Frequently Asked Questions

CustomSoftware.ai is a vendor-neutral software strategy advisor. Rather than selling you a specific product or development service, we help you figure out the right path forward before you spend a dollar, whether that's configuring software you already own, buying an off-the-shelf product, connecting your existing systems, adding AI or automation, or building something custom.

CEOs, COOs, CFOs, operations leaders, IT directors, founders, and business owners trying to decide how to solve a technology or process problem, or improve on how something already works, before committing budget to it.

No. Custom software is treated as a last resort. Our advisor follows a "90% rule": if configuring what you already have, buying an existing product, connecting your systems, or automating a process can solve the problem, that's what gets recommended first. A custom build only comes up when nothing else reasonably fits your requirements.

You describe what you're trying to accomplish, by typing or using voice input, and the AI asks a series of discovery questions about your business, the specific problem, your current systems, and your timeline and scale. Based on your answers, it recommends one path forward and explains what it ruled out and why.

1. Configure Existing Software: you already own a tool that can do this with setup or workflow changes.
2. Off-the-Shelf / Commercial Product: a proven product covers roughly 90%+ of what you need.
3. Systems Integration: your tools work fine individually, but they don't share data with each other, so you end up checking multiple dashboards to get the full picture.
4. AI Automation: repetitive, judgment-plus-rules work that AI or RPA can take over.
5. Custom Software: the need is genuinely unique to your business and nothing else reasonably fits your requirements.

That's a valid outcome. If the problem looks more organizational or process-related, or it's too early to act on, the advisor will say so, offer perspective, and suggest what to clarify internally, rather than push you toward a purchase.

Yes, there's no cost to have the discovery conversation.

No. You can have the full discovery conversation and get a short recap without giving any contact information. To receive the complete written executive summary, you'll be asked for your name and email.

Yes, the homepage supports voice input through the microphone icon.

Submitting your name and email to get the summary lets our own CustomSoftware.ai team follow up with you directly. If you also choose to opt in to the separate "Partner Introduction" option afterward, a person on our team reviews that request before any potential partners reach out. Nothing is shared automatically.

Evaluate is a free tool for procurement committees. It lets your team define criteria, compare real, named vendors side by side, score them individually, and let a weighted committee vote decide, rather than one person's pick.

No. At every step (vendor suggestions, vendor research, AI scoring, evidence summaries), the AI stays neutral. It will surface information, but it never ranks, scores favorably, or recommends one vendor over another. The decision is always the committee's.

Yes, it's free for procurement committees.

Anyone you invite by email can join your organization in Evaluate, and one account can belong to more than one committee (for example, if you're invited into someone else's evaluation while also running your own). Owners and admins can add or remove members, though every organization is guaranteed to always keep at least one owner, so a committee can never accidentally lock itself out of managing its own membership.

Yes. A "Research vendors" feature searches the live web (not just the AI's training data) to surface real, currently-active named vendors for your category, with citations so you can verify the sources. It only ever returns a neutral, unranked list. Nothing is added to your project until someone on your committee chooses to add a specific suggestion.

Yes. A "Research this vendor" action produces a neutral, factual, web-grounded summary of that specific vendor, informed by your own evaluation criteria, with citations, so the whole committee can see it, not just whoever ran the research.

Optionally. Evaluate can generate a provisional "AI reference score" and a one-line rationale for each vendor against each of your criteria, based on publicly available information. These are hidden by default (a committee member has to explicitly turn them on for a given criterion), and they're shown alongside your own score, never inserted into it, so an AI score can never be mistaken for, or accidentally submitted as, a person's actual score.

Evaluate flags any vendor/criterion pair where your committee's average score and the AI reference score diverge significantly, and gives you a place to record a short note on how the disagreement was discussed and resolved, so there's a clear audit trail behind the final decision.

Yes. An Evidence library lets any committee member attach links, notes, or files to the evaluation overall or to a specific vendor. You can also run an AI "synthesize this evidence" pass that produces a neutral written recap grouped by vendor and flags where evidence looks thin or missing. It never scores or ranks based on that evidence. It just organizes it.

Not necessarily. It's your choice. Committee members can be given a vote weight, and both the live vote tally and the final decision report are calculated using those weights rather than a flat one-person-one-vote count. You can also run quick, lightweight polls (separate from the final committee vote) for informal check-ins along the way.

Yes. Each evaluation has a simple task list, for things like "collect vendor pricing," where you can assign a task to a committee member, set a due date, and mark it done, separate from scoring and voting.

Yes. Each evaluation has a discussion thread where committee members can leave comments scoped to the evaluation overall or to a specific vendor.

Yes. A progress tracker shows the four-step status of any evaluation (criteria defined, candidates identified, scoring underway, and committee vote), so anyone can check in without reading the whole project.

Yes. The decision report and any RFI/RFP/RFQ draft can be downloaded as a real Word (.docx) file, not just printed or copied. There's also a print-friendly "decision presentation" view that turns your criteria, scores, and vote tally into a slide-style walkthrough, with an option to generate short AI speaker notes that describe the committee's own results, again without adding a ranking or recommendation of its own.

It's for software development firms, AI integration firms, and consulting firms that help businesses become more efficient through AI and automation, seeking a strategic partnership with CustomSoftware.ai. When a client's need spans more than one specialty, we assemble the right combination of partners for the job rather than making a single cold introduction.

Submit an inquiry through the Partner Program page. Firms interested in joining our vetted delivery network can also complete a more detailed capability survey.

Qualified, implementation-ready introductions: buyers who've already defined their needs, are vetted for real intent, budget, and fit, and are ready to move. Because introductions come from a neutral advisor rather than a sales pipeline, they typically move faster and convert better than cold leads.

Your written executive summary includes a cost band and a timeline band built from what you shared in the discovery conversation, each with the assumptions behind it and what would push the estimate higher. These are planning bands for budgeting, not fixed quotes. A firm, bindable number comes once you scope the work with whoever ends up doing it. This costs you nothing either way: if you engage a partner we introduce you to, they pay us a referral fee, not you.

No. They're honest ranges based on what you described, not commitments. Actual bids will move with the specifics that come out during scoping, such as data quality, number of integrations, and who owns testing.

It's used to generate your recommendation and, if you request it, your executive summary. If you provide your name and email, that information may be shared with our team for follow-up.

No. Partner introductions are consent-gated and reviewed by a person, so your information isn't handed to a partner without your knowledge.

Go to the homepage and tell the AI advisor what you're trying to accomplish, or pick one of the example prompts to get going.

That's fine, the examples are just starting points. Describe your situation in your own words and the advisor will take it from there.