Free tools
Build vs buy decision tree
Eight questions on portfolio size, time horizon, workflow fit, compliance, engineering capacity, investor pressure and budget. Get a weighted recommendation: buy off-the-shelf, hybrid, or custom build. The tool is willing to say buy when that is genuinely the right answer.
Question 1 of 80% complete
Portfolio size
Q1
How large is your portfolio today?
Time horizon
Q2
How long do you plan to hold the portfolio?
Current SaaS spend
Q3
What is your current SaaS spend per unit per month?
Operating model fit
Q4
How different is your operating model from generic SaaS?
Compliance surface
Q5
What is your compliance surface?
Internal engineering capacity
Q6
What internal engineering capacity do you have?
Investor pressure
Q7
How much investor pressure to demonstrate IP or moat?
Platform budget
Q8
What is your budget for platform work over 24 months?
FAQ
Common questions
When does custom software beat SaaS?
When your operating model is the differentiator, when portfolio scale pushes per-unit SaaS spend past thirty dollars, or when you plan to hold the assets long enough for a build to pay back. Under five hundred units and a three-year horizon, off-the-shelf almost always wins.
Why hybrid instead of full build?
The accounting layer (Yardi, AppFolio, Buildium) is commodity software. Rebuilding it wastes budget. The customer-facing surface, tenant portal, owner dashboard, leasing and maintenance, is where operators feel the SaaS UX gaps and where custom software actually moves NOI. Hybrid keeps the ledger and rebuilds the surface.
Is the recommendation biased?
No. We recommend buy off-the-shelf as often as we recommend build, because most operators genuinely should buy. The tool is transparent about the point weights, and small portfolios, short horizons, and standard workflows all push the answer toward buy. Credibility comes from being willing to say so.
What is the typical payback period on a custom build?
For portfolios over two thousand units with meaningful workflow custom logic, year two. Meaningful IP value and moat effects arrive by year three. Below that scale or above a three-year holding horizon, payback rarely lands and buy or hybrid is the better call.
What if my recommendation is buy but I still want to build?
Fine, but scope it as a hybrid first. Keep an off-the-shelf ledger, rebuild only the surface that hurts most, and prove ROI on that one slice before committing to a full platform. A thirty-minute call helps map which slice pays back fastest.
Weighing build vs buy?
Talk to our platform team before you commit either way.
The tree gives you a weighted recommendation. A 30-minute scoping call surfaces the specific factors that tip a close call, and maps the fastest slice to prove ROI on. Free, no commitment.