You're a growing business. You need some custom software fast, because the off-the-shelf options simply won’t work. But you don’t have a dev team sitting around. So, do you spin up an offshore agency, or build it yourself on a low-code platform like ours?
This decision matters. It affects your speed, your spend, your control, and your future. We’ve seen all approaches, but here’s the hard truth: outsourcing can deliver code, but not capability. Platforms like Rayven do both.
The offshore shortcut (that isn't).
Offshore developers are cheaper per hour, but you’re not just buying hours - you’re buying ownership, agility, and long-term leverage. And on those fronts, outsourcing falls short.
Here’s what you’re really signing up for:
- You don’t own the know-how. When your agency vanishes, so does your ability to change anything confidently.
- You can’t move fast. Want a change? Raise a ticket. Wait a sprint. Hope for the best.
- You’re paying to rebuild the basics. Infra, login, databases, workflows - coded from scratch, badly.
- You inherit their mess. Poor documentation, zero testing, spaghetti logic? That’s your new problem.
- Your roadmap, their priorities. That critical feature you need? It’s on their timeline now.
You might get a working app. But the second you need to change, grow, or fix it - you’re stuck.
The AI shortcut myth.
There’s a common assumption going around: AI makes it easier to build software, so you don’t need a platform. Just fire up ChatGPT or GitHub Copilot and generate the code, right?
Not quite.
AI helps with code generation - but it doesn’t give you architecture, security, deployment pipelines, or maintainability. What you get is code, fast. What you miss is structure.
And that speed? It often leads to bloat: you go from zero to thousands of lines of logic you barely understand. Debugging it? Good luck. Scaling it? Even harder. Replacing a developer midstream? Nightmare.
We’ve worked with teams who went all-in on AI-assisted building - only to be buried in brittle, unmaintainable codebases within months.
This is where Rayven wins. You don’t generate code - you model intent. You don’t wire systems from scratch - you configure proven modules. You move faster and stay sane.
What you get with Rayven.
We built Rayven to solve this.
We give you a low-code app development platform where 70% of the job is already done, alongside a range of (optional) services that you can use to build a solution end-to-end, i.e. you handle the bits that matter to your business and we’ve got all the plumbing covered.
What that looks like:
- Real-time dashboards, workflows, user auth, security - all pre-built. You configure, don’t code.
- Fast setup. Launch in weeks, not quarters.
- Own everything. Models, integrations, logic - it’s all yours.
- White-labelling, out of the box. Build apps under your brand, no extra layers.
- Iterate without begging for dev time. Your ops or product team can update flows and UX without touching code.
- No dead ends. Need to add a bespoke function? Plug in code anywhere.
- Built-in scalability. Multi-tenancy, versioning, and monitoring from day one.
- AI-ready infrastructure. Comes pre-integrated with leading LLMs like OpenAI, Anthropic, and more - ready for prompting, chaining, and automating straight out of the box.
Rayven isn’t a toy, and it’s not just for MVPs or prototypes, it’s a serious platform for building real business applications - the kind that run operations, serve customers, and integrate with your existing tech.
Our platform is used to build customer-facing products and critical systems in some of the world’s toughest industries:
- Mining: Managing distributed sensor networks and live operations
- Energy: Monitoring infrastructure, automating maintenance, orchestrating assets
- Asset rentals: Delivering end-to-end portals for tracking, usage, billing, and optimisation
This isn’t startup fluff. It’s industrial-grade, enterprise-capable tech you can run with today.
Need help? We've got you.
Don’t have an in-house product team or software capability? No problem.
Rayven’s Australia-based services team and global partners can take you from idea to live product:
- Scoping requirements and process design
- Mapping interface flows and user journeys
- Defining data models and business logic
- Configuring and deploying your entire solution, end to end
Everything is built on our platform by people who know it inside out - no external agencies, no knowledge gaps, no handovers. Whether you're just starting or scaling a critical system, we’ve got your back. And yes, you own the IP of all of it - every logic block, integration, workflow, and interface.
Let’s talk about control.
Outsourcing feels easy - until it isn’t. When your business logic lives in someone else’s repo, you’ve lost control.
With Rayven:
- You can see how everything works.
- You can train your team to use and update it.
- You’re never dependent on a third-party agency.
- You won’t wake up to surprise invoices or vanishing teams.
This isn’t just about software. It’s about sovereignty. Your business should own what it runs on.
What about cost?
You’ll hear offshore dev is cheaper. It is - per hour. But total cost? Different story.
- Rebuilding common components takes time. Rayven gives you them out of the box.
- Agency code is hard to maintain. Rayven is built to be changed without breaking.
- Rewrites happen. Many outsourced builds don’t scale - and get scrapped within a year.
- Every feature costs more. In Rayven, adding a new flow is often minutes of drag-and-drop.
When you factor in total cost of ownership - delivery, iterations, maintenance, scale - Rayven wins. Every time.
When you should still consider Dev Shops.
They’re not all bad. You should consider outsourcing if:
- You’re building proprietary tech that no platform can model
- You have a strong internal CTO who can manage the relationship
- You need custom mobile apps with native integrations
But if you’re building a workflow tool, customer facing tools and dashboards, internal system, or even a SaaS MVP - Rayven will get you there faster, cheaper, and with more control.
Don’t just build, build capability.
This isn’t about code, it’s about how you scale.
You need:
- Tools your team can actually use
- Visibility into how your systems work
- The power to change direction without writing a spec doc
- A partner you can trust, one that brings the tools and the people
Rayven gives you that, without the overhead, and with support that acts like an extension of your team. We’re not a dev shop and we’re not just a supplier; we’re your platform and your partner.
Start where others stall. Build faster. Ship smarter. Own everything.