From “Build vs. Buy” to “Build With”: Why Internal Tools Need a Unified Platform, Not Another App

The “build vs. buy” debate no longer fits today’s reality. Internal tools have become more complex, powered by AI and connected to dozens of systems, making both approaches harder to justify. Manually building every app drains precious engineering time, while managing multiple SaaS tools creates a tangled web of workflows. A unified platform brings together the best of both worlds, giving teams the flexibility of DIY with the speed and reliability of SaaS. Below, we’ll explore why traditional approaches are breaking down, the hidden costs they create, and how a unified platform is the best solution for today’s internal tooling needs.

The Rising Complexity of Internal Tooling

Internal applications are no longer simple CRUD dashboards. Modern businesses depend on tools that integrate with dozens of databases, APIs, CRMs, and more. A DIY approach means every new app requires full-stack developers, DevOps expertise, and QA cycles, while buying off-the-shelf SaaS often leads to siloed data and manual workarounds.

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These challenges are amplified by AI. The landscape is shifting extremely fast with LLMs evolving every few weeks, and a single wrong decision can lead to months of wasted engineering time and budget. As a result, Gartner predicts that 30% of Generative AI projects will be abandoned by the end of 2025.

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 Armand Ruiz, VP of AI Platform @ IBM, also warns that: 

“Most enterprise AI failures start with the same decision: ‘Let’s build it ourselves.’ It sounds bold, strategic, and cost-effective, but it’s usually a distraction. LLMs evolve every 3 weeks, tooling every 3 months, while teams are still maintaining the CRM. That’s not a strategy. That’s self-sabotage…The data is clear: AI projects succeed 2–3x more often when enterprises buy or partner. The smarter play? Buy the infrastructure. Partner on the orchestration. Build only what differentiates you.”

The Hidden Costs of DIY Development

Building internal tools yourself may feel like the safe, strategic choice. You avoid vendor lock-in, stay in control, and move faster than procurement cycles. But beneath the surface, DIY often leads up:

• High opportunity costs: Maintaining custom internal apps takes away valuable engineering time from core product innovation. Teams often spend months building and debugging rather than delivering differentiated value.
• Infrastructure burden: Self-hosted solutions require significant investment in infrastructure, monitoring, CI/CD pipelines, security audits, and more. Each new app adds to the operational overhead.‍
• Fragmentation and scalability issues: DIY stacks become brittle as they scale, making it harder to onboard engineers, secure endpoints, or roll out new features quickly.

The Hidden Costs of SaaS Sprawl

SaaS promises speed but can introduce its own set of challenges:

• Fragmented workflows: Teams end up switching between dozens of SaaS apps that don’t integrate smoothly, creating friction and inefficiency.
• Data silos: Each vendor controls its own data, making it harder to unify information across systems.
• Inconsistent standards: SaaS providers has their own standards, leaving it up to organizations to stitch together centralized governance on their own.
• Rising costs: Per-seat and feature-based pricing escalates quickly as teams and use cases grow.
• Limited flexibility: SaaS solutions aren’t built for specific workflows. Customization is often minimal or locked behind expensive enterprise plans.

The bottom line: whether you build or buy, both approaches put strain on engineering teams, introduce hidden costs, and leave organizations struggling to keep pace with the rapidly changing landscape.

Why Internal Tools Need a Unified Platform

A unified platform brings integrations, security, governance, workflows, and more under one roof so teams aren’t stuck stitching together brittle DIY stacks or juggling dozens of SaaS vendors. With a consistent foundation to build and scale on, teams can ship faster, reduce overhead, and adapt easily as technology evolves.

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The real shift isn’t “build vs. buy”, it's “build with”. A unified platform allows teams to focus on what makes differentiated value while leaning on proven infrastructure for everything else. And given the complexity of today’s tooling landscape, this shift extends beyond platforms themselves. As Andreessen Horowitz reported, more and more companies are adopting Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) who work directly with customers, providing hands-on technical and product support to help launch first apps quickly and set teams up for long-term success.

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Superblocks embodies this approach, offering a unified platform that gives engineering, IT, and business teams a shared foundation for building internal software with:

• Centralized integration and governance: Integrations with core systems are created once, governed centrally, and reused across applications. Data stays safe with SSO, granular RBAC, audit logs, and monitoring built-in.
• Guardrails for AI-generated code: Coding standards, design systems, and best practices are automatically enforced so AI-generated code stays compliant and consistent. With these safeguards, Clark, the agentic AI layer, helps teams accelerate development confidently at scale.
• Real-time monitoring and auditing: A single place of workflows, applications, and integrations makes it easy to track activity, spot issues early, and keep systems reliable as they scale.
• Flexible ways to build: Generate full-stack apps with Clark, refine them with the drag-and-drop visual editor, or extend them in code with the React backend using any IDE (e.g. Cursor, Windsurf, VSCode). 

With these “last mile” pillars in place, organizations can move faster, empower non-technical users, and scale to production without multiplying overhead.

DIY vs. SaaS vs. Superblocks: A Quick Comparison

Here’s how DIY development, traditional SaaS, and a unified platform like Superblocks stack up side by side:

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The Future of Internal Tooling is Unified

As we've explored above, the “build vs. buy” debate no longer applies. The future belongs to organizations that “build with” unified platforms, leveraging the expert support and proven infrastructure so they can focus on what truly differentiates their business.

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This approach helps organizations keep pace with rapid change, stay within security guardrails, and deliver better internal experiences without multiplying overhead. Superblocks is built for this future, combining the flexibility of custom development with the speed, reliability, and governance of SaaS. Book a demo today to learn more.