While custom software's cost is higher than packaged software since custom software are made for a specific purpose. 3. Packaged software are easy or simple to use because these software have an easy interface. Whereas custom software is hard to use because these software are custom-built or customized.
To add to both Sanjeev and Georg's remarks, web-based software development is often much cheaper (often free) than its counterpart. I suppose the infrastructure encourages the creation of the sort of excellent open-source platforms that professionals now regularly use to initiate, produce, and ultimately deploy their products.
On the other hand, the fact that there's still a big market for "conventional" software dev platforms suggests that open-source web-based dev has some catching up to do in terms of producing products of comparable robustness. (But I do wonder whether the line between "conventional" and web-based is even clear anymore). I can't think of any conventional platforms that haven't also fully embraced what the internet/web has to offer to leverage their products to an even greater extent (e.g., MS Visual Studio TFS). I'm a relative novice, but that's just my two cents.
