THE BUILD VS. BUY SOFTWARE DECISION
Build vs. Buy Software Monetization
What’s the True Cost of Doing It Yourself?
Scaling Smarter with Software Monetization
For companies that build software, it can feel natural to also build the systems that support it. But when it comes to licensing, entitlements, and compliance, the decision to go it alone isn't always as straightforward, or as cost-effective, as it seems.
These capabilities are essential to how your products are delivered, protected, and monetized. Get them wrong, and you risk more than just technical issues, you compromise revenue, time-to-market, and customer experience.
A dedicated, purpose-built platform can reduce complexity and free your teams to focus on what truly drives growth. Before investing valuable time and resources in a homegrown approach, it’s worth asking: what’s the true cost of doing it yourself?
The Hidden Costs of Homegrown
Complex Modern Software Business Models
Technology companies now operate in hybrid environments, blending on-prem, SaaS, and offline deployment models. Managing multiple products across diverse monetization strategies, subscriptions, usage-based, outcome-based, requires a unified and scalable framework that homegrown systems struggle to deliver.
Technical Debt and Maintenance Overload
Homegrown solutions demand continuous engineering investment. They are often undocumented, inflexible, and reliant on niche knowledge, leading to slower product releases, mounting security risks, and a lack of agility when shifting pricing or packaging models. Maintaining these systems pulls engineers away from revenue-driving work, creating long-term opportunity costs and impacting time-to-market.
Preventing Growth and Scalability
As companies expand, organically or through M&A, custom systems struggle to scale. Integrating new products, adapting to emerging monetization models, and meeting evolving customer expectations becomes increasingly difficult without a purpose-built platform.
Operational Risk and Revenue Leakage
Relying on manual processes or audit-based “honor systems” leaves companies vulnerable to underreporting, piracy, and inconsistent entitlement enforcement. These gaps directly undermine recurring revenue goals and limit the ability to optimize commercial performance.
Reduced Business Agility
Without a standardized platform, pricing and packaging decisions require engineering support, slowing go-to-market efforts. Product managers face delays, missed opportunities, and growing internal pressure to deliver flexible, data-driven monetization models fast.
Outperforming Homegrown: The Case for Revenera's Platform
Revenera offers out-of-the-box solutions and integrations that support various business models. Revenera has a long history in the software industry and is the de facto standard for many segments. Its monetization platform offers solutions and integrations that enable software publishers and device manufacturers to implement a wide range of digital monetization models for cloud, SaaS, on-premises, and embedded applications. The transition from a hardware to a software model can seem daunting for many software vendors and device manufacturers. Still, Revenera provides well-established industry best practices to ease these challenges.
TRUSTED BY INDUSTRY LEADERS
It’s easy to be short-sighted and think you can build it yourself, but industry metrics suggest the initial cost of builds is only 20% of the lifetime cost of maintenance, so it’s a false economy. Our engineering team specialize in quantitative finance, and it would be a very poor use of their time to work on licensing instead of the features our clients value.
Business Agility
Commercial licensing and entitlement systems support greater automation by integrating with CRM and payment platforms to streamline the quote-to-cash process and reduce manual work. They also enable innovation through usage tracking, allowing for flexible monetization models like metered or consumption-based licensing that open new revenue streams and meet diverse customer needs. Additionally, these purpose-built solutions are designed to scale easily, making them ideal for suppliers that need to deliver high volumes of licenses quickly and flexibly. Together, these capabilities drive greater business agility, helping organizations adapt faster to market changes and customer demands.
Operational Efficiency
Standardizing on a single licensing and entitlements platform across all product lines, whether on-premises, SaaS, or hybrid, drives operational efficiency by consolidating systems, creating a consistent customer experience, and providing a single source of truth for data-driven decisions. A purpose-built platform also supports seamless integration during M&A activity, eliminating the need to manually piece together disparate monetization solutions. Additionally, by enabling self-service for customers and partners, organizations can reduce support overhead and improve responsiveness. These efficiencies free up resources, streamline operations, and position teams to scale more effectively.
Revenue Generation
Usage tracking plays a critical role in revenue generation by offering actionable insights across the customer lifecycle. It helps identify churn risks early by flagging inactive users, enabling proactive re-engagement strategies that protect and grow ARR. By analyzing usage patterns, you can also uncover piracy and unauthorized use, turning infringement data into targeted sales opportunities that convert lost revenue into new business.
Purpose-built monetization platforms also deliver significant long-term ROI by reducing total cost of ownership and ongoing maintenance expenses. They help minimize engineering opportunity costs associated with building and supporting homegrown systems, resulting in an average 426% ROI with a rapid payback period of less than six months.
See the Results Revenera Delivers
426%
ROI over three years
90%
faster time-to-market
<6
months payback period
When you factor in all the testing and configuration requirements for licensing, it wouldn’t make sense for two engineers to spend two years building a system that would likely run into issues and not play nicely in every environment. Instead, Revenera’s secure platform allows us to invest more time in developing the capabilities that add value and ensure better outcomes for customers.
Resources
Case Study
a.i. solutions® Launch Flexible Licensing to Accelerate Growth
See how they saved two years in development time, reduced support tickets by 500%, and continue to grow.
Industry Report
Forrester Total Economic Impact Study
Learn More About 426% ROI and Operational Efficiencies Enabled by Revenera
Webinar
Hidden Costs of Homegrown Software Monetization Systems (And How to Avoid Them)
Don't Let Hidden Costs Drain Your Revenue! Secure your spot at this live Revenera webinar now and discover how to eliminate inefficiencies while maximizing profitability.
From the Blog
Blog
How to License Software in a Hybrid World
Blog
Software Monetization Models and Strategies – 2023 Report
Blog
How to Stop Software Piracy
Want to learn more?
See how Revenera's Software Monetization platform can help you take products to market fast, unlock the value of your IP and accelerate revenue growth.