I Stopped Paying for SaaS Tools and Started Building My Own.
· By Deborah Butler
Here’s What That Actually Looks Like.
Two years ago, if you wanted a custom internal tool for your business (a proper one, not a hacked-together spreadsheet), you had two options. Hire a full-stack developer and budget three to six months and anywhere from £20k to £100k. Or buy another subscription and accept that you’d be paying for features you don’t need, forever. That calculus has completely changed. And I want to show you exactly what changed, what it costs now, and why I’ve spent the last year rebuilding internal tools instead of buying them. What building software actually required in 2024 Let me be specific, because this matters for understanding how big the shift is. A typical internal tool (a dashboard, an approval workflow, a client onboarding portal) needed a React frontend, a Node.js API layer, and a PostgreSQL database. That’s before you’ve touched authentication, hosting, security, or any of the business logic specific to your operation. Full-stack developers in the UK and Europe were charging £60 to £120 per hour. An MVP took a minimum of three months. A mid-sized internal tool realistically cost £25,000 to £80,000 to build, and then needed ong…
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