Build vs buy, six months in.
A retro on the SaaS vs custom-build calls we got right and wrong.
Six months ago we ran a workshop with three of our hospitality clients. The question on the table: when do you build, and when do you buy?
We left that workshop with five recommendations. Today, we can see how each one played out. Three were right. Two were wrong. Here's why.
Right call: buying the channel manager
Everyone hates their channel manager. Nobody wants to build a new one. We told all three clients to use SiteMinder or Cloudbeds and stop fighting it. Six months in, none have switched, none have complained beyond the normal grumbling.
Right call: buying the email tool
Brevo, Klaviyo, Mailchimp — they're all good enough. Building an email-sending pipeline in 2026 is technical debt creation, not technology.
Wrong call: buying the booking engine
We told one client to use a popular booking engine. They did. The conversion rate cratered. The off-the-shelf engine has 14 steps to checkout. Their old custom engine had 4. We're now rebuilding the custom engine for them. The cost will pay back in six weeks of recovered conversion.
Lesson: we anchored on the wrong axis. We optimised for "is the SaaS good enough" when we should have asked "does the SaaS impose its own UX on the customer." For booking engines, the answer matters more than the cost saving.