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title: Your vendor says you need a custom solution
author: Giacomo Balli
published: 2026-07-28
url: https://BigBalli.com/blog/your-vendor-says-you-need-a-custom-solution
tags: SaaS, Engineering, Product, Pricing, Operations
---

# Your vendor says you need a custom solution

*By Giacomo Balli* | *Published: July 28, 2026*

Your vendor says you need a custom solution. Of course they do.

That is not an accusation. The people who build custom software are, in my experience, mostly honest and mostly good at their jobs. It is a description of how they are paid.

An agency's estimate is also its revenue. A SaaS vendor's "you'll grow into the enterprise tier" is also its revenue. A consultancy's "phase two" is also its revenue. Nobody in that position prices their own upside conservatively, and nobody should be expected to.

The owner asking "do we need this" is asking the one person in the conversation who cannot afford the answer to be no.

This is why the recommendation and the evaluation should not come from the same seat. Not because the vendor is lying, but because "is this necessary" and "can we build this" are different questions, and the vendor was only ever hired to answer the second one.

The practical version: before you accept "custom," ask the vendor what an off-the-shelf tool would fail at, specifically, for your business. If the answer is a feature list, the case has not been made. If the answer is a workflow of yours that no product supports, with a reason, you may actually need it.

Then ask someone who does not get paid if you say yes.

[Discuss on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7502488306497277953)

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**Tags:** SaaS, Engineering, Product, Pricing, Operations

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