What a custom business system costs (and why nobody tells you on the phone)

It is the first question on every call, and rightly so. The trouble is that anyone answering with a number over the phone is either guessing or selling you something else.

A custom business system has no price list for the same reason a renovation does not: it depends on what is behind the wall. What can be said up front is what moves the number, and you can start reasoning about that immediately.

The five variables

1. How many screens you genuinely need

Not how many you imagine: how many you would use in the first month. In most of the projects we see, half the screens asked for at the start are never opened. Starting with the ones you need and adding later costs less than building everything and then discovering what was surplus.

2. How many integrations

Every external system to connect — accounting, e-invoicing, the bank, the courier, the CRM — is a piece of work in itself. If the system exposes data cleanly it is half a day; if it does not, you have to build the bridge, and then it is days.

The question to ask before calling anyone: do the programs I use today let another program read their data? Often only the vendor knows, and it is the most useful phone call you can make.

3. How many kinds of user

A system with one role is one thing. A system where the office sees things the field team does not, the client sees something else again, and the owner sees everything, is quite another: permissions have to be thought through, written down and tested for every combination.

4. How orderly today’s process is

This is the variable that weighs the most, and almost nobody names it. If the way of working is clear and the same for everyone, it translates into software. If instead everyone does it their own way and the exceptions are the rule, someone first has to decide what the process is — and that decision is not technical work, it is your work.

That is not bad news. It is often the part that delivers the most value, because it lines up things nobody had ever lined up.

5. What happens afterwards

Software is not a painting you hang on a wall. Servers, security updates, changes when a rule or a process moves: if that line is not in the quote, it does not mean it is not coming — it means it arrives later, when you are not expecting it.

Why we give the number after the prototype

A quote written against an idea is a bet. Against a tested prototype it is an estimate.

We build the main screens, we try them with you against the real process, and at that point the scope is visible: you know how much there is, which integrations are needed and where the difficulties sit. The number that comes out has a small margin of error and, more importantly, it is checkable — you can look at the thing you are paying for.

An order of magnitude anyway

So as not to leave you empty-handed: the projects we take on generally start in the tens of thousands of euro for a first usable module in two or three months, and grow from there depending on how many of the five variables above are complicated. If your case sits well below that, you probably do not need custom software — and we will say so.