Most business owners assume custom software is the expensive option and SaaS subscriptions are the cheap, safe choice. After watching enough businesses scale, I'd argue that's backwards for a lot of common cases. Take an HR portal. A mid-sized company might pay $300 to $800 a month for a SaaS tool that does maybe 60% of what they actually need, then bolt on spreadsheets and manual workarounds for the rest. Over three years that's $10,000 to $28,000 spent on something that never quite fits, plus the hidden cost of every employee working around its limitations instead of within it. A custom-built portal, scoped tightly to what the business actually does, often costs a fraction of that three-year total to build once, and it does exactly what's needed, nothing more, nothing missing. No per-seat pricing creeping up as the team grows. No features they're paying for and never touch. This isn't just true for HR portals. The same math plays out with employee dashboards, inventory management, and internal CRMs, tools where the business's process is specific enough that a generic SaaS product always involves some compromise. The businesses that benefit most from custom builds tend to share one trait: their internal process doesn't quite match how the SaaS tool assumes they work, so they're paying monthly to fight their own software. Curious what others here have experienced. Anyone switched from a SaaS tool to something custom-built, or gone the other way after trying custom and regretting it?