When does replacing your app stack pay for itself?
Every app in your admin bills monthly whether anyone opens it. Custom-built functionality bills once, then costs almost nothing to run. Four numbers give you the month the build pulls ahead, including the months you keep paying app fees while it is still being built.
Four numbers. Everything below updates as you type.
How this is calculated
Two cumulative spend lines, compared month by month. One is what you pay if you keep renting the apps. The other is what you pay if you build the same functions into the theme instead. Breakeven is the month the second line drops below the first, and everything after it is money you keep.
The two lines
Renting is your monthly app spend multiplied by the number of months. Nothing else, because nothing else changes.
Building has three parts: the one-time build cost, the app fees that keep billing right up to launch, and the monthly upkeep on the code you own from launch onward. That middle part is the one most build-versus-buy sums leave out, and it is why this tool asks for a build timeline. Nothing switches off the day you sign a statement of work.
Breakeven
Once the build is live you save your app spend less your upkeep every month. Divide the build cost by that monthly saving to get how long recovery takes, then push it out by the build timeline you were paying app fees through:
That lands mid-month, and the month shown is rounded up. The first whole month you are genuinely ahead is the one after the crossover, so rounding to the nearest month would name a month the table below still shows you behind in.
If upkeep is the same as or more than your app spend there is no monthly saving to recover anything with, so no crossover exists at any horizon and the tool says so rather than showing a number. The horizon selector (12 / 24 / 36 months) never moves the crossover. It only decides whether the crossover lands inside the window you are looking at.
Worked example
The figures the tool loads with: $420/mo of apps, a $6,500 build over 3 months, $75/mo upkeep after launch, on a 24-month horizon.
- Monthly saving after launch: $420 − $75 = $345.
- Recovery time: $6,500 ÷ $345 = 18.8 months.
- Plus the 3-month build, during which $1,260 of app fees are still billing: a crossover at month 21.8, so the first whole month ahead is month 22.
- At month 24: $10,080 renting against $9,335 building, a net $745 saved.
Where the starting figures come from
The values the tool loads with ($420/mo of replaceable apps, a $6,500 build, $75/mo upkeep, 3 months of build time) are directional starting points from Shero's own Shopify build work, reviewed August 2026. They are a place to start typing, not a published benchmark and not a quote. Replace all four with your own numbers: a real build cost and a real timeline come out of a short discovery call against your actual app list, and the build-timeline options (1 / 2 / 3 / 6 months) are the shapes Shero typically scopes rather than a range you are limited to.
What this model leaves out
- It counts subscription dollars only. It does not price app features you would lose, or features a build would add.
- App prices are held flat for the whole horizon. In practice they rise, and every rise moves breakeven earlier, so the model is conservative in that direction.
- Upkeep is held flat too. A year-three refactor or a Shopify platform change is not in here.
- Owning code is a real risk transfer. The apps carry their vendor's maintenance, compatibility testing and support; a build moves that onto you and whoever you retain.
- It assumes the build actually replaces the apps. A partial replacement that leaves two of the six subscriptions running is a different, worse sum.
Want this run against your real app list?
Send us the app list from your admin and we will model the actual payback against a real build estimate, rather than a default.