Outgrowing your in-house experiences? Here’s how to tell.

Building your in-apps in-house feels like designing your own furniture. It’s custom-made, tailored to your exact specifications, and perfectly suited for your team—at first.

But as your company scales and your needs evolve, that once-perfect solution starts to feel outdated and mismatched, like a couch that doesn’t fit through the door of your new house. Suddenly, you’re wondering: Should we switch to a DAP?

Here’s the good news: you’re not alone. At Chameleon, we’ve spoken with thousands of product teams grappling with this exact dilemma. Over the years, we’ve gathered firsthand accounts of what works, what doesn’t, and the key signs that it’s time to make the leap.

These insights, straight from the trenches, will help you recognize when your in-house build is holding you back and why sticking to it might be costing you more than it’s worth.

Your engineers built your in-house experiences, but now they’re over it. Maintaining and upgrading those flows feels like trying to keep a 10-year-old PC running… it works, but nobody’s excited about it. Your in-house solution may have worked when things were simpler, but as your company scales, speed becomes non-negotiable. Whether it’s launching new experiments or making updates, delays can kill momentum—and your in-house setup might be slowing everything down.

It’s not just about burnout or low prioritization. Often, engineers resist switching to a DAP because they fear handing over control of in-app experiences to non-technical teams. This concern is valid, and no one wants to risk the integrity of the product by opening the door to inconsistent or poorly executed workflows.

Competitors are experimenting faster with tools designed for modern workflows. If your in-house solution is slowing you down, you’re already falling behind.

This resistance often leaves companies at an impasse: stick with a something engineers dislike maintaining, or risk friction by introducing a platform. But, modern DAPs address this exact fear by providing guardrails that balance control and flexibility.

What to watch out for:

Your in-house experiences worked great for what you were—a scrappy team tackling small challenges. But now you’re scaling, and those early limitations are starting to feel like shackles. Building modern patterns like embeddable cards or cmd-k search feels like reinventing the wheel every time.

We’ve frequently heard this all-too-common frustration:

If your experiences can’t keep up with your brand standards or customer expectations, it’s time to rethink your approach. A DAP gives you pre-built features like embeddable cards and product tours that you can customize to match your brand without reinventing the wheel every time. Here's an example of Chameleon's embeddable cards, where you can easily customize spacing, padding, layout, and more without code. Then your team can style these Cards as if they were native to your app.

Questions to ask yourself:

In-house patterns often require Herculean efforts to make them work. If your team is juggling Amplitude charts, manual data exports, and hastily created Google Sheets to deliver even basic results, your current build might be costing more than it’s worth.

As one PM put it during a conversation:

Your team deserves better than Franken-experience solutions. Self-serve capabilities empower non-technical teams to manage workflows independently, freeing everyone from the hamster wheel of inefficiency.

What to look for in a DAP:

Building in-apps in-house might look cost-effective on paper, but when you tally up the hours spent maintaining it, the opportunities lost due to inefficiency, and the morale drain on your team, the price tag can start to look pretty steep.

One PM highlighted this challenge:

A DAP helps you get unstuck. From faster A/B tests to better onboarding flows, it lets your team focus on delighting users and driving growth. If you’re wondering whether your in-house build's bargain price is a false economy, the DAP Buyer’s Guide can help you crunch the real numbers and find a tool that actually delivers value. While you’re stuck guessing about user behavior, other teams are driving growth with data-driven optimizations.

Crunch the numbers:

Your tools shape how your team feels. When inefficiency piles up, it drains the energy and creativity that fuel great work.

We’ve heard:

Switching to a DAP can empower your team, boost morale, and create an environment where people are excited to innovate.

Ask yourself:

Switching doesn’t have to mean abandoning your current setup entirely. Many teams succeed by keeping core flows in-house while handing off more flexible patterns like upsells, in-app surveys, or product tours to a DAP. This hybrid approach lets you experiment and iterate faster without overwhelming your team.

Switching from building in-house to a DAP can feel like a big step. But when you consider the time saved, the opportunities unlocked, and the energy regained, the decision starts to become clear.

Your in-house build served its purpose. Maybe it’s time to upgrade to something that scales with you, empowers your team, and fuels your growth. Because at the end of the day, your team deserves tools that let them thrive, not just survive.