Custom apps are dead: The smarter investment for cultural tech

The cultural sector is rapidly evolving, and digital transformation for cultural institutions is no longer a luxury, it’s essential. For years, bespoke apps have been the default digital solution, built to meet the specific requirements of individual organisations. While this approach has its merits, the long-term reality often involves high costs, slow updates, and growing maintenance burdens.

At Pladia, we've taken a different path. We believe that a productised platform, built on shared knowledge and a common foundation, offers a more strategic and sustainable investment for the future.

The hidden costs of the custom build

A custom app is a significant initial investment, but the real costs often emerge long after launch. Updates, security patches, and compatibility fixes become a constant drain on resources. New features, which might be a simple update for a productised platform, require a new project scope, budget, and development cycle.

This not only strains your budget but also slows your ability to innovate and respond to visitor needs. This is the very “technical debt” we’ve spent over a decade learning to avoid at Pladia.

Our goal with Pladia was to distill years of insights from these rigorous implementations into a unified platform of premium software products.

The power of a shared, single platform

Unlike one-off builds, a shared platform evolves constantly. Every new feature, bug fix, and performance improvement we develop benefits every single customer simultaneously. This creates faster innovation, lower costs, and stronger digital foundations for the entire community.

Shared innovation benefits everyone

Consider Pladia Empower. When we refine our Progressive Web App (PWA) architecture for one institution, every other institution using Empower instantly gains a more robust and efficient experience.

When we developed Pathways, our beacon-free wayfinding solution, it became a core capability available to all. This model allows for incredible feature velocity, meaning our platform is always at the cutting edge.

Customer feedback informs our product roadmap

This collaborative approach extends to our customers. We listen to feedback from a diverse range of venues, from small galleries to major museums, and use that collective intelligence to inform our product roadmap. This ensures that the features we build are not just technically sound, but also practically relevant and valuable to the entire community.

A sustainable and future-ready strategy

Investing in a productised solution is an investment in stability and scalability. It means:

• You’re always up-to-date: You're on a continuous development cycle, not a project-by-project one.
• You get more for your money: You benefit from a shared R&D budget and the collective insights of multiple institutions.
• You can focus on what matters: Spend less time on maintenance and more time on creating incredible content and visitor experiences.

Consistency drives efficiency

Beyond financial savings, a productised platform creates operational advantages. By relying on familiar design and interaction patterns, you minimise training time for staff, reduce onboarding friction, and free up resources to focus on storytelling and programming, not complex tech stacks.

Empowering cultural organisations for the future

Our mission is to empower cultural organisations to craft creative and accessible experiences that leave a lasting impression. We do this by providing reliable tools that are ready for the future. This approach fosters a shared journey of innovation.

By choosing a productised platform, you can contribute to a collective knowledge base that benefits all users, ensuring your digital strategy remains relevant and robust for years to come.

Related resources

Case Study: How MCA Enhanced Visitor Engagement with Empower

Pathways: Wayfinding without beacons

Empower product overview