Contents
01Why quotes differ by ten times
Two quotes for "a customer portal" can differ by an order of magnitude and both be honest. One vendor priced a login page and a table. The other priced invoices, payments, roles, an admin area, email notifications and a migration of five years of data.
The words in the brief were the same. The scope underneath them was not. Until someone writes down what the system actually has to do, every number is a guess, including ours.
A quote is only as precise as the scope it was written against.
02Typical ranges we quote
These are the ranges from our own pricing page, for work done by a small senior team in the US time zones. Agencies with larger overheads quote higher; freelancers and offshore teams often quote lower, with trade-offs in communication and ownership.
- Paid discovery: $2,400 fixed, three working days, ends in a written plan you keep.
- Internal tool or web app, first release: from $18,000, typically up to $46,000.
- CRM setup and integrations: from $7,500.
- AI or automation for one clear task: from $9,000.
- Website or online store: from $12,000.
- Mobile app: from $32,000.
03The five factors that move the price
Almost every change in a software estimate traces back to one of these. When a quote comes back higher than expected, ask which of them drove it.
- Distinct screens and roles. A system for one kind of user is a different project from one with customers, staff and managers, each seeing different things.
- Integrations. Every system the software talks to, such as payments, accounting, calendar or phone, adds building and testing time. Two is routine. Six is a different project.
- Data migration. Moving years of history from spreadsheets or an old system is usually the least visible and most underestimated part. Old data is rarely as clean as anyone remembers.
- Content. Someone has to write the emails, help texts and page copy. If it is the vendor, budget for it.
- Fixed deadlines. A hard external date means more people working in parallel, which costs more than the same work done in sequence.
04Fixed price or time and materials
A fixed price feels safer and is, for work that is well understood: a discovery phase, a clearly specified integration, a landing page. For anything larger, a fixed price forces the vendor to pad the number against unknowns, and you pay for risks that may never happen.
What works better for most first projects is a fixed price for discovery, then staged releases with a budget per stage. You see working software every two weeks and can stop, change direction or continue with real information.
05How to keep the first release affordable
The first release should remove the most manual work for the least money. That usually means one workflow, done properly, rather than every workflow done halfway.
- Start from the task your team repeats most often, not the feature that sounds most impressive.
- Keep the old tool running in parallel until the new one has proven itself.
- Buy instead of build wherever a standard product covers the need. Custom software earns its cost only where your process is actually different.
- Postpone the admin panel polish, the dashboards and the mobile version until people use the core daily.
06Costs after launch
Software is not finished at launch. Budget for hosting, monitoring, security updates and small changes. For a typical small business system, hosting is often tens of dollars a month; support and improvements are the larger line.
A reasonable rule of thumb is to set aside a monthly amount for maintenance and improvements from the start, rather than treating every change after launch as a new project.
07Questions to ask every vendor
These questions separate quotes that are cheap from quotes that are low for a reason.
- Who owns the code, and is the repository on our account from the first day?
- Where is it hosted, and whose account pays for hosting?
- What exactly is in the first release, and what is deliberately left out?
- How often will we see working software, and can we stop after any stage?
- What happens if you are unavailable: is there documentation another developer can use?
Questions
How long does it take to build custom software?
A focused first release of an internal tool or web app typically takes four to six weeks after discovery. Mobile apps and projects with many integrations take longer. Anything promised in one week is either very small or not custom.
Is it cheaper to use no-code tools?
For simple internal workflows, often yes, at least at first. No-code becomes expensive when you hit its limits, pay per user as the team grows, or need an integration it does not support. It is a good way to test a process before building it properly.
Why pay for discovery instead of getting a free estimate?
A free estimate is written without looking at your real data and process, so it is either padded or wrong. Paid discovery produces a written plan you own, which you can take to any vendor, including us.
Where we can help