It’s a complex issue, but I’ll try to explain.
I wanted to start a company and to do so, I needed a custom platform for various reasons. I spent a lot of time debating whether to go fully custom through boutiques or customizing existing off-the-shelf products. Through a detailed process, I found a company with a product that was 90% of what I needed with huge benefits - they hosted the product and had developers customize it to my needs.
Lately, their work has gone downhill, and they’ve dropped communication and missed multiple SLAs across all severity tiers. I finally was able to have a frank discussion with them, and only two options are now available.
1 I seek legal actions for their missed SLAs, poor quality work, and potential financial losses due to slower time to market based on their work
2 They’ve offered to give me full access and ownership of the code on my own server. (which usually has a fairly large fee attached to it but they are doing it for free given their poor quality of work)
The second option sounds cleaner and easier as I would rather not do legal battles that could be fairly expensive. However, a huge reason I went with them was they had developers and SLAs to fix things when they broke- I can’t code, nor do I have the money for a full-time developer.
Any suggestions?
You used an off the shelf product to validate your business.
Time to get funding.