Custom dashboard or off-the-shelf SaaS
A ready-made BI tool goes live in a day and charges for seats or queries. A custom dashboard has to be built, but it grows with you. When each option pays off.
The question isn't what it sounds like
It isn't about which tool is "better". Ready-made BI SaaS products are good — that's why they exist and have customers. It's about whether your case fits what such a tool assumes from the start: data in one place, standard charts, one agreed way of counting an "active user".
If it fits, you pay monthly and have a dashboard within a week. If it doesn't fit, you still pay monthly, plus your team's time spent forcing your data into someone else's model. That second option costs more than the invoice shows.
When a ready-made tool is enough
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Data in one place
One database, one source system. A ready-made tool's connector does exactly what it was built for.
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Standard metrics
Revenue, conversion, traffic — things every BI tool counts the same way, because the definition is standardised in the industry.
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Small team, one view
A handful of people looking at the same numbers. No need to vary views by role or embed the panel in anything else.
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A short horizon
A project running a few months, where the monthly SaaS cost is cheaper than the time it'd take to build anything of your own.
When a custom panel pays off
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Data across several systems
Combining a database, an external API and a spreadsheet in one view is usually done worse and more expensively by ready-made tools than by a custom integration.
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Different views for different roles
Management, sales, support — each a different set of tiles. In a SaaS product that's usually a higher pricing tier per seat, not a feature.
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A dashboard as part of your product
If the dashboard has to live inside an app you sell on, embedding someone else's tool shows at first glance — and sometimes can't be placed there at all.
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Data that can't leave
A regulated sector, or simply a security policy. A custom panel stays inside your own infrastructure; a SaaS product, by definition, doesn't.
Cost over time — roughly
- Ready-made SaaS, start
- days, billed from month one
- Ready-made SaaS, year 2–3
- cost grows with seats and queries
- Custom panel, start
- weeks, a one-off build cost
- Custom panel, year 2–3
- maintenance cost, usually lower and steadier
Questions
- Can we start with SaaS and move to a custom panel later?
- Yes, and it's a common path — start cheap, move once your data and requirements outgrow what a ready-made tool offers. Just export your data in a format you can carry with you from the start.
- What do you build custom dashboards on?
- On dash-b — our own software, which we maintain ourselves and which already runs in production. We don't start from zero on every project.
- What does a custom dashboard cost to build?
- It depends on the number of data sources and roles. A first panel is usually from three weeks — we give an exact quote after one conversation about what data, for whom.
Tell us which data you'd finally like to see together.
That's where we start — with what's not visible in one place today.
Write to us