Custom software is expensive to build. Even if you’re just building a prototype, you’ll likely need plenty of functionality that will drive the cost of development sky high.
This is made worse when you don’t know exactly what you need to build. Many change their minds while they build. This is called scope creep and it gets VERY expensive.
Instead, you can productize a service yourself in less than an hour. Hard to beat that kind of time to market and cost savings.
Again, I can’t reinforce strongly enough, the early phase of building a product business is all about validating your value proposition. Basically, does your solution comprehensively solve your customer’s problem?
If you can verify this, then you’ll know you have product market fit and once verified, you can add software to automate the steps and reach greater scale.