How AI Has Flipped the Buy vs Build Equation

Written By:

Brad Anderson

CTO/Founder

7 Minute Read

Last Updated:

Jul 04, 2025

Executive Summary

You’re an exec of a rapidly growing company. Your SaaS subscriptions to Salesforce, once affordable, have ballooned into a significant budget line item. Integration headaches and compliance audits are becoming frequent and costly. Previously there was one decision and that was pick the SaaS product e.g. Salesforce and go with it. Now, with AI assisted development the buy vs build decision has shifted and there are better alternatives.

Thanks to modern AI-powered development tools, custom software costs have plummeted by up to 80%, while SaaS subscription fees continue to rise sharply. For organizations spending more than $50K annually on licenses—or grappling with complex integration and compliance requirements—building custom solutions is now often the cheaper, lower-risk path.

1. Why the Equation Changed

Three forces converged:

Generative code assistants (GitHub Copilot, Claude, GPT-4) now create 40–60 % of production code, compressing timelines from months to weeks.
Automated quality tooling writes tests, finds bugs, and generates documentation, slashing maintenance overhead.
SaaS inflation—especially “seat-based” pricing—outpaces IT budgets and forces painful licence audits.

The net result is a permanent cost inversion: custom can be cheaper than commodity.

2. The New Cost Math at a Glance

Old vs New Costs for CRM, CMS, Ecommerce

Application	Pre-AI Build Cost	AI-Era Build Cost	SaaS 3-Year Cost *
CRM	$150-500 K	$30-100 K	$288-960 K
CMS	$75-200 K	$15-50 K	$72-360 K
Ecommerce	$100-300 K	$25-75 K	$60-180 K

* Representative pricing: Salesforce Enterprise, Contentful Enterprise, Shopify Plus.

3. When Buying Still Wins — and When It Doesn’t

To help you quickly determine the best approach, follow this decision-making flowchart:

Buy vs Build Decision Framework

Software Need
     |
     v
User Count & Annual SaaS Cost
     |
     +-- < 25 users, < $50K/year ────────────→ BUY SAAS
     |
     +-- ≥ 50 users, ≥ $50K/year
         |
         v
    Workflow Complexity
         |
         +-- Standard workflows ─────────────→ HYBRID APPROACH
         |                                         |
         |                                         v
         |                                   Unique Data Models?
         |                                         |
         |                                         +-- Standard ─→ Buy + Integration
         |                                         +-- Unique ──→ BUILD CUSTOM
         |
         +-- Complex/Unique workflows
             |
             v
        Compliance Requirements
             |
             +-- Standard needs ─────────────→ HYBRID APPROACH
             +-- Strict compliance ──────────→ BUILD CUSTOM

Buy	Build	Hybrid
Simple, well-defined workflows	Unique workflows & data models	Phased migrations
< 25 users	≥ 50 users or $50 K / yr SaaS spend	Keep commodity modules, replace bottlenecks
No strict compliance needs	Data sovereignty / FedRAMP / WCAG	Combine open-source core + custom extensions

4. Platform Snapshots

CRM

Off-the-shelf works for small sales teams. Once headcount or compliance increases, licence costs quickly eclipse an AI-built alternative that you fully own.

Content Management

Headless SaaS shines for marketing sites with vanilla workflows. Complex editorial governance, multi-brand requirements, or API-first mandates favour custom CMS and in some cases still Wordpress because of marketing team preferences.

Ecommerce

Shopify is unbeatable below $10 M GMV. Enterprise merchants with dynamic pricing, multi-storefront logic, or SAP integration needs gain ROI by building.

(Need details? See our CMS migration guide and E-commerce replatform checklist).

5. Government & Enterprise Spotlight

Government agencies and Fortune 1000 firms share two pain points: licence scale and regulatory drag. A portal for a major airport we rebuilt saved $1.05 M in three years compared with Salesforce Government Cloud while achieving Section 508 compliance from day one.

6. AI Tooling Landscape (2025)

Category	Leading Tools	Typical Impact
Code generation	Copilot, Cursor, GPT-4	40-60 % faster feature delivery
Testing & QA	Diffblue, CodiumAI	Automated unit/integration tests, fewer bugs
Documentation	Mintlify, Swimm	Up-to-date docs, lower onboarding time
Low-code scaffolds	Vercel v0, Replit Agent	UI generation in minutes

7. Implementation Roadmap

timeline
    title Build-First Decision Timeline
    2025-Week1 : Assessment & TCO analysis
    2025-Week5 : AI-powered proof-of-concept
    2025-Week10: Full build kick-off or SaaS renegotiation

8. Key Objections — and Reality Checks

“Development takes too long.”
AI shortens timelines by 50–70 %, and phased releases deliver value early.

“We lack dev resources.”
Most SaaS rollouts need integrators anyway. Partner with an AI-enabled team—like Fruition—while up-skilling internally.

“Custom is riskier.”
Vendor lock-in, price hikes, and API limits are risks too. Modern modular stacks plus automated tests mitigate build risk.

9. Decision Checklist (Download)

Thinking of switching?
Take our Interactive Buy vs Build Quiz to get a personalized recommendation in under 3 minutes.

Conclusion

The question is no longer “Can we afford to build?”
It’s “Can we afford not to?”

Ready for an impartial assessment? Schedule a complimentary 30-minute consultation with our technology strategists and receive a personalised TCO model.

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Updated with July 2025 pricing data and AI tooling benchmarks.