When custom software makes sense—and when off-the-shelf wins

A field services company came to us wanting a custom dispatch app. They'd outgrown spreadsheets and group chats, and off-the-shelf tools like ServiceTitan were either too expensive or too rigid for their workflow. We scoped it under software development.

We built them a lightweight web app in about six weeks. Job list, assignment, status tracking, technician notes. Nothing fancy — it just matched how they actually worked instead of forcing them into someone else's workflow. Cost about a third of the annual license for the SaaS tool they'd trialled.

But we've also talked clients out of custom builds. If your process is standard — invoicing, CRM, project management — there's almost certainly a good tool that does it for $50 a month per seat. Custom makes sense when your workflow is genuinely different, when you've tried two or three off-the-shelf options and they all miss the same thing, or when you need systems to talk to each other in ways the vendor doesn't support.

The honest answer is that most businesses don't need custom software. But the ones that do really need it, and the difference it makes is significant.