Are you thinking of launching an Over-The-Top (OTT) streaming service? You have the content, the vision, and the market. But before you can hit ‘play’ on your launch strategy, you face the pivotal decision: Should you buy vs build your … Continue reading
Are you thinking of launching an Over-The-Top (OTT) streaming service? You have the content, the vision, and the market. But before you can hit ‘play’ on your launch strategy, you face the pivotal decision: Should you buy vs build your OTT platform?
Well, let’s get this straight. The choice of buy vs build is a classic dilemma faced by businesses. This is more than a technical choice—it’s a fundamental business strategy. For most enterprise-level companies, the reality is that the “build” option, while tempting, is often a costly, time-consuming detour from your core business.
In this blog, we will break down the real costs, risks, and benefits of buy vs build options and show you why an end-to-end premium solution like Muvi One is the strategic choice for scaling your OTT or video streaming business.
Let’s dive in.
Choosing whether to buy or build is not just a tech decision—it’s a business strategy. The choice directly affects with a few basic questions:
One wrong move can delay your launch by 6–18 months, inflate budgets by 300–500%, and leave you dependent on a development team forever.
Building a custom solution sounds appealing because it promises total control. But what you gain in hyper-specific features, you lose in time, resources, and peace of mind.
The reality of a custom build is that the initial development cost is just the tip of the iceberg. You’re not just building a product; you’re building and maintaining an entire technology company within your existing structure.
Even for basic OTT features, your team will need:
Feature Area | Avg. Duration | Resources Required | Approx. Cost |
Content Management | 3 months | 2 devs | $48,000 |
Search & Filtering | 3 months | 2 devs | $48,000 |
Payment Gateway Integration | 2 months | 1 dev | $16,000 |
Monetization Suite (Subscription, PPV, Coupons, Billing, etc.) | 4 months | 2 devs | $64,000 |
And this is just the starting point. When we sum up effort across all core OTT modules, total costs routinely exceed $500,000–$1,000,000+, with development timelines stretching 12–24 months.
In the streaming world, that delay can be fatal. Competitors launch faster, viewers choose alternatives, and investors lose patience.
Building your OTT platform from scratch is not a one-time project—it’s a continuous drain.
You will need full-time teams for:
If you decide to invest in even a decent in-house team of 8–10 members, it will cost $60,000–$150,000 per month.
This amounts to a staggering $720,000–$1.8M per year, just to keep the platform running.
OTT tech evolves every 3–6 months with new devices entering the market, browsers changing protocols, payment gateways updating APIs, and emerging encoding and DRM standards.
A custom-built platform often starts becoming outdated within 12–18 months, leading to spiraling rework costs.
Industry studies show that 70%+ custom OTT development projects fail due to:
This is why building from scratch is usually recommended only if you’re a Netflix with a billion-dollar engineering budget.
When you choose to buy vs build with a comprehensive, end-to-end OTT solution like Muvi One, you are making a strategic investment that refocuses your resources where they belong: on your content and your subscribers.
Muvi One is an all-in-one platform that handles the entire complex streaming ecosystem for you—from content ingest to monetization to multi-device delivery. Think of it as your complete IT, security, and development team, delivered as a robust, fully managed service.
Here’s what you get instantly:
Everything comes pre-integrated, pre-tested, and production-ready.
Need inspiration? Check out our customers who have built their streaming services using Muvi.
Muvi one literally helps you launch in weeks and not months! While building takes 12–24 months, Muvi One lets you launch instantly in under 24 hours, with zero coding or within a few weeks if you want customizations
That’s a 90–95% reduction in time-to-market if you are thinking of building an OTT platform.
Just give it a thought. Compare building a video streaming platform that would cost you $500,000–$1,000,000+ upfront with $720,000–$1.8M annual maintenance. Compare that with just a $399 Muvi One monthly subscription. ( $339 is you bill annually)
Buying Muvi One:
✅Starts at a fraction of that cost
✅Pay monthly or annually
✅No development team required
✅No hidden maintenance expenses
✅No infrastructure overhead
Check out Muvi One Pricing here.
Muvi One releases platform-wide updates across app stores, infrastructure, payment gateways, UX/UI templates, security and DRM, and device support. Also, everything is included in your subscription without any additional cost.
Muvi One scales automatically with cloud infrastructure, CDN support, and load balancing. Something very few custom-built solutions can handle without massive engineering complexity.
The dilemma of buy vs build depends largely on your requirements.
Go for Building if you:
Gor for Buying an OTT service if you:
Criteria | Buying (Muvi One) | Building |
Time to Market | Launch in days | Takes years |
Upfront investment | Costs a fraction compared to building – low subscription costing | Costs millions – High upfront CapEx for infra and development |
Maintenance & Updates | Included – Automatic upgrades | Ongoing maintenance costs; risk of technical debt |
Technical expertise needed | Zero coding, fully managed | Requires large engineering teams |
Feature Depth | End-to-end OTT stack (CMS, Monetization, Apps, DRM, CDN, Analytics, AI, etc. | Limited initially; every feature requires custom coding & maintenance |
Scalability | Auto-scaling with enterprise-grade CDN and hosting | You bear the cost of scaling and optimization efforts |
Security & Compliance | Built-in: DRM, Multi-CDN, SOC2, GDPR, PCI-DSS, watermarking, etc. | Full responsibility to implement and update security layers |
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) | Low — predictable and optimized for ROI | Very high — hidden costs (bugs, hosting, integrations, downtime) |
Wrapping Up,
Let’s be honest — unless you’re Netflix and have a billion-dollar engineering budget, building your entire OTT ecosystem from scratch is rarely worth it.
With Muvi One, you skip the engineering chaos and jump straight into what actually matters:
✔ Content
✔ Revenue
✔ Audience growth
✔ Global reach
You get enterprise-grade technology, all the apps you need, every monetization model you can imagine, and a platform that evolves every month — without paying for an engineering team.
In the buy vs build debate, the smart move for 99% of companies is crystal clear:
👉 Buy Muvi One. Build your business.
Take a 14-day Free Trial!
Many organizations choose to buy because SaaS OTT platforms like Muvi One reduce cost, development complexity, and time-to-market while offering continuous innovation. Building works only when there are highly unique, custom needs and large technical budgets.
Custom-built OTT platforms usually require $500K–$2M+ in development and infrastructure investment, plus ongoing maintenance costs. Buying a platform significantly lowers TCO (Total Cost of Ownership).
A custom OTT build typically takes 12–24 months, depending on features and complexity. Muvi One can get you live in weeks.
Delayed launches, budget overruns, technical debt, scalability issues, and security vulnerabilities are common risks when building from scratch.
Muvi One provides an end-to-end, fully managed, white-label OTT solution that is faster, more affordable, and continuously updated with new features — without requiring engineering effort from your team.
Yes — Muvi One offers API-based customization, UI/UX enhancements, and configurable workflows so you maintain brand control while avoiding backend complexity
Written by: Sreejata Basu
Sreejata is the Manager for Muvi’s Content Marketing unit. She is a passionate writer with a background in English Literature and music. By week Sreejata spends her time in the corporate world of Muvi, but on weekends she likes to take short hiking trips, watch movies and read interesting travelogues.
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