Buy vs. Build
Should you build in-house gamification infrastructure?
| Key Considerations | Build | Why does it matter? | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Developers Required | Initial integration: 1 Ongoing maintenance: 0 | Initial build: 2-4 Ongoing maintenance: 1-2 | Gamification isn't the core of your business, so it doesn't make sense to spend precious development resources on it. By doing so you needlessly create an opportunity cost of missing out on new product opportunities in your core roadmap. |
| Integration Time | 1-3 days | 2-3 months | Building a reliable gamification system that can process millions of user interactions a day gets complex quickly. With Trophy, you can skip the initial build and just focus on the user experience. |
| Ongoing Maintenance | 24/7 support team with dedicated Slack channels for customers who need it. Focused on guiding on best practice, not fixing bugs. | Ongoing infrastructure monitoring, patching and maintenance. Dedicated gamification backlog to fix customer reported issues and queries. | Building in-house introduces a permanent recurring maintenance cost to your business, stealing time and resources away from your core product roadmap. |
| Cost | Usage-based pricing based on monthly active users minimizes cost. What's more, Trophy only charges for active users, so you never pay for churn. | High upfront investment for initial release, with ongoing costs for infrastructure, monitoring, support, and new feature development. | With Trophy you have zero upfront investment and only pay for what you use. Plus by using Trophy you benefit from our economies of scale that help reduce infrastructure costs. |
| Reliability | 99.99% historical uptime | Gamification systems can process millions of user interactions a day which creates unique reliability challenges. | Processing high frequency event streams like those common in gamification infrastructure leads to issues with atomicity, idempotency, retries and more. With Trophy, you skip the hard parts and just focus on the user experience. |
| Scalability | Trophy is built for scale. We can handle hundreds of millions of user interactions a day and scale to meet your needs. | As you grow, so does your propensity to hit scaling limits. Each step change in scale requires infrastructure reviews, optimizations and additional resource allocation. | With Trophy you let us focus on optimizations and scaling so you can keep your team focused on creating a great user experience. |
| New Feature Development | New features are added to Trophy on a regular basis. We're constantly iterating and improving the product according to our vision for gamification and to meet the needs of our customers. | You are responsible for adding new features to your gamification infrastructure to support customer requests and your internal business objectives, adding more upfront investment with each new feature. | We're building Trophy to be the most flexible and powerful gamification infrastructure platform ever. No matter the what your customers ask for, it's likely we've already thought about it and are planning the solution. |
| Peripheral Tools | We've built tools for feature analytics, experimentation, and more natively into Trophy. | You need to provision and manage tools for analytics, experimentation, and more, requiring additional upfront investment with each new tool. | Gamification is not set and forget. Users require constant innovation to stay engaged which requires constant feature analysis and experimentation. Doing this effectively requires extra tools but with Trophy, you get this functionality out of the box. |
Developers Required
Initial integration: 1
Ongoing maintenance: 0
Build
Initial build: 2-4
Ongoing maintenance: 1-2
Why does it matter?
Gamification isn't the core of your business, so it doesn't make sense to spend precious development resources on it. By doing so you needlessly create an opportunity cost of missing out on new product opportunities in your core roadmap.
Integration Time
1-3 days
Build
2-3 months
Why does it matter?
Building a reliable gamification system that can process millions of user interactions a day gets complex quickly. With Trophy, you can skip the initial build and just focus on the user experience.
Ongoing Maintenance
24/7 support team with dedicated Slack channels for customers who need it. Focused on guiding on best practice, not fixing bugs.
Build
Ongoing infrastructure monitoring, patching and maintenance. Dedicated gamification backlog to fix customer reported issues and queries.
Why does it matter?
Building in-house introduces a permanent recurring maintenance cost to your business, stealing time and resources away from your core product roadmap.
Cost
Usage-based pricing based on monthly active users minimizes cost. What's more, Trophy only charges for active users, so you never pay for churn.
Build
High upfront investment for initial release, with ongoing costs for infrastructure, monitoring, support, and new feature development.
Why does it matter?
With Trophy you have zero upfront investment and only pay for what you use. Plus by using Trophy you benefit from our economies of scale that help reduce infrastructure costs.
Reliability
99.99% historical uptime
Build
Gamification systems can process millions of user interactions a day which creates unique reliability challenges.
Why does it matter?
Processing high frequency event streams like those common in gamification infrastructure leads to issues with atomicity, idempotency, retries and more. With Trophy, you skip the hard parts and just focus on the user experience.
Scalability
Trophy is built for scale. We can handle hundreds of millions of user interactions a day and scale to meet your needs.
Build
As you grow, so does your propensity to hit scaling limits. Each step change in scale requires infrastructure reviews, optimizations and additional resource allocation.
Why does it matter?
With Trophy you let us focus on optimizations and scaling so you can keep your team focused on creating a great user experience.
New Feature Development
New features are added to Trophy on a regular basis. We're constantly iterating and improving the product according to our vision for gamification and to meet the needs of our customers.
Build
You are responsible for adding new features to your gamification infrastructure to support customer requests and your internal business objectives, adding more upfront investment with each new feature.
Why does it matter?
We're building Trophy to be the most flexible and powerful gamification infrastructure platform ever. No matter the what your customers ask for, it's likely we've already thought about it and are planning the solution.
Peripheral Tools
We've built tools for feature analytics, experimentation, and more natively into Trophy.
Build
You need to provision and manage tools for analytics, experimentation, and more, requiring additional upfront investment with each new tool.
Why does it matter?
Gamification is not set and forget. Users require constant innovation to stay engaged which requires constant feature analysis and experimentation. Doing this effectively requires extra tools but with Trophy, you get this functionality out of the box.
Gamification infrastructure that retains users
Boost retention and customer lifetime value. Try for free up to 100 MAUs.
