exceed 1/30 of the custom price, it pays back in under two years.
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Thinking about a switch?
Book a free Discovery call. We help you calculate the real five-year cost of both scenarios and propose a realistic path - sometimes “stay on SaaS another year”, sometimes “time for custom”.
Reach out at [email protected] or via the form on our homepage.