Custom Software vs SaaS: The Real 5-Year Cost...

The average small and mid-size company spends $11,200 per employee per year on SaaS subscriptions. For a 50-person team, that's $560,000 a year, and it grows every year. SaaS vendors raise prices 7–12% annually as a rule, so the same bill crosses $800,000 within five years even if headcount stays flat. SaaS works beautifully at the start. A two-person startup should absolutely use Stripe, Notion, and HubSpot. But once a business has real operational complexity, 30, 80, or 200 people with establi