Every team eventually faces the question: do we buy an off-the-shelf tool, or build our own? Both answers have a real cost, and the usual framing hides a third option.
Buy
Buying is fast and cheap to start. The cost shows up later: you adapt your process to the tool, you pay per seat forever, you stack more tools to fill the gaps, and you never own the thing or its data.
Build
Building gets you exactly what you want, eventually. The cost is upfront and large: hiring or contracting, long timelines, and the permanent burden of maintenance. Most teams can't justify it, so they don't, and they settle for buy.
The third option
Unstack is custom software delivered as a subscription. You get the fit and ownership of build, with the speed and cost shape of buy: a working v1 in 2 weeks, no big upfront fee, and our team maintaining and extending it through unlimited feature requests.
It's not for every situation, if one cheap tool genuinely fits, buy it. But when the honest choice is between a tool that doesn't fit and a build you can't afford, there's now a third path.
By The Unstack team