Buy off the shelf software solutions?
Question: I want to create a software as a service development company that offers a service to streamline operations in the manufacturing industry. I found some softwares from codecanyon.net that kind of does what I want and they only cost about $100 USD. Would Evermight be able to leverage off of these affordable scripts to build my SAAS platform and business?
Answer: It depends on what you plan to do.
If you're building a prototype/proof of concept model which you intend to throw away, then cheap downloaded software scripts will work. You can pay a developer to re-skin the app.
If you're going to extend the system such that it forms the back bone of your business then it won't work because:
- Purchased solution will have insufficient documentation
- High chance existing solution will consist of poor quality code
Developers spend 80% of hte time reading code and 20% fo the time writing code. As an analogy, imagine you were hired to write chapters 110 to 120 of War & Peace. Before you can write these chapters, you need to read chapters 1 to chapters 109. Everytime I've been asked to work on software that's bought off the shelf, I spend so much time studying hte past developer(s) work that it isn't worth it (the only exception are large scale softwares where the original architects write very good documentation about the foundation of the system. The documentation is almost as lengthy as the code itself. Examples would be wordpress, drupal, Google apps etc...).
So whenever you look at buying a template/software off the shelf, assume the only thing you can do is change colors and company logo. Everything else must work EXACTLY as is.
You'll also notice that all the companies in our competitor research did not build their business off of solutions like the ones you mentioned below. In fact, I can't think of a successful technology company that powered their core offerings via an off-the-shelf solution.