I Don’t Hate Salesforce But…

How many internal apps will be shoehorned into a Salesforce instance before we realize it isn’t the solution to everything?

Choosing between a custom build and SaaS tooling for a new system is tough. Both can be expensive and difficult to maintain. Companies often swing too far in one direction or invest too heavily in a single SaaS platform to rule them all. We need more flexibility.

Salesforce is excellent as a large-scale CRM, but treating it as a catch-all database leads to convoluted integrations and endless workarounds. After a couple of years, you’re left asking: “Was this really easier than building something purpose-built?”

At the same time, investing in custom apps isn’t always worth it. You can spend months defining basic architecture when platforms like Streamlit offer usable scaffolding from day one.

There’s no perfect answer, but there is a smarter one: stop defaulting to one extreme. Build where it makes sense, buy where it makes sense, and stay honest about the long-term cost of both. Curious how others think about this balance.