[benchaney]

> I've been in countless meetings with countless executives where the Google Sheet is busted out featuring engineering cost and tool cost and where cost/benefit is aggressively decided.

That is the problem though. It isn't the engineering cost vs the tool cost. It is the engineering cost vs the tool cost PLUS the engineering cost of dealing with the tool once you buy it. Everything you have said so far leads me to believe you are missing this aspect of the cost of buying the tool.

You are right that there is a time and a place for buying over DIY, but in order to make those decisions reliably you need to know how much effort is going to go into dealing with the tool once you buy it. This isn't something you can figure out using Google sheets, because you have to actually evaluate the tool and get a sense of how dangerous the foot guns are.

You're probably right about scaling though. That sounds like an area where the ROI of paying someone else to do it is pretty good.