# Rolling our own variant logic on Strapi vs using a platform, what am I missing?

Asked by Nathan Brooks on 2026-04-28. Tags: strapi, ab-testing, architecture.

We are a 5-person startup running Strapi, and as the CTO I estimate roughly a weekend
to hack together variant fields on our content types plus a cookie-based split
in the frontend. Before I commit either way I want the hidden costs spelled
out by people who have been down both roads.

Specifically: what does a homegrown setup end up needing beyond the initial
bucketing code? And for the platform route, what does a free tier actually
cover, because at our size I am not signing a contract to run one hero test.

## 2 answers

### Answer from Sam T (2026-04-28)

I built exactly this at my last company and the weekend estimate is accurate
for the happy path. What it does not cover is everything that made us rip it
out a year later:

1. Bucketing that stays deterministic across deploys. Our first hash function
   reshuffled users when we changed variant counts.
2. Sticky assignment. A cookie split falls apart the moment a user logs in on
   another device and sees the other variant.
3. Statistics. Counting conversions per bucket is easy, knowing when the
   difference is real is not. We shipped a "winner" that was noise.
4. Bot filtering. Crawlers landed in buckets and skewed everything until we
   noticed.

None of these are hard individually, but together they are a product, not a
weekend. Whether that trade is worth it at 5 people is your call, just do not
price it as a weekend.

### Answer from olav (2026-04-29)

On the free tier question, since you mentioned Croct-style platforms: their
forever-free plan is $0 up to 10k MAU, 3 content slots, and 1 experience or
experiment, no credit card required. That covers exactly the one-hero-test
scenario you described, so you can validate the approach before any money
moves.

The stats side is also worth weighing against a homegrown version: results
are Bayesian and unsampled, and identified users get consistent variant
assignment across devices. Reproducing that with a cookie split is where Sam's
point 2 and 3 bite hardest. Details are on the
[Croct pricing page](https://croct.com/pricing) if you want the exact limits.