Should your company write your own system to save on an online service?

Lately, the online school where I am learning English to reach almost the native level, quit using a SaaS service for online meetings (popular one) and decided to write its own one.

The main adventage of it is that they can customize it and save money on subscription. The downside is they will spend money on writing it and maintaining. There will be also the cost of downtimes and bugs resulting in poor satisfaction for students like me.

A lot of companies struggle now with costs, and online services are things that are easy to be cut cost on. It only takes one click to cancel subscription. For a company that uses twenty or thirty SaaS it can be a game changer.

You probably wonder what is my opinion about it, and specifically, since you are here, if your company should write an alternative for a SaaS.

It is a difficult question because every business is different. But I can give you some insight as a person that is a software developer and an entrepreneur.

I have worked as a commercial coder for 16 years and 8 years as a business owner.

It is very tempting to write own services to replace SaaS you are using. It may save you some money and give you a competitive adventage.

On the other hand it takes time, money to create it and maintain.

You should really consider if having the service is core for your business, and…