Been building custom internal tools for small businesses lately and noticed the same pattern over and over:

A business signs up for 4-5 different SaaS tools (CRM, spreadsheets, a scheduling app, an inventory tracker) because each one solves one problem well. Six months later they're paying $400+/mo combined, none of the tools talk to each other, and someone on the team is manually copy-pasting data between them every single day.

The math that actually matters: if your team is spending 5+ hours/week on manual data-shuffling between tools, that's not a $50/mo problem — that's a $1,000+/mo problem in wasted labor, and it compounds as you grow.

A few signs it's time to stop stacking SaaS and build something custom instead:

• You've said "we just export a CSV and re-upload it into the other tool" more than once

• Your "workaround" for a missing feature involves a shared Google Sheet that only one person understands

• You're paying for features in 3 different tools that you use in 1

Custom doesn't mean expensive or slow anymore — a focused internal tool (one dashboard, one automation, one integration) can usually be scoped and shipped in 1-2 weeks if it's solving a specific, well-understood workflow.

Curious if others here have hit this same wall — what's the SaaS stack you're most tempted to rip out and replace?