The choice between using an off-the-shelf software solution or a customized one can cause several companies a great deal of stress. The most interesting things about this supposed problem is that almost every business knows that custom software development is the best choice. Despite this, fear still exists. The following are five reasons why businesses of any size should consider custom software development.

1. Your Industry Is Competitive

Does your software deliver your service or product to your customer? Those who promote off-the-shelf software state it gives businesses a competitive advantage of getting their product to market quicker than their competitors. Assuming this is true, it would only be an advantage in the short term. Your competitors already know of this as well, and will probably have the same solution as you, but position their offering as a newer version of yours. Off-the-shelf software can’t provide businesses with the same advantages as customized ones simply because it’s open to everyone. Customized software is the only long term competitive advantage in software development.

2. You Want Your Business To Grow

The assumption is that people want their businesses to grow. Custom software development can help with growth. It’s designed to be scalable and is able to streamline the process for growth due it becoming uniform to only your business. While integrating free database software, it also adds value to your business if your end game is to sell the business.

3. You Use Other Software

If your business uses other software programs and platforms, the odds of off-the-shelf software matching them is very small. As the different plug-ins, programs, and platforms are updated over time, those odds get even smaller. The way to ensure that your new software and existing software are able to work together is to use custom software development, one that is designed to adapt if needed.

4. Not As Time Consuming or Costly As It Seems

Time and cost are the biggest arguments against the use of custom software. This may have been the case in the past, but open source tools and software have changed those costs. The availability and quality of open source software is continuously growing. There are numerous tools, libraries, and frameworks for developers to choose from. These can be augmented and customized to suit your business needs at a lower cost and quicker.

5. Cyber-Security

It’s completely reasonable to be worried about the safety of your business’ data. Custom software built with open source technology is a large part of the defensive front. Open source software allows for industry experts to be able to review code to discover most issues with security, However, open source software code can be vulnerable before deployment. This is why it’s necessary for a professional provider of custom software to include risk management, remediation, and identification within the software.