There are a lot of different ecommerce, subscription and payment solutions available. And the cost of these solutions differ greatly. If you are consulting a company or looking for a solution for your own project, here are some pointers that can help make the choice easier between investing in building your own payment solution or opting for an out of the box solution.
Especially when it comes to subscription and payment solutions there is a lot to consider and the consequences of either choice can be far reaching.
As from your earliest idea onwards you’ll be answering two simple questions. Two questions that force you to prioritize your resources, and consider long term financial consequences. “Do I build or buy?” And “Do I build or buy it now?”
You should ask these questions in this exact order. You might be inclined to ask the question if you need something now, first. But contrary to your instinct make the assumption you need it first, and consider what it takes to build something and compare purchase options. Why? Because it forces you consider long term impact for your business first and from there it will be easier to motivate the decision to pursue this option or not.
These simple questions will help you to invest in things that will generate income or save you money in the long run. Breaking these questions down will give you a simple and easy to follow framework for all future financial decisions:
– Make the assumption you need it
– Consider what it takes to build it
– Compare purchase options – if you were to buy this solution.
– Pursue this option yes, no or later
In general when it comes to making investment decision about your product your leading principle should be: own it and control it. Every part of your product that is essential to your value proposition you should build and own – period.
Make sure you or your company owns all ip. All tech stack and resources should be in your company’s name and control. Not on the server managed and controlled by the contractor helping you build YOUR product.
It has cost us a lot of time and money to get everything from our initial supplier towards our own environment. A decision hastely made out of convenience in the early stages – proved a big and costly mistake a year into the project. That is not so say buying in services to support your product isn’t something you should consider. Depending on the stage of your business using third party server & compute space, for example, is a very efficient decision. And when it comes to payment platforms there is really no way around them.
A broader discussion on making sound financial decisions – if you are interested you can read (or listen to) here
So how does this play out when it comes to choosing a payment solution? Let’s follow this “making sound financial decisions” framework.