Cost & ROI
DPP: Build or Buy?
Should you develop your own Digital Product Passport system or buy a platform? Real cost lines, maintenance burden and a decision framework.
Every company with a technical team asks this: "It is a database, a QR generator and a web page. Why buy?" The first version really can be written in a few weeks. The problem is not the first version — it is everything after it.
Visible versus invisible work
| Visible | Invisible |
|---|---|
| Data model and forms | Append-only versioning and audit trail |
| QR generation | Resolver, content negotiation, domain strategy |
| Web page | Access tiers and role verification |
| Database | Registry API integration and status tracking |
| Simple export | Signing, key management, verification interface |
| — | Persistence, backup, multilingual content |
See the DPP standards guide.
A decision framework
Build makes sense when:
- The passport is part of your own product (you sell a platform, for instance).
- You have a highly specific data model that standard templates do not fit.
- Your internal team can own this system long term.
Buy makes sense when:
- Your goal is compliance and meeting customer demand.
- You want to spend your capacity on data collection, which is the real bottleneck.
- You do not want to track regulatory change yourself.
The hybrid approach
A common and sensible middle path: your data, their publication. Keep product and supplier data in your own systems (ERP/PLM) and let a platform handle passport creation, signing, publication and registry integration. See ERP integration for DPP.
This preserves data ownership while keeping the maintenance burden of regulatory change outside.
If you do build
- Keep the canonical data model in one place.
- Design append-only versioning from day one; retrofitting it is very expensive.
- Mark the access tier in the data model.
- Decide your domain and resolver strategy on day one.
- Make a persistence plan: backup and handover.
Frequently asked questions
Are there open source options?
Yes — open source stacks exist with EPCIS repositories, Digital Link resolvers and DPP modules. The maintenance burden still sits with you.
How should I compare costs?
Calculate three-year total cost of ownership: development plus maintenance plus regulatory tracking plus infrastructure. See DPP cost breakdown.
Can I move to a platform later?
Yes, if your data model is portable. That is why standard field names and export capability matter from the start.
