Honest comparisons, including when you should not hire us.

Keep Tally for accounts, GST and audit; it does that job well and your accountant already knows it. Build a custom ERP only for the operational work Tally does not follow, such as production stages, job work, approvals and field orders, and let it post finished vouchers into Tally. Replacing Tally outright is rarely worth the disruption.

Choose Odoo if your processes are close to standard and you are willing to adjust the rest to its modules; its breadth is hard to match at the price. Choose a custom ERP when your workflow is unusual enough that bending Odoo would need heavy partner customisation, or when per-user subscriptions across a large workforce outweigh a one-time build.

Most small and mid-sized sales teams should start on Zoho CRM: it is affordable, well supported in India and more configurable than most teams ever use. A custom CRM pays off when one customer moves through several parallel tracks, when WhatsApp is effectively your whole sales channel, or when the CRM must share records with your own billing, booking or delivery software.

If you need a simple, good-looking presence quickly and are happy to edit it yourself, Wix or a similar builder is a reasonable choice, and many small businesses should stop there. Choose a custom-coded site when search traffic, page speed, connections to your billing or booking systems, or owning the site outright have a direct effect on sales.

Pick Firebase's Firestore when the app needs live updates, offline use on phones and almost no server management, and your reporting is modest. Pick MySQL or PostgreSQL when the system revolves around money, stock and reports that combine many kinds of records, or when you want hosting costs that stay flat however often screens are opened. Plenty of good systems use both.

A single school with a straightforward fee structure should subscribe to ready-made school software: it is quick, affordable and well tested. A custom school ERP earns its cost for groups running several branches, for fee rules a subscription cannot express, and for managements that want to own the system outright and perhaps offer it to other schools.

For a defined project such as an ERP, a portal or an app, an agency is usually cheaper and safer than hiring, because you pay for delivered work rather than a year of salary, and a team covers every skill involved. Hire in-house when software is your product or changes every week. Many businesses do best with an agency build followed by a small retainer or a later hire.

Hire a freelancer for small, well-defined jobs such as a landing page, a WordPress fix or a single integration, where price and speed matter and the work ends in weeks. Choose a software company when the system will run your business for years, needs several skills, or must come with contracts, GST invoices and continuity that does not depend on one person.

A progressive web app is enough when customers or staff mainly browse, order, book or fill in forms, because on Android it installs from the browser, works offline and receives push notifications, for less money than native. Choose a native Android app when you need background GPS, Bluetooth printers, large offline data, a full Play Store presence or deep access to the phone.

Google Sheets works well as a stock register for one location with one or two people updating it and a product list you can scroll through. Move to ready-made inventory software when several staff enter stock, when bills and stock must come from the same data, or when you need barcodes. Consider custom software only when godowns, branches or production steps outgrow what ready-made tools can follow.

Vyapar and similar ready-made billing apps are inexpensive, quick to start and well suited to standard retail and wholesale with GST invoices, stock and party ledgers. Custom billing software earns its higher cost when your bill carries trade-specific arithmetic, such as gold rate, wastage and making charges in a jewellery store, or material received and returned in a job-work unit.

For most small businesses with standard processes, a SaaS subscription is the better choice: low entry cost, upgrades included and nothing to maintain. One-time custom software pays off when many users would pay per-seat fees for years, when your workflow is unusual, or when owning the code and data matters more than convenience, provided you accept responsibility for hosting and maintenance.