Expert Interview: How to Decide Between Custom Software and Off-the-Shelf Solutions

Let’s start with the obvious: why would anyone today pay for custom software development if there’s so much ready-made stuff out there – and even AI tools that can generate websites in a day?

That’s the core question, isn’t it? The short answer is: competitive advantage.

Off-the-shelf software is designed to be a one-size-fits-all solution that addresses most common problems. It’s like buying a standard sedan, a Toyota Camry. It gets you from A to B reliably, and for many businesses, it fully covers their needs, and that’s perfect.

But if you’re in a competitive race where every second counts, you don’t want a sedan. You want a Formula 1 car built specifically for your driver, your team, and the track you’re on.

Custom software is that F1 car. It’s built around your unique business processes, your “secret sauce,” and your specific goals. It doesn’t force you to change how you work. On the contrary, it’s built to embrace and amplify how you work best. It basically turns your operational uniqueness into a market advantage that competitors can’t just buy off a shelf.

Sure, you can try to enter the race with your Toyota Camry. But you’ll have to manually make changes – swapping the standard engine for a powerful turbo, bolting on a spoiler, and hoping your Frankenstein doesn’t fall apart on the track and actually makes it to the finish line.

Recently, my feed is flooded with ads like “you don’t need developers anymore” and “AI will build your product for you.”
And honestly, every time I see that, I think – this can’t possibly end well.
When someone says to you, “I can just build this with AI in one day,” how do you usually respond?

I usually say, “That’s fantastic. AI is an incredible tool for getting a first draft or building a simple prototype quickly. We use AI tools ourselves to accelerate development.”

But then I pivot.

AI can create the basic structure, but it can’t understand the deep business logic, the long-term scalability requirements, the specific security needs of your industry, or the refined user experience that turns a functional app into one your users actually love to work with.

AI doesn’t ask why you need a feature. It just builds it.

Our approach is different. We start projects with robust planning activities. We dive deep into the business needs of our clients to understand why a feature is needed and what purpose it will serve. We figure out the right architecture to make the product scalable, secure, and reliable. We also help clients identify and assess risks and work out mitigation strategies.

Only after that do we proceed to writing the code and building those features.

I think the reason those ads for no-code solutions are so popular is because many people don’t really understand what’s behind professional custom development – what they’re actually paying for.

What’s the real value businesses actually get from custom software that they can’t get from off-the-shelf or AI-generated solutions?

I’d say there are three key aspects.

Perfect fit.

You’re not paying for 50 features you don’t need, and you’re not missing the three critical ones that would save your team 10 hours a week.

Custom software is built around your exact workflow, eliminating numerous manual workarounds that off-the-shelf implementations are usually plagued with.

Control and flexibility.

With a shelf solution, you’re in the back seat. You wait for them to add features or integrations you need.

With custom software, you’re in control. As your business grows and your needs change, the software evolves with you, exactly as you need it.

Ownership.

With custom software, you own the asset. The intellectual property is yours. You’re not just renting a service – you’re developing a proprietary tool that increases the value of your company.

Okay, but let’s flip it for a second.
Say I’m a business owner, sitting on a call with you, convinced I need something custom.

Why would you tell me to maybe look at off-the-shelf first?

That’s a great point for discussion. I’d recommend business owners ask themselves a few questions.

Is this process my “secret sauce”?

If it’s a generic function like accounting or HR, an off-the-shelf solution is most likely fine. If it’s the unique way you manage operations or deliver your service, that’s a candidate for custom.

Are we spending more time on workarounds than on actual work?

If your team is constantly copying and pasting data manually from one system to another, waiting for huge Excel files to load, or regularly saying, “our system can’t do that,” you’ve most likely outgrown the shelf solution and need something custom.

Does the lack of a specific feature cost us money or customers?

When limitations in your current software directly lead to lost revenue or customers moving to competitors, it’s a clear sign you should talk to development vendors and calculate whether a custom solution makes sense.

You know, I actually wanted to build custom software myself once. I had an idea for a dog-owner social app: local walks, chats, and a small community feel. It looked fun… until I found out how much it would actually cost.

What’s the minimum budget where custom development makes sense – and at what point can you expect a real MVP, not just slides?

I’m always direct about this.

In our experience, any budget below $20K is essentially a discovery phase. In that range, we can conduct workshops, define the strategy, create user-flow diagrams, and produce a clickable prototype. This is incredibly valuable for validating an idea and securing further investment, but you won’t get a coded, functional product.

To get a real, deployable MVP – something with real backend logic, a functional user interface, and the core feature set for early users to test – you should be looking at a starting budget of at least $50K, and going up depending on how big and complex your MVP is.

That’s pretty close to what I’ve seen as well.

Sure, there are cheaper regions – India, Latin America – but it’s rarely as simple as it sounds. Reliable teams there cost roughly the same as in Europe, and when you go below that line, it turns into a real gamble.

Let’s zoom out for a second. You’ve been in software sales for eight years. Looking back, how has the market changed in that time?

First, no-code and low-code solutions have filled the niche of simple websites and apps. Which is actually great for us, because it means the conversations we’re having are now about more complex, high-value business problems that can’t be solved by a low-code solution or a template.

Second, the speed of delivery has dramatically increased. Eight years ago, clients were okay with 12-month semi-waterfall projects. Today, everyone understands the value of agility. The conversation is all about launching an MVP in three to four months, getting user feedback, and iterating. Squeezing the timeline to get to market as soon as possible is a common thread in many discussions now.

Third, AI has fundamentally changed what businesses can achieve with their software.

For years, the primary goal of a custom solution was automation – taking a predictable, manual process and making it more efficient.

Now, the most forward-thinking conversations are about building intelligence. Clients are asking for features that were once the exclusive domain of tech giants.

They’re asking, “Can our system forecast inventory needs by analyzing past sales data, seasonality, and upcoming marketing promotions?” or “Can we create an internal tool that lets our staff ask questions in plain language and get answers from our company’s entire knowledge base, as well as reliable external sources?”

This means custom software is no longer just about improving efficiency. It’s about creating a proprietary brain for your business that gives you a competitive edge.

Okay, let’s say I’ve got my budget in place. The next big question is: who should I trust to build the thing?

You’re usually on the other side of this process – representing the vendor. So I want to hear your view about the right approach to vendor selection.

Everyone says: check the portfolio, years on the market, read reviews. But from your experience, what’s one less obvious thing that really shows whether a vendor is reliable? What differentiates a professional vendor from an unprofessional one?

Pay attention to the questions they ask – and whether they ask them at all.

A vendor who is ready to give you a quote without diving deep into your business needs and without asking additional questions is a red flag for me. They’re a code factory.

A true partner acts more like a consultant or even a doctor. They’ll ask “why?” a lot.

Why do you need that feature?

What problem is it solving?

Have you considered an alternative approach?

They might even challenge or push back on some of your ideas. This shows they’re genuinely interested in the project’s success, not just in billing hours.

That’s actually unusual – I’ve never heard anyone describe it that way.

Maybe companies should even put something like “we ask at least 20 questions before the first quote” on their websites. That would be pretty original.

Anyway, let’s move to the next stage – development itself.

How do I know if my project is on track during development?

The most important sign of a healthy project is seeing regular demonstrations of working software.

You should be seeing and interacting with new, functional features every couple of weeks.

Your development partner should also be transparent, bringing potential risks, roadblocks, or budget concerns to your attention before they become major problems.

What’s also important is making sure that you’re sticking to the timeline and staying within the agreed-upon budget. You should receive regular, easy-to-understand reports on progress and

So basically, you should literally see the progress as it happens, not just at the very end, right? And if I’m told that I only see something working at the very end, that’s already a red flag, right?

Yes

What are the top three mistakes you see businesses make when they look for a software partner – and how can they avoid them?

Choosing the cheapest quote.

A cheap quote often means inexperienced developers, poor code quality, or hidden costs later on.

Focus on the value you get, not just the price. How good are these developers? Do they have relevant expertise? Can they provide references? Can they showcase other complex projects they’ve worked on?

Having an unclear vision.

Handing a vendor a vague idea and hoping they figure it out themselves.

Avoid this by doing your homework. Have your business goals and core features outlined before you start the conversation.

Staying distant from your vendor.

If you only attend the kickoff meeting and then disappear for three months, you can’t expect great results.

Avoid this by embracing partnership. The best results come from collaboration. Involve your vendor in business discussions, share your challenges, and treat them as an extension of your team.

That’s a solid checklist – and I like that last point about collaboration. A lot of companies still treat vendors like suppliers, not partners.

Let’s turn to startups for a moment. I have a lot of respect for these teams – they pour everything into getting an idea off the ground, often with little more than grit, coffee, and belief. Their journeys can be inspiring, sometimes a bit chaotic, and yes, occasionally hilarious.

Let’s say I’m a startup with a great idea. If I have €10–30k for development, what can I realistically achieve in eight weeks?

The honest answer is that with that budget, you’re not going to build a full, market-ready product. But that’s okay. The goal at this stage isn’t to build everything. It’s to spend that money in the smartest way possible to prove your concept and unlock your next stage of funding.

On the lower end ($10K-$15K), you can de-risk your vision by doing a discovery phase. This includes workshops to refine your idea, map out user journeys, and define a clear scope for an MVP.

The key deliverables are a vision and scope document that outlines the future system and all functional and non-functional requirements, a clickable prototype – usually done in Figma – which looks and feels like the real product, and a detailed estimate with a phased delivery roadmap.

On the higher end ($20K-$30K), you can validate one core assumption by building a proof of concept. That’s a small, functional piece of software that validates the single biggest risk in your idea.

If your idea depends on a complex algorithm, a unique third-party integration, or an unproven technology, a PoC helps prove it’s technically feasible.

So basically, with €10–30k you’re not building the next unicorn – but you can build something that convinces investors it’s worth betting on.

That sounds solid. Invest some money to attract more money. Smart approach.

If you look back, what’s one custom vs off-the-shelf decision you’d make differently – and why?

The project decision that immediately comes to mind is one where we built a massive multi-platform MVP for a marketplace connecting customers and service providers. The founders had a great idea and a clear vision of how they wanted to implement it. Our mistake was not pushing back hard enough on the scale of their launch – they wanted to go really big from day one.

The core assumption was that both sides of the marketplace would demand a premium, native mobile experience from the very beginning. So we went big. We built everything at once:

A web app for customers

A native iOS app for customers

A native Android app for customers

A web app for service providers

A native iOS app for service providers

A native Android app for service providers

It was a beautiful, complex ecosystem – and it cost over $1 million just to get this MVP to launch.

The platform launched and started getting traction. The service providers, who were always on the go, loved their mobile apps and used them constantly.

But the customers were a completely different story. When we looked at the analytics, we were stunned: 97% of all customer activity was happening on the web app.

All the time and money invested in building, deploying, and maintaining dedicated iOS and Android apps for customers was serving only 3% of our audience.

That project fundamentally changed how I advise startups. The lesson wasn’t just to “start small.” It was to validate each critical assumption before you invest heavily.

Today, I would advise that client to launch with a web-only platform for customers. The moment we saw data showing thousands of users accessing the service from their mobile browsers, that would be the signal to invest in building a mobile app.

It’s about letting your users’ actual behavior – not your assumptions – dictate the roadmap.

Ouch. A million-dollar lesson right there – but probably one that paid off in experience.

There’s no shortage of books, blogs, and advice on why startups succeed – and just as many on why they fail. From your perspective, having seen dozens of projects play out, what are the success factors and common pitfalls that stand out the most?

I would say the most common reason projects fail is that they’re built in a vacuum, based entirely on the founder’s assumptions.

They spend months, sometimes years, in stealth mode perfecting a product without having a single real conversation with a potential customer. They essentially build a beautiful, complex key for a lock that might not even exist.

When they finally launch, they’re often met with indifference. Not because the product is poorly built, but because it solves a problem nobody has, or solves it in a way nobody wants. They run out of money before they have a chance to learn and pivot.

On the contrary, successful founders are focused on the problem they are solving, not their idea for the solution.

This approach makes them incredibly resilient and adaptable. When user feedback shows their first solution is wrong, they don’t see it as a personal failure. They see it as valuable new information that helps them find a better way to solve the problem.

They’re willing to pivot, simplify, and change because their focus is on the customer’s pain point, not their own ego.

So it’s really that classic “learn from your failures” mindset – but applied in startups, right?

Kinda

Man, I’d love to be that sharp in my own mindset – but every time I realize I could’ve done better, it still stings.

But these guys keep failing over and over until they finally make it. That’s crazy. And now with all this AI stuff, everybody tests their luck building an AI startup. It almost feels like if a startup doesn’t have AI built in, it’s not even a startup anymore.

From your experience, how much of that is hype, and how much is already changing the way companies build software?

The biggest hype, in my opinion, was the idea that AI is some kind of magic wand you can wave at any messy part of your business to create value.

We constantly heard businesses say, “We don’t even know what our process should be, but that’s what AI is for, right? It will just figure it out.”

The belief was that AI could create order from chaos – that it could invent data you didn’t have or fix a business process you hadn’t bothered to define.

The reality is that AI is more like a powerful amplifier than a magic wand. It doesn’t fix a broken process, but it can supercharge a well-defined one.

Do you believe that every business needs this powerful amplifier? If a business is a retail store that is far from tech, should it care about new technology implementation? And if yes, how should it even approach it?

Yes, 100%. Technology is the backbone of every modern business.

For a non-tech company like a retail store, the approach should be problem-first, not technology-first.

Instead of saying, “We need AI,” just because everyone else talks about it, start by asking:

What is the most tedious, manual task we do every day?

Where do we lose the most time or money?

What is the number one complaint from our customers?

For example, you might find out that 80% of your employees’ time is spent tracking inventory. Then look for a simple tech solution – whether it’s an off-the-shelf app or a small custom tool – to solve that specific problem.

Not the other way around – choosing a tech tool first and then figuring out how to squeeze it into your processes.

I like that – problem-first, not tech-first. That’s a great rule for any business, really.

For a business owner watching this, what’s one practical action they can take this year to benefit from tech trends without overcomplicating things?

My advice is to find and automate one thing.

Don’t try to digitally transform your entire company in a week.

Just identify the single most repetitive, time-consuming, and soul-crushing task your team performs – usually something involving manual data entry or spreadsheets, something everyone hates.

Then spend a few hours researching a tool to automate it. It could be a simple solution like Zapier to connect two apps you already use, or it could be a small project with a development company like ours.

By automating that one process, you’ll save time, reduce errors, and demonstrate the power of technology to your team. That momentum makes it much easier to tackle the next, bigger challenge.

Hopefully, that small win opens the door to much bigger gains in the future.

I like that. Start small, prove the value, and build from there.