i've gone down this route before, we're back on freshdesk now. it's easy to build a prototype in two days, but the long tail of making it actually meet _all_ the requirements is hell.
the value platforms provide is that _you_ didn't make the software, somebody else did, so somebody else defines the functionality and workflow of the software. it can be treated as fixed, and a thing that people learn how to use. they have support docs and training resources for your staff to access. when somebody has a problem, you can tell them to make a ticket with freshdesk not with you.
if you make the software in-house, you have to also make all those training resources yourself. you have to make all the ui decisions. and you have to defend those ui decisions, even when each of your support staff wants something different, and knows there's nothing preventing you from changing it to exactly what they want. even when exactly what they want contradicts with what the person sitting next to them wants.
As someone who is currently in the process of integrating Zendesk: It seems to have a moat, however directed in the wrong direction. This integration might be my first project failure in the last decade which included two SAP integrations.
There is just so much clunk and developer hostile stuff going on that I would rather just not deal with it anymore.
It's that last S in SaaS that builds the moat around companies like this. Even if you can make the Software, it's on you to provide the Service as well if you go that route. Quite a lot of companies simply don't want to self-host yet another thing and make their IT group even larger (or more burdened). It's rarely the Software or the Platform that's the selling point as much as the Service.
or, as you have been able to do for decades, use an existing open source solution? Zendesk’s value isn’t in the CRUD operations. If a company doesn’t want to pay for Zendesk, don’t ask Claude to build a replacement… use a good free solution, that has years of domain expertise built into it.
the value platforms provide is that _you_ didn't make the software, somebody else did, so somebody else defines the functionality and workflow of the software. it can be treated as fixed, and a thing that people learn how to use. they have support docs and training resources for your staff to access. when somebody has a problem, you can tell them to make a ticket with freshdesk not with you.
if you make the software in-house, you have to also make all those training resources yourself. you have to make all the ui decisions. and you have to defend those ui decisions, even when each of your support staff wants something different, and knows there's nothing preventing you from changing it to exactly what they want. even when exactly what they want contradicts with what the person sitting next to them wants.