Build vs Buy

Build vs Buy - Choosing the Right Incident Management Solution

When your organization starts to scale, so do your incidents. That’s when the big question hits: Should you build an in-house incident management tool or buy an existing solution?

When your organization starts to scale, so do your incidents. That’s when the big question hits:
Should you build an in-house incident management tool or buy an existing solution?

This isn’t just a technical decision—it’s a business-critical one. The choice you make will affect your team’s productivity, response times, and even the reliability of your services. Let’s break down the pros and cons of building vs. buying an incident management system to help you decide what’s best for your team.

Why Do Teams Consider Building Their Own Incident Management Tool?

Building an internal incident management system seems appealing, especially to engineering teams confident in their ability to develop custom tools. Here’s why:

  1. Tailored to Your Specific Needs
    You can design the tool exactly how your team wants, with custom workflows and integrations unique to your stack.

  2. Perceived Cost Savings
    The thinking often goes, “We already have developers. Why pay for something we can build ourselves?”

  3. Full Control Over Features
    No waiting for feature requests. You decide what gets built and when.

While these reasons seem solid on the surface, they often overlook the hidden costs and complexities involved.

The Hidden Costs of Building In-House

What starts as a simple project can quickly snowball into a maintenance nightmare. Here’s what many teams underestimate:

1. Development Time and Resources

Building an MVP might take a few months. But maintaining, updating, and scaling it? That’s an ongoing commitment.
Your engineers will spend hundreds of hours on bug fixes, new features, and support instead of focusing on your core product.

2. Complexity Over Time

Incident management isn’t just about triggering alerts. You’ll need:

  • Escalation policies
  • On-call scheduling
  • Multi-channel notifications (email, SMS, Slack, etc.)
  • Integration with monitoring tools like Prometheus, Datadog, or AWS CloudWatch

Each layer adds more complexity—and more risk if something breaks.

3. Incident Risks for Your Incident Tool

What happens if the tool you built to manage incidents… has an incident?
Your team now has to manage two fires: the original issue and the tool meant to alert you about it.

4. Opportunity Cost

Every hour spent building and maintaining an incident tool is an hour not spent improving your core business.
Is that trade-off worth it?

The Case for Buying an Incident Management Tool

When you buy an incident management solution like Spike, you’re not just paying for the software—you’re buying reliability, scalability, and peace of mind.

✅ Fast Implementation

Get started in hours, not months. No need to spend weeks writing code, setting up databases, or configuring APIs.

✅ Proven Reliability

Spike is built with high availability in mind, trusted by companies across industries to handle their most critical incidents.

✅ Continuous Improvements

You automatically get new features, security updates, and performance optimizations—without lifting a finger.

✅ Ready-to-Go Integrations

Connect to Slack, Prometheus, Zendesk, Freshdesk, and more right out of the box. No need to build custom integrations from scratch.

✅ Focus on Your Core Business

Let your engineering team focus on what matters most—developing your product and serving your customers.

When Does It Make Sense to Build?

We’ll be honest: building an in-house tool can make sense in certain situations, such as:

  • You Have Unique, Niche Requirements
    If your incident workflows are so specialized that no tool can adapt, building might be the way to go.

  • Dedicated Resources for Maintenance
    Large enterprises with dedicated DevOps teams who can manage internal tools without impacting core product development.

  • Cost Isn’t a Constraint
    If budget is no issue and control is the top priority, in-house tools can offer full ownership (at a high cost).

Build vs. Buy: A Side-by-Side Comparison

Factor Build In-House Buy (e.g., Spike)
Initial Cost Low upfront (using internal resources) Subscription-based, predictable pricing
Maintenance Effort High—ongoing support required Handled by Spike’s team
Customization Fully customizable Configurable with flexible workflows
Time to Value 6–12 months (or more) Immediate—set up in hours
Scalability Requires additional development Built to scale effortlessly
Reliability Dependent on internal resources 99.9%+ uptime, proven in production

Key Questions to Ask Before Deciding

  1. Is incident management part of our core business?
    If not, why invest significant resources in it?

  2. Can we afford the opportunity cost?
    What could our team build if they weren’t focused on maintaining an internal tool?

  3. Do we have the expertise to manage reliability at scale?
    Incident tools are mission-critical. Downtime isn’t an option.

Conclusion: The Smarter Choice

Building in-house can seem attractive, but the hidden costs—time, maintenance, complexity—often outweigh the benefits.
Buying a solution like Spike gives you enterprise-grade incident management without the headaches, so your team can focus on what they do best.

Ready to stop worrying about incidents?
Start your free trial with Spike today and experience the difference.