Bespoke Software vs Off The Shelf Solutions: Everything You Need To Know

[Mitchell Jannette]

For companies to achieve success these days, it's more crucial than ever to stand out from the competition.

Given the stakes, more firms are looking at bespoke software vs off the shelf solutions for their business. We'll discuss some of the advantages of each and take a deep dive into the Laracle development team's creation of a highly broscorp.net successful bespoke software solution, ticketing application Seatedly.

But first, let's define our terms in brief.

What Is Commercial Off-The-Shelf Software?

Commercial off the shelf software (COTS) is widely distributed, generic, and ready to use straight out of the box. It's designed for the mass market, calibrated to sell as many units across as broad a swath of company types as possible.

Of course, the trade-off here is obvious: such a broadly appealing application might not do everything every company needs it to do. For many, it will lack the desired features.

You could say that COTS is designed to meet some of the needs of most of the people most of the time.

What is Bespoke Software?

Custom or bespoke software solutions, on the other hand, are created from scratch by a developer to fit the specific needs of one business. Tailored software is crafted to match the existing business model of the company that commissions it and to adapt to and work with their legacy systems.

A bespoke developer team works with a given company to fully understand their unique needs and the way their current system works in detail. Then they take the time to not only create the precise tools needed to maximise the firm's efficiency and cost-savings, but also to create a design aesthetic that's a 100 per cent match for the company's style.

Differences Between Bespoke Software Vs Off the Shelf

Up-Front Cost – Up-front costs are cheaper with generic items of any sort, software included. It's important to remember, however, that subsequent expansion of your business using COTS can bump up your outlay considerably. You'll be required to purchase more licences once you scale up, and that's if you can even still use your original COTS. At a certain point in their growth trajectory, many companies find generic software is no longer compatible with the way the business is evolving.

Time – Buying and installing a ready-to-go application is naturally faster than having a developer design a custom one. (Although it must be said that the time you save in terms of efficiency and reduced labour once a bespoke software solution is up and running usually dwarfs the wait time needed to create it.)

Maintenance – Buying generic software from a massive corporate developer means most bugs have been eliminated. However, don't count on a fast resolution if you do encounter a problem when you call a software giant's labyrinthine customer service department. With bespoke software vs off the shelf applications, however, you're just a phone call away from the actual humans who wrote it, and who can therefore fix any issues.