The "Build vs. Buy" Dilemma in 2026

Every Product Manager faces the same question: Should we build this feature in-house, or buy a SaaS solution to handle it?

In 2020, the answer was almost always “Buy.” Why build auth when you have Auth0? Why build billing when you have Stripe?

But in 2026, the calculus is changing.

The proliferation of AI coding assistants and open-source libraries has lowered the cost of “Building” by an order of magnitude. What used to take a team of five engineers three months can now be done by one engineer in two weeks.

The Rise of “Owned Infrastructure”

At App Studio, we are seeing a shift back toward owning your core tech stack.

When you rely entirely on third-party SaaS wrappers, you are:

• Leaking Data: You are sending your customer interactions to third-party servers.
• Rent-Seeking: You are paying a premium for convenience that no longer exists.
• Vendor Locked: You cannot pivot your product because you are constrained by the API limitations of your vendor.

Our Recommendation

Buy the commodities (Payments, Email delivery). Build the core value.

If your startup’s value proposition is “Analyzing Legal Documents,” do not wrap an OpenAI API and call it a day. You must build your own ingestion pipeline, your own vector storage, and your own fine-tuned models.

That is where the equity value lives. That is what we help you build.