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Objections

Why in-house development is less profitable than DrgnFly

In-house development means guaranteed costs and an unknown outcome. DrgnFly is a test with limited downside: no lift — you only pay messaging cost; with a lift — a fee paid out of the extra profit.

In-house development

Guaranteed spend before the hypothesis is tested. Outcome risk sits with the client. Losing 1–2 pp of Delivery Rate costs more than it looks.

DrgnFly

A test with limited downside. No lift — you only pay messaging cost. With a lift — a fee paid out of the additional profit.

It's rational to at least run an A/B test with DrgnFly — the risk is lower than building your own.

Reason 1

In-house has guaranteed costs; DrgnFly is paid for results

In-house development

The client pays regardless of the outcome:

  • developers
  • analysts
  • product manager
  • WhatsApp/SMS providers
  • support
  • copywriting
  • integrations
  • bug fixes
  • infrastructure
  • analytics
  • account monitoring

Even if the system fails to lift Delivery Rate, the costs are already incurred.

DrgnFly

The model is softer:

  • if Delivery Rate goes up — the client earns more and shares part of the result;
  • if there's no lift — the client doesn't pay the performance fee;
  • only the messaging cost is paid;
  • DrgnFly's messaging cost can be lower than or comparable to what the client would pay on their own.

«In-house development requires spending before the result is clear. With us it's the opposite: the performance fee only appears when Delivery Rate actually goes up.»

Reason 2

Downside of an A/B test with DrgnFly is almost limited to messaging cost

If the test produces no lift:

  • the client pays no performance fee;
  • only communication costs are paid;
  • those costs would have been needed anyway for an in-house system;
  • DrgnFly can often deliver them at the same level or lower, thanks to provider terms and optimisation.

In effect: the worst-case scenario is that the client tested a ready-made system at roughly the cost of their own messaging, without any development or maintenance overhead.

«If we don't deliver a lift, you don't pay us a fee. So the financial risk of the test is much lower than the risk of building your own solution.»

Reason 3

DrgnFly's messaging cost can be lower than the client's direct cost

Reasons:

  • provider agreements
  • Gupshup without supplier markup
  • right segmentation of WhatsApp templates
  • use of the 24-hour window
  • cascades without redundant sends
  • stop messaging after pickup
  • stop on customer request
  • name and address normalisation
  • SMS segment control
  • diacritics handling
  • fewer unnecessary SMS and calls

«Even without counting our expertise, the raw cost of communication through us can be lower — or at least no higher — than sending it yourselves.»

Reason 4

In-house requires spending before the hypothesis is tested

To find out whether their own system works, the client first has to:

  • design the product
  • connect providers
  • set up WhatsApp
  • write templates
  • set up SMS
  • build cascades
  • build reporting
  • run an A/B test
  • fix bugs
  • produce content
  • train the team

Only after all that will they learn whether there's a lift.

With DrgnFly:

  • you can launch a test faster;
  • you can validate the lift before investing in your own platform;
  • you reuse proven scenarios;
  • you don't pull your engineering team off other work.

«Validating the economics with us first is cheaper than building an internal platform and then discovering it delivers a smaller lift.»

Reason 5

If your own solution is 1–2 pp worse, the savings disappear

The main financial risk of in-house is this: it may work — just worse.

You don't need to argue they'll fail. It's enough to show that even a small gap is expensive.

Orders / month
100,000
Average order
$50
+1 pp Delivery Rate
1,000 orders
Extra revenue
$50,000

At a 30% margin that's $15,000 of gross profit. If your own solution lags DrgnFly by 1–2 pp, you could lose $15k–$30k of gross profit per month.

«The question isn't whether your solution will work. It probably will. The question is whether it will be no worse by 1–2 pp of Delivery Rate.»

Reason 6

In-house saves on the fee but can lose more on mistakes

An in-house system can look cheaper because there is no DrgnFly fee. But the hidden losses include:

  • lower Delivery Rate
  • more unnecessary SMS
  • wrong WhatsApp templates
  • extra marketing messages
  • no use of the 24-hour window
  • overpaying for SMS segments
  • weak copy
  • no video/carousels
  • no AI dialogues
  • no stop logic
  • complaints
  • risk of WhatsApp account degradation
  • no proper A/B framework
  • delayed launch

«Fee savings can be smaller than the losses from one or two mistakes in channels, content or analytics.»

Reason 7

DrgnFly handles the operational load

Even if the test shows no lift, the client already benefits — they don't do these things themselves:

  • writing copy
  • running notifications
  • configuring scenarios
  • monitoring channels
  • optimising SMS
  • watching WhatsApp accounts
  • building reports
  • tying up a team supporting the test

«Even with a zero-lift scenario you don't spend internal resources running this system. We take the ops; you only pay messaging cost.»

Reason 8

DrgnFly validates hypotheses faster

In-house development usually moves through the internal backlog. DrgnFly is continuously testing:

  • new copy
  • new WhatsApp formats
  • videos
  • carousels
  • RCS
  • calls
  • AI agents
  • geolocation
  • the tracking page
  • SMS optimisation
  • stop logic
  • new scenarios

«While your in-house team is building the current layer, we're already testing the next one. So the comparison is not between your first version and us today — it's between the speed of your iterations and the speed of our product team.»

Reason 9

DrgnFly lowers the risk of drawing the wrong conclusion from a test

When a client builds their own, they may measure the effect incorrectly:

  • uneven groups
  • different products
  • different regions
  • different couriers
  • seasonality
  • traffic changes
  • call-centre changes
  • no confidence intervals
  • no change log
  • no per-pickup unit-economics

The result: a working scenario can be turned off or a non-working one can be scaled.

«An error in measurement can cost as much as an error in development. With us, A/B is part of the system — not a separate project.»

Reason 10

An in-house system builds up technical and operational debt

After 3–6 months they'll have:

  • many ownerless templates
  • unclear rules
  • manual exceptions
  • duplicate messages
  • contested statuses
  • incomplete analytics
  • stale content
  • account issues
  • questions about who owns what

DrgnFly already lives in this complexity as its core business.

«For you this will be a side product. For us it's the main product.»

A strong final takeaway

In-house looks cheaper because the full cost isn't visible. In practice the client takes on development, support, providers, copy, A/B, WhatsApp risks, SMS optimisation and the risk of losing 1–2 pp of Delivery Rate.

With us, the model is inverted: if we don't deliver a lift, you don't pay a performance fee — only the messaging cost, which can be lower than or comparable to yours. If there's a lift, you earn more and pay a fee out of that additional result.

So the rational step is not to build your own straight away, but to first A/B-test DrgnFly. The downside is limited and the upside is measurable.

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