The Hidden Costs of Building Your Own Customer Platform

“It seemed like a smart move. We knew what we wanted. We had engineers. We thought—how hard could it be?”

We’ve heard some version of this line more times than we can count.

Sometimes it’s a CIO who greenlit a two-quarter build that’s still not live after two years.

Sometimes it’s a VP of Sales asking why their “custom portal” hasn’t closed a single deal.

Sometimes it’s a CEO realizing their tech investment didn’t move the needle on retention.

The bottom line? Many forwarders go into custom builds with confidence and come out the other side with some hard-earned lessons.

Here’s what they wish they’d known sooner.

1. You’re Not Just Building a Portal; You’re Becoming a Product Team

Most internal builds start with a goal: “Let’s get something usable out in 3–6 months.”

But then come the decisions:

• What should the shipper dashboard look like?
• Who handles the design?
• How do we prioritize tracking vs. documents vs. reporting?
• What happens when customers ask for new features?

Suddenly, your team isn’t just building. They’re scoping, roadmapping, and managing internal stakeholders like a software company.

We’ve heard more than one exec joke:

“We didn’t mean to launch a tech startup inside our forwarding company—but that’s what it turned into.”

2. UX Gets Deprioritized (Because You’re Not a Software Company)

This one’s sneaky. Your internal portal might check all the boxes—shipment views, document uploads, tracking links.

But if it’s designed around how you think instead of how shippers work, adoption stalls.

Shippers don’t want to click through five tabs or cross-reference spreadsheets. They want fast answers to simple questions.

A portal that’s technically functional but confusing to use won’t eliminate the email crutch. And it definitely won’t help you win competitive deals.

3. Dev Resources Get Pulled Away Every Time There’s a Fire

Your engineers didn’t join your company to become product managers.

So when a TMS update breaks something…
Or ops needs a one-off report…
Or security flags a vulnerability…

Guess what gets bumped?

Your customer portal.

The roadmap slips. The backlog grows. And soon, the “strategic initiative” turns into a side project—because you’ve still got a business to run.

4. Total Cost of Ownership ≠ Initial Dev Hours

Building the first version is the “easy” part; maintenance is where costs start to really snowball.

Ongoing updates. Bug fixes. API changes. UI refreshes. Feature requests.

Each one feels minor—until you realize your roadmap is now a revolving door.

“We looked at building something custom… then the cost ballooned to 8x the original quote.”
— Adam Hill, CEO at Scarbrough Global

And the true cost isn’t just in IT resources. It’s in the time you lose. The momentum that stalls. The deals you don’t win.

5. You’re Competing with Your Customers’ Best Vendors

Here’s the harsh truth: shippers don’t care if you built it yourself.

They care whether it works better than the portals they use from your competitors.

If your in-house portal isn’t as polished, intuitive, or responsive as what they’ve seen elsewhere, it’s not a point of pride; it’s a liability.

Final Thought: Owning the Code Doesn’t Mean Owning the Outcome

We’re not here to say “never build”. Some forwarders pull it off—and they should be proud.

But if your goal is to deliver a world-class customer experience quickly, scalably, and without distraction… Make sure you’ve counted every cost—not just the obvious ones.

The true price of building your own portal often isn’t the budget. It’s the drag on your team, your timeline, and your customers’ patience.