agency client spent 6 weeks building chat into bp before we ripped it out

full disclosure i run atomchat so grain of salt. but an agency using us walked me through their numbers last month and it stuck with me. they'd built a custom messaging layer on top of bp for a client, 6 weeks of dev time, then spent another month firefighting websocket drops and notification bugs every time bp updated. they swapped to an embed widget, billed the client a flat monthly instead of eating maintenance, and the dev hours went to zero. not saying buy beats build every time, but for chat specifically the upkeep math caught them off guard.