Salesforce vs Custom Development: What’s Right For Your Business?

In this dynamic and ever-evolving technological innovation landscape, you have a choice to make – a choice that will influence your company’s efficiency, growth, and, ultimately, success.

Imagine having professional developers create a custom application tailored to your exact needs or the ease of harnessing the unparalleled capabilities of Salesforce, a renowned leader in cloud-based solutions.

Well, this choice isn’t just about technology, it’s about aligning your tools with your business goals, budget, and long-term vision and shaping the future of your enterprise.

While both Salesforce and custom app development have their strengths, understanding the key differences between them is essential to making the right decision.  So let’s break it down bit by bit and strategically map your digital future.

Understanding Custom Application Development

Custom app development encompasses the complete journey of conceptualizing, creating, launching, and sustaining an application tailored to the specific requirements of clients or individual users to address their unique business needs. For instance, Uber (a riding application) was developed from scratch to give users a seamless experience of traveling within the city or intercity.

According to Grandview Research, the custom app development market is growing at a 22.4% CAGR (2023–2030), reflecting the increasing demand for personalized solutions. But is custom development the right fit for your business? Let’s explore its pros and cons.

Pros of Developing Custom Applications

Since every service/product has brought some positive and negative aspects with it. Similarly, custom app development has its pros and cons. Let’s first talk about what benefits you can unlock while opting for this option. 

1. Tailored solutions

Every user/client or customer wants to experience a personal interaction with a business where they feel valued and catered solely. Leveraging the expertise of developers for custom app development allows you to make your customers feel entertained exclusively.

Similarly, customers would like to opt for the company providing more personalized solutions. Anyone having low or no code practice or expertise can help you achieve this with custom app development. This is because you can personalize the app to meet customer satisfaction and their requirements. Such added value helps you win customer trust and extends customer retention.

2. Complete Control Over the Development Process

In-house developers are designing and developing an application for you, hence interacting with them 10x times easier for you. You have complete control over the development requirements and needs.

Custom applications provide you with complete control over your digital toolkit. They are the primary aspect to unlock your business’s full potential by ensuring the technology aligns with your unique vision. While off-the-shelf solutions have their place, if you’re looking for a tailored, efficient, and secure digital future, custom applications are the path to explore.

3. Exclusivity of All Features & Functionalities Developed

Custom app development is a popular choice among companies that value ownership and control of their software solutions. By opting for customized software, businesses can effectively manage their systems and data, as well as modify the software functions and development methodologies as per their requirements.

Moreover, customized software solutions allow businesses to seamlessly integrate crucial data from multiple sources, which not only streamlines their business processes but also results in better decision-making. The ability to incorporate valuable customer feedback further enhances the software’s usability and functionality, ultimately leading to a more satisfied customer base.

By investing in custom software development, businesses can bolster their reputation, cultivate more robust customer loyalty, and maintain a leading position in an ever more competitive market environment.

Cons of Custom App Development

Now let us take a closer look at some of the disadvantages of opting for this model;

1. Higher Upfront Costs:

Building a custom app requires a significant amount of investment in development, infrastructure, and resources. This might sometimes exceed the existing budget and be financially draining. Businesses might often be required to seek external financing or make trade-offs in other areas to support the development process. Additionally, ongoing maintenance and updates can further strain financial resources, leading to long-term budgetary challenges.

2. Longer Development Time:

A lot of time goes into designing, developing, and testing a custom-made application. This can eventually delay your time-to-market. For instance, depending on the complexity of an app it can take up to 6–12 months to get launched successfully.

3. Ongoing Maintenance:

Since no platform could take care of the updates or bug fixes while developing a custom app one has to be responsible for all updates, bug fixes, and security patches on their own. Plus, this ongoing maintenance aspect can be quite resource-intensive as well.

Understanding Salesforce

Salesforce stands as a top-tier cloud-based platform within the realm of business technology worldwide. This platform provides services for Sales, marketing, customer service, collaboration, analytics, and building custom apps. As of now, more than 150,000 businesses cater to the solution and experience drastic management and growth of their business.

Since Salesforce is a one-stop solution for every industry, it become the foremost choice for all businesses. But why choose it when you can build a custom app? Let’s dive into its pros and cons.

Pros of Leveraging Salesforce

1. Rapid Development

Salesforce is renowned for its lightning-fast development capabilities, aura components, low code-no code solutions, and inbuilt templates. It provides businesses with tools to create, customize, and deploy applications quickly. In fact, if you’re considering creating tailored solutions within the platform, understanding What is Salesforce app development can help you make informed decisions.

2. Enhanced Scalability

As your business grows, the platform scales with you. Whether you’re a small startup or a well-established enterprise, it offers a scalable environment that adapts to your evolving needs. For instance, if you want to extend functionality like storage, extensions, productivity tools, or any other, Salesforce is the solution you need.

3. Helps Provide Better Customer Service

With its robust Customer Relationship Management (CRM) functionalities, businesses can gain in-depth knowledge about customer preferences, purchase history, interests, and behaviors. This information empowers businesses to deliver personalized service, boosting customer satisfaction and loyalty.

4. Cloud-based Tech

The platform is a fully cloud-based platform that allows you the flexibility to access your data and applications from any location. This offers enhanced flexibility, as you are no longer restricted to a single location to access your data. By shifting to Salesforce, you can save on infrastructure and maintenance expenses while still enjoying a powerful and secure system that can be accessed from anywhere in the world.

5. Built-in Features

Offering a vast array of features, the platform simplifies business operations. From automation tools to analytics and reporting capabilities, Salesforce has everything under one roof you need to manage your daily tasks and track performance metrics.

With this platform, you won’t have to spend time and resources looking for third-party solutions because everything you need is built-in. Whether you’re managing leads, automating tasks, or analyzing data, the Salesforce development lifecycle becomes much more convenient. There’s no need to search for external solutions; everything is available on one platform.

6. Less Time Spent on Data Entry

Time is an invaluable asset in the world of business, regardless of whether you’re operating a small startup or a large corporation. The challenge lies in finding ways to free up time from mundane and repetitive tasks, which, while essential, can be quite tedious.

Fortunately, there are multiple avenues to explore for task management optimization. One such avenue is the integration of automation software into your existing platform, or you can leverage the full potential of Salesforce.

By incorporating Salesforce into your workflow, data accessing becomes a minute task. With its robust automation capabilities, routine tasks are seamlessly managed, allowing you to redirect your focus toward strategic business initiatives. This results in enhanced productivity and, in the long run, a more robust bottom line.

Cons of Leveraging Salesforce 

1 Subscription Costs:

The platform operates on a subscription model, which can become expensive as your business scales and requires the addition of more users or features. For instance:  costs can incur for premium add-ons like Marketing Cloud or Analytics besides the routine subscriptions.

2 Limited Customization:

Although Salesforce is highly customizable, there are limits to how much its core functionality can be modified. This often restricts the ability to fully customize the app as needed.

3 Dependence on Salesforce:

Well, last but not least for checking the availability of features, security patches, and other updates one has to be completely dependent on the platform and its releases/ announcements.

Factors to Consider When Comparing Custom Development and Salesforce

Finally, you’ve ventured into the realm of custom app development and Salesforce, and now you’re weighing the advantages of these solutions. It’s time to move from thinking to action. Still, if you’re finding it difficult to make a decision, don’t fret! We’re here to assist you. By letting you know the best practice, we can make it easier for you to decide what’s the best Salesforce vs custom development.

Let’s delve into the key considerations:

1. Budget & Cost Considerations

Salesforce, being a leading player in the CRM industry, offers a subscription-based pricing model with a monthly license cost. While this may seem costly, the value is in the convenience it brings. It eliminates the need for ongoing maintenance, juggling multiple solutions, or hiring in-house or freelance developers. It’s a recurring payment that allows you to focus hassle-free on your company’s core competencies.

On the other hand, custom solutions entail higher upfront development costs. However, they can provide more cost control in the long term. With custom development, you’ll need to budget for initial development, infrastructure, and ongoing maintenance. This might seem counterintuitive, as you’ll also have to consider requirements like in-house space, resources, tool availability, or the need for freelance developers, along with associated employee benefits costs. Additionally, you’ll be responsible for operating, managing, and maintaining the app without expert assistance, which can be a demanding task.

2. Time-to-market

Salesforce enables faster deployment and reduces time-to-market due to its robust set of pre-built features and configurations, which allow businesses to rapidly implement sales, marketing, and customer service processes. With Salesforce, organizations can significantly reduce the time and effort required to build out their custom solutions, ultimately enabling them to get up and running more quickly and with less risk. This shows that being faster and more agile can give you a big edge in today’s business world.

On the other hand, custom app development solutions usually take longer to develop and implement because you’re building from scratch. It can vary in project complexity and length.

3. Security Considerations

Customers seek a trustworthy and dependable platform that leaves no room for errors. Only partners who can guarantee an impeccable level of data security can meet these demands. This is where Salesforce excels. It boasts an array of challenging security measures, including encrypted authentication information. However, the effectiveness of these security measures is contingent upon the active configuration and management of your instance. In general, Salesforce is considered a secure option, particularly for businesses that diligently adhere to best practices.

At the same time, when we talk about custom app development, security risks can be higher if not properly addressed. You’ll have to invest in security measures, code reviews, and regular updates to minimize risks with custom app development.

4. Integration with Existing Systems

Since any platform you leverage does not have all the solutions you need to bring productivity and enhance ongoing operations. That’s why integrating external apps or third-party software helps you unlock the benefits of multiple apps in one place.

Salesforce has its own marketplace called Appexchange, which has pre-built or ready-to-use applications that you can select for integration. By exploring the marketplace, you can select apps for sales, marketing, analytics, customer service, automation, and much more. You can select the app required for integration for your business.

By leveraging it’s extensive integration capabilities, it allows seamless integration with third-party apps using connectors, APIs, or Zapier tools.

On the other hand, custom solutions offer greater flexibility in terms of integration but require more development effort and expertise to connect with existing systems. Since your developers are taking care of all the tidbits and challenges, they address them while developing the app. In turn, it takes lots of your valuable time and hidden costs associated with the development process.

5. Customization Requirements

Customization is the key to agile customer engagement, conversion, and retention. So, to ensure your custom-built app helps not only in streamlining your business operational activities but also other businesses to expand their customer base.

And what’s better than developing custom apps on Salesforce CRM? It offers you diverse features and functionality to perform customization the way your business wants. By leveraging its declarative tools like Lightning App Builder, aura components, etc., you can ensure your custom app has all the features to achieve your business objectives. Further, with the help of Salesforce application development services the process can be streamlined, strategized, and become effortless allowing you to focus on growing your business.

Moving ahead, Salesforce customization offers complete flexibility, allowing you to tailor the application to your exact needs. This is ideal if you have highly specific or complex requirements.

To help you decide, here’s a side-by-side comparison of the two options:

How to Make the Right Decision? 

The right choice depends on your business’s unique needs, budget, and goals. However, for a better understanding here are a few use cases that could be  a quick guide for making a sound decision:

Cases where one can choose Salesforce:

• If your business needs a quick, out-of-the-box solution.
• In case your business processes align with standard CRM functionalities.
• If budget is a factor of consideration and your business prefers a subscription-based cost model.

Cases where one can choose Custom Development:

• If your business has unique or complex requirements that can’t be fulfilled with existing Salesforce functionalities.
• In case you require complete control over your software and data.
• If you want to build proprietary features that set you apart from competitors.

Final Thoughts 

Figuratively both Salesforce and custom app development offer distinct advantages, but the best choice depends on your business’s priorities. While Salesforce is ideal for businesses looking for speed, scalability, and ease of use. On the other hand, custom development is perfect for those seeking complete control and tailored solutions. 

If you’re still unsure about which direction to take, consider reaching out to a reputable Salesforce Development Company like Cyntexa. They can assess your requirements, budget, timeline, and long-term goals, guiding you toward the best decision for your business.

Still uncertain about what is best for your business? Schedule a free consultation call with our experts to explore tailored solutions that fit your objectives.

AUTHOR

Vishwajeet Srivastava

Salesforce Data Cloud, AI Products, ServiceNow, Product Engineering

Co-founder and CTO at Cyntexa also known as “VJ”. With 10+ years of experience and 22+ Salesforce certifications, he’s a seasoned expert in Salesforce Data Cloud & AI Products, Product Engineering, AWS, Google Cloud Platform, ServiceNow, and Managed Services. Known for blending strategic thinking with hands-on expertise, VJ is passionate about building scalable solutions that drive innovation, operational efficiency, and enterprise-wide transformation.