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Cost a custom build against buying one

Put in your team size, day rate and months to first release. It costs three years of both sides, names the headcount above which building wins, and cites its sources.

Everyone who would use it. A company subscription starts at 200.

A product owner, engineers, QA, a designer and security — and the team stays after launch.

A custom platform usually takes 12 to 18 months, and longer before people use it.

Salary, benefits and overhead. We publish no benchmark; your finance team has it.

What you would be building 2 of 13

Most internal teams scope one or two of these. Within a year, the business asks for the rest.

Benchmarks: MangoApps build-vs-buy brief, 27 Oct 2026

6 people × 15 months × $900/day × 21 days = $1.7M to build 2 of 13 systems

Build it

$4.1M

over 3 years — $1.7M to build, then $1.4M a year to keep it running

Communications & Intranet

$972K

over 3 years — $324K a year at list, all 13 apps included

Over 3 years the build costs 4.2× the subscription.

To match the subscription you would have to build and run all of it with 1.4 people for 3 years. Building is the cheaper of the two above about 12,600 employees.

Employees feel it after about 21 months on a build, or 12-18 weeks on MangoApps.

What the team keeps doing after launch

  • Mobile OS updates, twice a year, on two native apps
  • Browser changes and security patches
  • Accessibility requirements
  • Identity provider changes
  • An integration update every time a connected system changes its API

And re-earned every year

  • ISO 27001:2022
  • SOC 2 Type II
  • HIPAA and GDPR support
  • Third-party penetration testing

MangoApps build-vs-buy brief, 27 Oct 2026

What this arithmetic ignores
  • The build figure is people only. It excludes hosting, security tooling, audit fees, app store accounts and the cost of the systems you would still be integrating.
  • It assumes the team ships on the month you set. Most do not.
  • The subscription figure is list price for the suite named above, before the volume, term and non-profit discounts a proposal applies, and before any professional services.
  • Neither figure prices the delay. A build that lands 18 months later is 18 months of value not collected, which this calculator does not count.
  • This is arithmetic, not a quote.

You might also want What does another year of deciding cost? What does one platform return in a year?

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