I get the temptation. You're smart. You've got great engineers. You read a few LangChain tutorials and now you're 3 prompts away from "revolutionizing customer support."
For many teams, the next question becomes: should we just build our own?
And to be fair — there are real reasons to build. More control, more flexibility, full ownership of the stack. But before you dive in, it's worth going in with eyes open. Because while the demo might take a weekend, production-grade AI support is a different beast entirely.
If you're weighing up whether to build or buy, here's how to think about it.
Build
Pros
- Full control over the system
- Can customize to exact specifications
- Own the IP and data
Cons
#### The Cost Is Way Higher Than You Think
It all comes down to cost, so let's do the math:
- An AI engineer = ~$200K/year
- You'll need at least 2 of them
- Oh, and LLM cost, compute cost, eval tooling, observability, etc.
That's easily $500K+ annually. Even if the software is "free," the team maintaining it definitely isn't.
Buy
Pros
- Fast to deploy
- Proven, battle-tested solutions
- Ongoing maintenance and updates included
- Can focus on core business
Cons
- Less customization (though this varies by vendor)
- Vendor dependency
When to Build vs Buy
Build if:
- You have 1M+ monthly support tickets
- You already employ a full-stack AI team
- You're allergic to vendors
Buy if:
- You want something that works
- You want to move fast
- You want your team focused on what actually matters
Why We Built Duckie
That's why we built Duckie — so you don't have to. At Duckie, we take a hybrid approach. You get a strong foundation out of the box — a support agent that can answer and resolve tickets with solid reliability.
We give you the building blocks: agent tools and workflows builders. You can define triggers, conditions, and actions to tailor how Duckie handles different ticket types or scenarios. You can plug it into your existing systems.
We obsess over AI support, so you can focus on building the thing you actually want to be known for.
Want to see Duckie in action? Book a demo.
P.S. If you're still considering building your own AI agent, I'd genuinely love to chat. Either to help you avoid the pain... or to hear your war stories later. Both are fun.
