It’s a question consultants hear all the time—usually right after someone mentions that a business invested in a custom-built system, despite the internet being absolutely packed with SaaS tools that claim to do the same thing.
And honestly? On paper, the question makes sense.
Why spend weeks (and real money) building something custom when there’s a perfectly good $99/month tool with a polished landing page, glowing testimonials, and a free trial?
Because sometimes, that $99/month solution quietly costs a business way more than $99/month.
The Bakery That Almost Became a Spreadsheet Company
A few years ago, a consultant worked with a local bakery that needed an order management system. During the initial conversation, the owner said something telling:
“I’ve already tried three different systems. They all almost work.”
The tools she’d tested were familiar names:
- Toast (restaurant POS)
- Square for Restaurants
- A generic order management SaaS
Each one cost somewhere between $60 and $200 per month. Each one looked great during the demo.
And each one broke down the moment the bakery tried to use it for… well, actual bakery work.
Problem #1: Custom Cake Orders Are Not Menu Items
This bakery didn’t sell “one cake.”
They sold highly customized cakes.
Every order needed to track:
- Theme
- Flavor
- Filling
- Size
- Number of tiers
- Dedication message
- Celebrant details
- Pickup date
- Event information
Restaurant POS systems are fantastic at selling predefined menu items. They handle burgers, drinks, and modifiers like “extra cheese” or “no onions” beautifully.
They are not designed for “three-tier chocolate cake with vanilla filling, dinosaur theme, for a 7-year-old, delivered Saturday at 2 PM.”
The workaround? Everything went into the notes field.
Which meant:
- No searching by cake size
- No reporting on popular flavors
- No visibility into upcoming tier complexity for production planning
All the most important data existed… as unstructured text.
Problem #2: Bakeries Don’t Get Paid Like Restaurants
Restaurants follow a simple flow:
Order → Serve → Pay
Bakeries don’t.
They follow:
Deposit → Production → Final Payment
This bakery required 50% down before production even started.
The POS systems? They technically could handle it… if staff remembered a series of hacks, partial payments, and manual checks.
In practice, it caused:
- Confused staff
- Confused customers
- Orders slipping into production without proper deposits
Which is not ideal when flour, time, and labor are involved.
Problem #3: Cakes Are Events, Not Just Orders
Many orders were tied to real-world events:
- Birthdays
- Weddings
- Corporate gatherings
The bakery needed:
- Event dates
- Venues
- Delivery windows
- A calendar view to prevent double-booking
The SaaS tools allowed… more notes.
No structured event data.
No delivery calendar.
No safeguards against scheduling conflicts.
After six months, the bakery was paying monthly SaaS fees and running half the business out of spreadsheets.
The Real Cost of “Close Enough”
SaaS companies are very good at selling “90% coverage.”
And for many businesses, that’s absolutely fine.
But that missing 10% adds up fast.
Time spent on workarounds
The owner spent 2–3 hours every day managing workarounds:
- Re-entering data
- Manually checking notes
- Reconciling deposits
That’s roughly 15 hours per week.
At $20/hour, that’s $1,560/month in hidden labor costs.
Suddenly, the “cheap” $150/month SaaS doesn’t look so cheap.
Errors and lost revenue
- Orders entered without deposits
- Delivery conflicts
- Miscommunication between front staff and production
Each mistake cost money—and reputation.
Staff frustration
Training staff on software that fights the workflow is exhausting.
Steps get skipped.
Processes get forgotten.
People get frustrated.
The owner later mentioned losing good employees partly because the system was so painful to use.
Growth bottlenecks
As order volume increased, the workarounds multiplied.
The SaaS tools weren’t just inefficient—they were actively limiting growth.
When Custom Software Actually Makes Sense
After seeing this pattern across many businesses, consultants tend to notice a few consistent signals that custom software might be the better option.
Your workflow is your competitive advantage
If the way you operate is the reason customers choose you, generic software will constantly push back.
In this case, deep customization and event-based planning were exactly what made the bakery successful—and exactly what restaurant software couldn’t support.
Your business rules are non-standard
Deposits, approvals, tiered pricing, commissions, multi-step workflows—SaaS tools often handle these poorly or not at all.
You need answers, not just reports
SaaS tools give you their reports.
Custom systems give you answers to questions like:
- “How many three-tier cakes are scheduled next week?”
- “Which flavor combinations are trending?”
- “What’s our real production capacity?”
SaaS pricing scales painfully
$50 per user per month is fine… until you have 30 users.
That’s $1,500 every month. Forever.
At a certain point, custom becomes cheaper—not more expensive.
You want to own your data
With SaaS:
- You hope exports are good
- You hope APIs stay stable
- You hope pricing doesn’t change
With custom systems:
- Your data is in your database
- On your server
- Under your control
When SaaS Is Absolutely the Right Choice
To be clear—this is not an anti-SaaS argument.
SaaS is perfect when:
- Your needs are standard
- The tool fits your workflow naturally
- You don’t need deep customization
- You’re happy outsourcing maintenance
Email marketing, project management, video calls—don’t reinvent the wheel.
The Bakery’s Outcome
A custom system was built specifically around how the bakery actually worked.
The results:
- ~15 hours/week saved
- Zero deposit tracking issues
- Clear production planning
- Reports that actually mattered
- One-time development cost instead of endless subscriptions
- Full ownership of data
The system paid for itself in under a year from time savings alone.
The Real Question to Ask
Instead of asking:
“Why not just use SaaS?”
The better question is:
What is the total cost of ‘almost fitting’?
Time × workarounds
- subscription fees
- errors
- missed opportunities
vs.
Custom development
- hosting
- occasional updates
Sometimes SaaS wins.
Sometimes custom wins.
But comparing only the monthly fee to a development quote misses the real math.
Final Thought
SaaS tools are incredible for common problems.
But when a business has:
- Unique workflows
- Complex rules
- Software at the core of how it competes
Custom software often delivers more value, even with a higher upfront cost.
Off-the-rack shoes are great. But if you’re running a marathon with unusual feet, custom shoes stop being a luxury—they become necessary.
If a business finds itself constantly fighting its tools, building elaborate workarounds, or paying monthly fees for solutions that only solve 60% of the problem…
That’s usually the moment when “custom” stops sounding extravagant—and starts sounding practical.