Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zoho offer powerful out-of-the-box functionality. But when per-seat costs multiply at scale, customization hits walls, and your workflows do not fit their templates, building custom becomes the smarter investment. A fair, data-driven comparison to help you decide.
INR 2000
Per Hour
30+
SaaS Products Built
4.9/5
Client Rating
<4 Weeks
MVP Delivery
Trusted by businesses worldwide
What changes when you stop adapting your business to software and start building software for your business
Per-Seat Cost
$50-300/mo
Customization
Limited
Vendor Dependency
High
Per-Seat Cost
Near Zero
Customization
Unlimited
Vendor Dependency
Zero
Results seen within 30 days
Six scenarios where building custom delivers better ROI than subscribing to an off-the-shelf platform
When your team exceeds 50 users, per-seat licensing becomes a significant cost center. A 100-person team on Salesforce Enterprise pays INR 28 lakhs per year in licensing alone. A custom CRM with equivalent functionality costs INR 3-8 lakhs to build and INR 15-30K/month to host — breakeven in under 18 months with compounding savings every year after.
If you spend more time configuring workarounds in Salesforce than actually using it, your workflows do not fit the platform. Industries like real estate, logistics, manufacturing, and legal services have domain-specific processes that off-the-shelf tools approximate but never match. Custom software models your exact workflow without compromise.
If your business data — customer records, transaction history, proprietary analytics — is a core competitive asset, storing it on a vendor's servers with their export limitations is a strategic risk. Custom SaaS gives you full control over your data infrastructure, enabling advanced analytics, ML pipelines, and integrations that are impossible with vendor-controlled data.
Regulated industries need control over where data is stored, how it is encrypted, and who has access. Off-the-shelf platforms offer compliance certifications but you cannot control data residency at the row level or implement custom retention policies. Custom SaaS lets you deploy in specific regions, encrypt with your own keys, and implement audit trails that satisfy any regulatory framework.
Off-the-shelf platforms have connectors for popular tools but struggle with proprietary internal systems, legacy databases, and custom APIs. If your business depends on integrations with warehouse management systems, custom ERPs, or industry-specific data feeds, custom SaaS integrates directly without middleware and without the rate limits and governor limits that platform APIs impose.
When the software itself differentiates your business — a proprietary pricing engine, custom matching algorithm, or unique customer experience — building on a platform that competitors can also subscribe to eliminates your advantage. Custom SaaS creates intellectual property that cannot be replicated by purchasing the same off-the-shelf subscription.
Replace per-seat licensing with software you own. No compounding costs, no vendor dependency.
"We were paying Salesforce INR 18 lakhs per year for 60 seats on the Enterprise edition, plus INR 5 lakhs per year for a Salesforce consultant to manage our custom objects and workflows. Edesy built a custom CRM that matches our real estate deal pipeline perfectly for INR 6 lakhs. With INR 20,000/month hosting, we save INR 20 lakhs per year."
MD
Managing Director
Leadership at Commercial Real Estate Firm
"HubSpot Marketing Pro was costing us $890/month and we were only using 30% of its features. The 70% we did not use cluttered the interface and confused our marketing team. Edesy built a focused campaign management tool with the exact features we need for INR 2.8 lakhs. Our team adopted it in one day because it mirrors their actual workflow."
MD
Marketing Director
Marketing at B2B Manufacturing Company
"Zoho CRM could not handle our multi-level commission calculations and custom approval workflows for insurance policy processing. We spent 4 months trying to make it work with Zoho consultants. Edesy built a custom policy management system in 10 weeks that processes our exact workflow and handles commission calculations that Zoho could never support."
C
COO
Operations at Insurance Brokerage
Resources to help you evaluate and implement
Stop paying per-seat fees for software that does not fit your workflow. Get a custom SaaS product built for your exact business process — with full data ownership, zero vendor lock-in, and costs that do not scale with headcount.