Custom software or SaaS: how a small company should decide
When a Monaco company should rent a standard tool and when it should have a small tool built and owned: the three-year cost, the fit with your process, what happens to your data, and the AI case where the custom tool is now cheaper than it was.
For twenty years the advice was “never build, always rent”. For standard needs it still holds. For the process that makes your company yours, the arithmetic has changed.
Rent for the standard, build for the specific
Email, calendar, accounting, a basic CRM: rent them. They are standard, cheap, maintained by thousands of people, and your process is not special there. The tool that tracks your charters, your villa cleanings, your patient recalls, your file reviews: that process is yours, and a rented tool built for someone else will make you work its way. That is where a small custom tool, owned by you, earns its place.
Count three years, not one month
A SaaS at a modest monthly fee per user, for nine users, over three years, with the price rises that always come, is a real number. Add the hours spent working around the tool. Compare it to a small tool built once and run for a small monthly amount, which does exactly your process and stops costing when it is finished. For specific processes the custom tool often wins by the second year; for standard ones it never does.
What AI changed
Building a small, solid tool used to take months and a team. With AI in the development process it takes weeks and a small studio, which is why we can offer fixed prices for it. The economics that made “always rent” true have moved. The rule that has not moved: you must own the code, documented, and someone must maintain it. We do both.
Your data in a rented tool
In a SaaS your data lives on the provider’s servers, under its terms, often outside the EU, and leaving means exporting what it lets you export. In a tool you own, the data is in your database, in the EU, and the processing description for the APDP is yours to write. For regulated Monaco professions this alone often decides.
Two questions.
Who maintains a custom tool?
We do, in the monthly run, or your IT with the documentation. Both are fine; what is not fine is nobody.
Can we start with a SaaS and build later?
Yes, and it is often right: rent until the process is clear, then build the part that the rented tool does badly.
Related.
Software built around your data
When no tool on the market does the job, we build it: screening and verification tools, internal search and assistants, client portals, automation around your own data. Working prototype in two weeks, then built, run and kept working. Trace started this way.
How much does an AI project cost in Monaco?
Nobody can quote an AI project from a web page without guessing, and a guess is a lie with a currency sign. Here is what actually drives the price, how we fix it before each step, and what you get for it.
AI for operations and processes in Monaco
A booking that creates the job sheet, orders the supplies, schedules the team and confirms to the client. A delivery that updates the stock, the invoice and the next order. The chain, without the phone calls in between.
Start with a 30-minute call. Keep what it finds.
You tell us where the hours go. We tell you which two or three tasks to automate first, in a short written note. Free, in English or French.