The decision in one table
| Off-the-shelf | Custom | |
|---|---|---|
| Speed to first login | Faster | Slower |
| Fit to how you work | You adapt | It adapts |
| Licence shape | Per user / per module, forever | You own the result |
| Change later | Vendor roadmap, or expensive “customisation” | Your backlog |
| Fails when | Your process is the product | You rebuild a solved commodity |
Buy the commodity
Accounting, email, payroll, card payments, generic CRM for a simple pipeline. Building those from scratch is how custom projects get a bad name. Use a product, integrate it, move on.
Build the middle
The job that is specific to your warehouse, your job cards, your dealer network, your billing exceptions — that is where staff time is going today, usually into Excel. That is also where custom software cost is justified, especially if you start with an MVP.
ERP-shaped decisions have their own comparison: custom versus SAP versus Odoo.