Why is it sometimes better to buy a ready-made software product than to develop your

Back in the era when we were actively engaged in the development of websites, we had a strong desire to make our web service better than all existing ones in this market segment. First of all, this desire arose from the fact that all the products on the market did not satisfy our needs, and secondly, because of the not always objective assessment of our own capabilities.

So, in 2009, we developed our city portal and started selling ads on it. At first, there were only news and a catalog of organizations - and after a while we realized that we needed many more different services - announcements, posters, etc. And it was here that a problem arose - it turned out that it was not always possible to select the time of programmers from commercial projects, and the development of new functions and partitions was dragged out. Only by taking a separate person specifically for this project, we were able to fully engage in its development - but this person’s salary was rather big.

After a couple of years, we realized that we needed a normal project management system and also decided to make our own, and again after a couple of months we rested on the fact that for its further development and support we need an individual, and, in fact, a separate budget for his salary. After another couple of years, we decided to make a system for controlling the working time of the staff and again the story repeated.
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All systems developed by us are still working with us, however, with changes within the company, new changes are required in these systems, which again need to be allocated time for current employees or money for the salaries of new specialists. Due to the fact that either one or the other was constantly lacking, the development of some of them almost completely stopped.

The only thing that we really support and develop is the city portal, which is one of the main sources of income for our company. However, having invested several tens of thousands of man-hours in 7 years, I understand how much easier it would be to buy a ready-made solution, which other people will develop and maintain.

In fact, everything rests precisely on support and development - products that do not change with the market, the needs of users and customers, are doomed to disappear. In our rapidly changing world, even one year without any changes is enough to start falling behind, and two or three years is already a serious divide. Therefore, when creating any own product, it is necessary to understand whether the capabilities will support it to the extent that is needed for development or not.

The same is true for individual development, which some companies order for themselves. The main question is whether you or your developers will be able to maintain the project at the proper level? Due to the lack of understanding of this, several years ago we made one big project, which is now being used for 10% of its capabilities only because it is not possible to allocate resources for its at least some development and improvement.

Already, more and more companies use SaaS-services, and less and less order or make their own projects. The cloud service, especially the one whose developers use it themselves, is simply “doomed” to success, because its creators always keep up with the times, understand the needs of the market and their users.

Therefore, we decided to focus on what we do best - on our city portal, which we have been doing for more than 6 years. Having prepared all the necessary components, we made the Gorodor franchise, in the framework of which we offer partners from other cities to take advantage of our product and our experience to launch our own city portal.

And now I understand how great this opportunity is for other companies - to get their portal at their own disposal and not to think about technical support, who will implement new functions and how, how to cope with the increasing load, and many other things. And the owners of the portal do not need to worry about the development - because for us this is one of the main sources of income, we will inevitably continue to develop and improve the portal, constantly adapting it to all the new needs of users.

Having specially established the value of royalties comparable to the salary of one good specialist, we made a very good offer, especially for those who thought about creating such a project on their own.

Thus, summarizing all the above, you can develop it yourself or order it from someone only when you are sure that you can maintain and develop your project at the proper level. Otherwise, it is better to look for a cloud service or solution, especially if you pay attention to companies that actually use their product themselves.