Ask HN: Is Traditional SaaS Dying?

#1

Post by vibe_that_works » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 10:55 AM UTC

I think a good proxy for the question is: Does your employer try to replicate some SaaS features in-house? And do these experiments mostly succeed?

My data points: Two internal projects to replace Hubspot and Float. Hubspot will be kept, Float will be replaced.

Re: Ask HN: Is Traditional SaaS Dying?

#2

Post by zer0tonin » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 11:44 AM UTC

I'm going to let you in on an open secret of the industry: a lot of SaaS companies were already zombies, only running around because of the large amount of debt they managed to obtain during the ZIRP era.

I am self-employed but I'm tempted to replicated buffer in-house for my social media management. I feel that they are adding a bunch of pointless features while the core of the product is less and less stable.

Re: Ask HN: Is Traditional SaaS Dying?

#3

Post by burntoutgray » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 12:11 PM UTC

Data sovereignty is the critical factor. If bringing the data back in-house increases security, robustness then there might be a business case for replicating only that portion of the SaaS app that is actually being used.

Replicating software with AI is not zero cost issue. Not only do you need to pay for tokens used, but still have in-house tech and support costs to consider. Unlikely to be a strong business case for replication on those cost/ROI basis alone.

Re: Ask HN: Is Traditional SaaS Dying?

#4

Post by lbhdc » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 7:53 PM UTC

The company I work for is in the process of replacing jira with an in home grown solution. They ran through a bunch of trial with pretty much every vendor under the sun looking for a replacement for jira, but none of them really sparked joy. Someone rolled their own a year or so ago, and it started gaining adoption, and people liked it enough that the whole company is switching to it.

I don't think that means saas is dead. There is a strong preference to buy instead of building if there is something worth buying.

Re: Ask HN: Is Traditional SaaS Dying?

#5

Post by marinaview » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 8:16 PM UTC

We’re already seeing bespoke saas for one.

Re: Ask HN: Is Traditional SaaS Dying?

#6

Post by plainviewinstru » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 8:52 PM UTC

i'm at an investment firm, we do late stage privates and publics. we've built inhouse alternatives for most of our company tracking saas that we used for outbound/sourcing. also built in house crm.

Re: Ask HN: Is Traditional SaaS Dying?

#7

Post by kypro » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 10:46 PM UTC

High cost per-seat SaaS will die.

SaaS itself won't because it will always be easier to use existing software vs vibe code your own. The reason people are starting to roll their own is because with AI they can, and many SaaS products are still priced as if code is expensive.

I suspect in the future SaaS products may need to move to advertisement models rather than charging per seat. I also suspect successful SaaS products of the future will be much smaller and much more niche projects, with much smaller teams maintaining them.

This will take many many years to play out however. A large company using Salesforce today is going to find it extremely difficult to switch even if they want to.

Re: Ask HN: Is Traditional SaaS Dying?

#8

Post by orng_banana » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 4:07 AM UTC

lbhdc wrote: post #4

The company I work for is in the process of replacing jira with an in home grown solution. They ran through a bunch of trial with pretty much every vendor under the sun looking for a replacement for jira, but none of them really sparked joy. Someone rolled their own a year or so ago, and it started gaining adoption, and people liked it enough that the whole company is switching to it. I don't think that means saas is…

Why would your company build a whole new jira just to manage tickets? What about cost and maintaince?

Re: Ask HN: Is Traditional SaaS Dying?

#9

Post by atmosx » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 4:43 AM UTC

plainviewinstru wrote: post #6

i'm at an investment firm, we do late stage privates and publics. we've built inhouse alternatives for most of our company tracking saas that we used for outbound/sourcing. also built in house crm.

You built these now because of AI / LLMs made it easier or because because resources / willpower / management decided to do it _now_ as opposed to _before_ ?

Re: Ask HN: Is Traditional SaaS Dying?

#10

Post by sandcat_ » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 7:18 AM UTC

kypro wrote: post #7

High cost per-seat SaaS will die. SaaS itself won't because it will always be easier to use existing software vs vibe code your own. The reason people are starting to roll their own is because with AI they can, and many SaaS products are still priced as if code is expensive. I suspect in the future SaaS products may need to move to advertisement models rather than charging per seat. I also suspect successful SaaS pro…

I sorta expect the opposite. Anyone can build some small, niche SaaS themselves now. It's the giant, hulking behemoths (Salesforce, as one example) that can't be vibe-coded away easily. I suspect we'll see far more consolidation, and SaaS will also shift towards focusing far more on the enterprise. And so cost per seat will in fact increase, is my guess. But we'll see.