Custom business software or off-the-shelf: how to decide

This year we wrote two programs for the same client, Phoenix Solutions SRLS, a debt collection firm in Palermo, and we treated them in opposite ways. Effetto fills in and prints the promissory notes in a repayment plan, runs on Windows and Mac, and we give it away free to any office. Compensi, a Windows program, works out what each of the firm's collaborators is owed from the files its client companies send, and it's made for them alone. One question settled it: would another office do this job the same way?

Same for everyone, or only yours

For promissory notes the answer was yes. The form measures 105 × 221 mm in every office, the amount in words has to match the figures because under Article 6 of the Italian bills of exchange law of 1933 the words win, and a due date on the 31st lands on the 28th in February for everyone. You solve a problem like that once and hand it to everybody.

Not for commissions. The rate table depends on the client company, the contract, the collaborator's role and how the debt was paid. Those are the firm's own rules, they change whenever a contract does, and real people's pay goes through that calculation.

Ask yourself the same question. If a competitor would do the job exactly like you, someone's almost certainly selling a program for it already, and that's where you start. If it's the way only you work, and your revenue runs through it, that's the part worth having built.

What ready-made software does better

It exists today, and you can try it on your own work before you pay. Other people have already found the worst bugs. For anything the law wants identical for everyone, like electronic invoicing or bookkeeping, a widely used product is nearly always the right call. We wouldn't write custom invoicing software for a small business: every rule change would land on that one business alone.

We use ready-made pieces in our custom projects too. Subscriptions on Finanzamille go through Stripe's checkout and billing portal, and the platform listens to Stripe's webhooks to find out who has canceled.

When custom software pays off

The clearest case is the process that sets you apart, when a ready-made program would make you do it worse. The people doing the sums in Compensi come from years of Excel, and one correction often covers dozens of rows. So review happens in a grid you select like a spreadsheet. A form to open for every row, the usual shape of management software, would've been slower than the sheets it was replacing.

Then there are the files that come in from outside, each in the format of the company sending it: fixed-width CSV exports, a PDF statement for every name, summary reports. Compensi recognizes them from their content. A ready-made product doesn't know your counterparties' formats, or the other programs you use.

Compensi also handles personal data about debtors and collaborators, and it keeps that data on the office computer. An online service would have added a processor, as Article 28 of the GDPR calls it, with a contract to sign and guarantees to check. Too much, for a job one person does once a month.

In a ready-made product, the vendor has already decided who can do what. On the platform Finanzamille started from, generated with a no-code service, the subscription showed a label and protected nothing: people who didn't pay could read everything. The barbershop Priolo the Barbers, open in Palermo since 1982, needed the opposite: you book with a name and a phone number, no account, because sign-up is where people give up.

The costs a quote doesn't show

With ready-made software, people look at the subscription fee. What comes later weighs more: a fee that climbs with every user, features the vendor decides on, the time your people spend bending to the program, and the Excel sheet that almost always shows up again next to it.

Since September 12, 2025, at least leaving has rules. The Data Act requires providers of software as a service to put in the contract a notice period of at most two months to switch provider, a 30-day transition period and the export of all exportable data; from January 12, 2027, they can't charge you for switching. But exportable means the data generated by using the service, minus anything protected by the provider's intellectual property: you take the data with you, not the way the program processes it.

With custom software you're the only customer. Every fix and every new feature goes through whoever wrote it, and the program needs updating even when nobody's asking for anything. It takes your people's time too, because they're the ones who know the rules: before we used the Compensi rate table on new months, we checked it line by line against the sheets filled in by hand. And if the code and the accounts aren't in your name, whoever comes next starts from scratch. In our contracts the code is the client's once it's paid in full.

The middle road

That's how Effetto works. The program is the same for everyone; linking it to the CRM an office already uses, or importing its archives, is done separately, on quote. To make that link possible, Effetto exports debtors and banks in a fixed, documented column format you can hand to whoever runs the CRM.

If you're moving off Excel, this is where we'd start almost every time: a ready-made product for the common part, a custom link for the part that's only yours. It holds up if the product lets your data out through a documented export or API. If the only way to get it out is retyping it, it won't do as a base, however nice the rest is.

Before you ask for a quote

Write down your answers before the first phone call, even roughly. You'll need them whether you're choosing a product or having one written.

1. What's the process, step by step, and who does it today? Add what happens when that person is on vacation.
2. Which programs does it have to talk to, and do those programs have an export or an API?
3. Who'll use it, and what mustn't each of them see?
4. Where does the data have to live, and does it include personal data about customers or staff?
5. If your supplier vanished tomorrow, what would still be in your name: data, code, accounts, domain?
6. Have you tried at least one ready-made product on your real work? Note where it made you change how you work: that list is the scope of the custom part.

With those answers in hand, in our free analysis we look at how you work today and tell you which part to buy ready-made and which to build. If a program you can buy is enough, that's what we'll tell you.