Custom Vs Off The Shelf

Custom Vs Off The Shelf 

Off the Shelf Advantages: 

• It is relatively cheap
• It is easily available from most computer shops
• It will have been thoroughly tested so there won’t be any serious problems or bugs
• There will be lots of user support i.e. books, user guides, online help and discussion forums on the Internet
• Available immediately

Off the Shelf Disadvantages: 

• No access to original developers
• May not meet all client needs
• Large memory footprint
• Lots of ‘unneeded’ features

Custom Advantages: 

• The company will get the exact software/system that they need
• The software will work exactly how they want it to work
• The software will only have the features that they specifically need in their business.

Custom Disadvantages: 

• It takes a long time to develop such a system, between a few months to  years.
• It costs a great deal of money to develop such a system. 
• The company may need to employ a team of people such as business analysts, programmers, testers etc.
• There will be little in the way of user support and online help.

An online ordering system for a small company. [Essay]

Both off the shelf and custom made software could be purchased by the small company for an online ordering system. Off the shelf software is much cheaper in comparison to custom, therefore this software is likely to be more appropriate for a small business as they are likely to have limited funds to spend on this software. As well as this the small company's needs for the software are not really specific, there's already off the shelf software that would meet the requirements of the small business, therefore it would not be necessary to spend extra money on custom made software.

The off the shelf software would be available to the company immediately, where as they would have to wait time for the custom made software to be built, therefore it would be beneficial for the business to use off the shelf software. 

The small company may also not be experts at using software's / systems, therefore off the shelf software would be more appropriate, this is because there is lots of support available such as user guides and online help. Therefore, if the company was to have any problems, then lots of help would be available to them in order to solve the issue. Whereas, this would not be the case for custom made software, if there was problems with this they would have talk to the original developer, which may be difficult.