[FinnLobsien]

I think this is true, but there's also another thing here: The software market is incredibly complex, and much of the "SaaS is dead because I can vibe-code custom software" voices don't understand why certain products are bought.

Let's take project/task management stuff. You can vibe-code a kanban board, task tracker with different statuses, and project folders quite easily.

For my personal use, I can probably build a "better" Jira. I could have an agreeable interface, a data model molded to the types of projects I work on and how I work on them, useful constraints that assuage my weaknesses (e.g. you can't have more than 3 active projects), and a persistent list of things I've shipped to combat imposter syndrome.

That solution would be far too opinionated to scale across even a small team, let alone an enterprise.

Companies buy Jira because it integrates with just about everything, because it's the de-facto standard so you don't need to teach people how to use it, and because you have all the SSO, workflows, approval policies, RBAC, etc. anyone could want.

SaaS vendors don't compete to offer the core features, but the genuinely hard stuff.

[hahn-kev]

Integrations are good. But most people don't need ALL integrations, there's just a couple that are show stoppers, and even then it probably doesn't integrate how you want it to. I think the future is a platform with a good data model that people can vibe code plugins on top of.

[FinnLobsien]

Most people don’t need all the integrations (I‘d even say most need very few).

But:

1. As companies grow, customers continue to want more integrations.

If you imagine a massive matrix of companies and all the tools they use, you need to expand the number of rows where your product is a viable solution.

This matters for implementation now (any tool must work with your stack) and for your long-term prospect of using a product since companies expect to migrate, add, or retire tooling.

2. I think the problem with a vibe-codeable plugin platform is “what is a good data model” because that depends principally on what a tool is for.

[Hizonner]

... and once you take more than the tiniest step beyond the defaults, the difficulty of configuring all that complex optionality exceeds the difficulty of coding your own, and coding the integrations you actually need. And you still get screwed when the vendor decides to make a change, or refuses to support some niche thing you need in favor of some niche thing a few more users need. Not to mention the security nightmare.

SaaS was mostly a bad deal before "AI".