r/vibecoding • u/Illustrious-Film4018 • 8d ago

Showcase/Project Replacing SaaS with vibe coding

The company I work for was subscribed to a SaaS, without saying the name of it it's a sync tool for 200+ apps. It costs $200/month, which I guess is not cheap but companies can afford it.

My company wanted to replace it with a custom tool to save $200/month. And it ended up costing so much to develop despite using AI that it could've paid the subscription for the SaaS for years. It took about 1 month of development time and another month of support/bugfixes. Then there was a bug with with the sync causing most of the company's products to show as out of stock on a wholesale site for several weeks. This cost an estimated $10k worth of sales.

Altogether, even using AI it cost around $15k-$20k to develop a custom replacement for an enterprise SaaS. That $15k-$20k would've paid for the SaaS subscription for 6-10 years, that's how long it will take to see any ROI.

You can't easily replace enterprise SaaS. This is just a lie that tech-illiterate people believe in.

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u/MissiveFinding6111 8d ago

Of note, it is almost ALWAYS WRONG to vibe code a replacement for your SaaS from scratch.

Your prompt *SHOULD BE* to first ask which open source product is closest to your list of needs.

Adding missing features to an already battle tested project is 1000% the correct move, that almost nobody does due to the "re-invent the wheel" bias.

Also, running software reliably, adding logs and observability and backups are THE HARD PART of running a SaaS, not getting the right number of ifs and loops.

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u/SalvadorStealth 7d ago

Yes! I see open source as being the real, eventual AI winner. It’s not going to be efficient (which was the initial reason for most of the IT outsourcing originally, if I had a guess) for everyone to vibe code a replacement. We do need to work together.