Build versus buy, explained without the jargon

The advice here is unglamorous, which is probably why it gets skipped. Here is build versus buy without the vocabulary that usually surrounds it.

Clear scope protects the client at least as much as it protects the agency. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

The short version

Build what makes you different, buy the rest. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it. The practical test is whether someone new to the project could tell, in a minute, that it had been handled.

Why people complicate it

Most of the confusion comes from tooling rather than from the idea itself. Small and consistent beats large and occasional here.

Off-the-shelf is cheaper until the customisation starts. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.

Turning this into a decision

Count ongoing maintenance in the build column. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.

In practice

Strategy work is mostly deciding what not to do, and writing it down so it stays decided. Three things worth confirming about build versus buy before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Build what makes you different, buy the rest — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Most of the value here comes from doing the first two things, not all of them.