How to compare a subscription to a ready-made service with your own system on total cost over three years: the costs people usually forget, a worked CRM example for a growing sales team, and the signs that it is time to build your own.
When a company needs a CRM, a system for tracking enquiries or a client portal, the choice usually looks like this: subscribe to a ready-made service at 20 to 30 dollars per user per month, or commission your own system for several thousand dollars. The subscription looks cheaper, and in the first year it is. Three years later the picture is often different: the team has grown, the plan has gone up in price, paid add-ons have piled up, and staff do part of the work by hand. Here is how to calculate both sides and when custom development starts to pay off.
What to count: total cost of ownership
A subscription and a development project are priced in different ways. One is paid every month and grows with the company; the other is paid almost entirely up front. So you need to compare everything you will pay over three years, including your staff's time. In finance this is called total cost of ownership, or TCO.
What a ready-made SaaS costs
- A subscription for every user. Most CRMs and business services charge per seat, so the bill grows with your team.
- A higher plan. Automations, API access, permissions and advanced reports are often available only on expensive plans, and you pay for them for every user at once.
- Paid add-ons and integrations: telephony, widgets, 1C sync, messaging services.
- Implementation: setting up pipelines, migrating your database, training. An integrator often does this, and it is a separate invoice.
- Price increases. The vendor can raise prices, and you have no say in it.
- Manual work. Whatever the service cannot do, staff do in Excel. There is no separate invoice for it, but you pay salaries for those hours.
What your own system costs
- Development. The largest amount, paid at the start.
- Hosting, backups and monitoring.
- Support and improvements: updates, fixes and new features as the business grows. Budget for them for as long as the system runs, or it will be out of date within a couple of years. We covered what support includes in "Website Support After Launch".
- Your staff's time for writing requirements, testing and sign-off.
- Time to launch. Your own system takes several months to arrive; a subscription works from day one.
A three-year example
Take a hypothetical company that needs a CRM for its sales team. The figures are rough and only show how the calculation works. For your own decision, use real plan prices, your contractor's estimate and your hiring plans.
Assumptions:
- 15 people use the CRM today, 20 in a year, 30 in two years and 40 in three.
- Ready-made service: 25 dollars per user per month on a plan with the features you need, 2,000 dollars for implementation, 40 dollars a month for paid add-ons.
- Your own system: 20,000 dollars for development, 50 dollars a month for hosting, 250 dollars a month for support after a three-month warranty.
Ready-made SaaS
- Year one: 6,980 dollars (subscription 4,500, implementation 2,000, add-ons 480).
- Year two: 6,480 dollars (subscription 6,000, add-ons 480).
- Year three: 9,480 dollars (subscription 9,000, add-ons 480).
- Three-year total: 22,940 dollars.
Your own system
- Year one: 22,850 dollars (development 20,000, hosting 600, nine months of support 2,250).
- Year two: 3,600 dollars (hosting 600, support 3,000).
- Year three: 3,600 dollars.
- Three-year total: 30,050 dollars.
Over three years, the subscription in this example is about 7,000 dollars cheaper. In year four the team has 40 people, the subscription costs 12,480 dollars a year against 3,600 for your own system, and by the end of that year your own system is cheaper overall: 33,650 against 35,420 dollars. From then on it saves almost 9,000 dollars a year. If the vendor raises prices by 15% along the way, the break-even point moves into the first half of year four.
The number of users affects the result more than anything else. If your team has five people and does not plan to grow, the subscription will still be cheaper after five years. If you plan to grow to 50 or 100 people, your own system pays off sooner.
How to calculate it for your company
- Write down how many people will use the system now, in a year and in two years. Base this on real hiring plans.
- Find the plan that has everything you need. The starting price on a service's home page usually excludes API access, automations and permissions.
- Add implementation, add-ons, integrations and a margin for price increases, for example 10% a year.
- Ask a contractor for a development estimate and a monthly support price. Compare offers with support included: cheap development without support becomes expensive within a year.
- Count the manual work: the hours per month staff spend on what the service cannot do, multiplied by their rate.
- Add everything up by year and find the year where the totals cross.
What the numbers do not show
Data and switching
With SaaS, your customer database lives with the vendor. You can usually export contacts and deals, but call history, conversations and automation settings move over poorly. The longer you stay, the more it costs to leave. With your own system the data is where you decide, but the code, server and access must be registered to the company. We covered what to get from your developer in "How Not to Lose Your Domain and Website".
Find out in advance where the service stores customers' personal data. Uzbekistan's Law on Personal Data currently requires only biometric and genetic data and telecom subscriber data to be stored in the country. Other data may be stored abroad if the law's conditions are met, which is usually manageable for a CRM holding customer names and phone numbers. It is best to check the conditions with a lawyer before you subscribe.
How standard your processes are
If you sell the usual way (enquiry, call, invoice, payment), a ready-made service covers almost everything, and there is no point paying to build the same thing. Your own system pays off when the process is unusual: complex pricing, several warehouses, dealer networks, a client portal, 1C sync, payments through Click or Payme. In SaaS these are handled with customisations and third-party add-ons, and each one adds to the bill.
Speed to launch
A subscription works from day one; your own system has to be built first. If you do not yet know what your sales process will look like in a year, start with a ready-made service. Within six months you will know what you actually need, and the specification for your own system will be more accurate.
The hybrid option
You do not have to pick one. You can keep a ready-made service for what it does well (email, telephony, tasks) and build only what is specific to you: a client portal, a calculator, 1C sync. The two connect through an API. That way you do not pay to develop standard features, and you do not bend your business around the service's limits.
When a ready-made SaaS is the better deal
- Your team has up to 15 people and you do not expect rapid growth.
- Your processes are standard, and the service covers almost everything without customisation.
- You need to launch within a week.
- You have no development budget right now, and monthly payments suit you better.
- You are still working out your sales model.
When custom development is the better deal
- Dozens of people use the system, and the number is growing.
- You pay for a higher plan for the sake of one or two features.
- Staff spend hours doing by hand what the service cannot do.
- You need a portal for clients or partners, or a complex integration with 1C, banks or payment systems.
- The system is part of the product you sell.
- Owning your data and code matters to the company.
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to build your own CRM?
It depends on the number of roles, integrations and reports. A system for tracking enquiries and deals costs considerably less than a platform with a client portal, warehouse management and 1C sync. For an accurate estimate, start by describing your processes: who does what, what data they enter and what they want to see in reports. We covered implementation in more detail in "CRM for Small Business in Uzbekistan: When to Start".
Can we move our data from SaaS to our own system?
Yes. Customers, deals and contacts are usually exported through the API or to Excel. Call history, files and automations are harder: they are often moved only partly or set up again. Budget for the migration as a separate stage.
What if the developer who built the system disappears?
The risk is real, so the code should live in the company's repository and the server should be registered to the company. If the system is built on a common stack such as Laravel and Vue, another developer can maintain it without rewriting it from scratch. Include documentation and access details in the project's sign-off terms.
Aren't no-code platforms cheaper?
For a small internal tool they often are. But their pricing also tends to grow with the number of users or the volume of data, and as the company grows it runs into the platform's limits. We looked at where no-code is enough in "How Automation and AI Are Transforming Website Development Forever".
Want to compare a subscription and your own system using your own numbers? Get in touch: we will look at how many people and processes you will have in three years and calculate both options.
