Subscribe when the software does a job every business does the same way, like accounting or stock, and when the vendor's meter (users, orders, seats) will stay small. Build when the process is what sets your business apart, or when that meter will grow faster than your margin. For a five-person trading business tracking stock and orders, a subscription like Zoho Inventory costs less than half as much as a custom build over three years.
When does SaaS make sense?
- You need it running this week. A subscription works the day you sign up, and a build takes weeks.
- Your process is the standard one. If the tool was designed for exactly what you do, you'll get value from it without changing anything.
- You want to test the idea first. A few months on a subscription tell you whether that kind of tool solves the problem before you pay for a build.
- It's a supporting job. Accounting, payroll and plain stock-keeping work the same way in most businesses, and a vendor maintains the software for all of its customers at once.
When is custom software the right call?
- Your team spends time every day working around the tool. Those hours are a cost the subscription price doesn't show.
- You're building a product to sell. If the software is your business, you need to own the code. Our post on what a SaaS MVP costs covers that route.
- You need it to talk to systems you already run, like Tally on the office computer or a portal your buyers log into, in ways the vendor's integrations don't cover.
- You want the data on a server you control. With custom software you decide where it lives and you can export all of it whenever you like.
What does each cost over three years?
Take a trading business in Navi Mumbai with 5 staff handling around 2,000 orders a month across two godowns. It wants to track stock and orders. One option is a subscription such as Zoho Inventory. The other is a custom web app built for the way it already works.
Zoho Inventory charges per organisation, and each plan caps orders a month, users and locations. Premium allows 3,000 orders a month, 5 users and 4 locations. Plus allows 7,500 orders, 10 users and 6 locations. Our business fits Premium today and needs Plus as soon as it hires a sixth person or passes 3,000 orders.
On our side, the closest plan is Enterprise, from ₹1,20,000*, which covers a custom backend and database, logins, dashboards and 12 months of support. For months 13 to 36 we've used our Website Care Plan at ₹3,000*/mo, our published price for hosting, backups and security updates.
| Option | Published price | 36 months |
|---|---|---|
| Zoho Inventory Premium, billed yearly | ₹2,299 per organisation a month | ₹82,764 plus GST |
| Zoho Inventory Plus, billed yearly | ₹4,999 per organisation a month | ₹1,79,964 plus GST |
| KodeThat Enterprise build, then Website Care Plan | from ₹1,20,000* once, then ₹3,000*/mo from month 13 | from ₹1,92,000* before taxes |
At today's size, Zoho Premium costs well under half of the custom option over three years. Once the business moves to Plus, the two come close. Zoho's page says its prices exclude GST, and our written quote states taxes separately, so neither total includes tax.
Two limits on the table. The care plan is priced for websites, and we used it because it is the only hosting and upkeep price we publish. A system your whole team uses all day may need more looking after, and we'd quote that. And we haven't compared features line by line. Zoho Inventory does things a custom build would have to be paid to do, and a custom build can do things Zoho can't. The table only compares money.
For CRMs we ran the same sum against per-user Zoho CRM pricing in our post on custom CRM development cost. The pattern there is the same: per-user pricing grows every time you hire.
Which costs does the subscription price hide?
The biggest one is the meter. Find what the vendor charges for, whether that's users, orders, locations or messages, and price the plan you'd need at twice and five times your size today. In the example, going from 5 to 6 staff more than doubles the monthly bill, because the next plan up costs more than twice as much.
Your team's time is the next one. Moving data in, cleaning it and training staff take the same effort with either option, and no price list includes them.
Then there's the cost of leaving. Before you put three years of records into any tool, check how you export them and in what format. With a custom build the database is yours. With a subscription, the export is whatever the vendor offers.
Three questions to decide with
- How unusual is the process? If the tool's design matches what you do, subscribe. If your staff keep a spreadsheet beside it, that spreadsheet describes what a custom build would do.
- What does the meter look like at twice and five times your size? Price the subscription at both before you compare it with a build.
- Is it core or supporting? Systems that decide how you win customers or deliver your service are worth owning. Supporting jobs are usually fine on a subscription.
Our take
Sayed Zaid builds the back ends of our custom systems and Ravinder Kumar builds the screens, so a build is what we sell. For stock and orders at the size in the example, we'd still tell a small Navi Mumbai trader to subscribe. Zoho Inventory Premium will cost less over three years, and they keep working while you learn what you actually need. We'd build custom when the software is how you serve customers, such as a portal your buyers order from, or when your process needs so many workarounds that the subscription stops being the cheap option. Tell us which tool you're on today and what you work around on the custom software call, and we'll say which side of the line you're on. Our full price list is on the pricing page.
Where these numbers come from
- Zoho Inventory Premium and Plus prices per organisation a month billed yearly, their order, user and location limits, and the note that prices exclude GST: Zoho Inventory pricing, India, checked 3 November 2026.
- The 36-month totals are those monthly prices multiplied by 36, assuming the prices stay the same.
- KodeThat's Enterprise plan and Website Care Plan: our pricing page, read from the same price list as this post, 3 November 2026.
