What custom software really costs (and why quotes vary so wildly)
For the same question you get quotes of € 8,000 and of € 60,000. That gap is rarely about quality. Here is what it is about.
Almost every business owner having custom software built asks for three quotes and is startled by the spread. That gap is almost never an indication of quality. It is an indication that the three parties answered a different question.
What sets the price
- The number of screens where something complicated happens, not the total number of screens
- Whether there are integrations with other systems, and whether those systems have decent documentation
- Whether there are different kinds of users with different permissions
- Whether money runs through it
- Whether data has to come across from an old system, and what state that data is in
That last point is the quietest cost of them all. “We still have some data in Excel” means, in practice, three files with different column names, duplicate customers and dates in four notations. How that switch actually goes is on from spreadsheets to software.
What does not set the price
The number of pages. An application with forty screens that are all a list and a form is cheaper than five screens with a pricing engine, a schedule and an approval flow in them. Anyone quoting by the page has not looked at your process.
Why that low quote is dangerous
€ 8,000 for something another party charges € 40,000 for rarely means the first one works more efficiently. Usually it means they did not see half the question, or that the change requests are priced so that you get there during the project anyway. You only notice at handover, when the budget is gone and half of it works.
The most expensive software is not the most expensive quote. It is the project that stalls halfway.
How to close that gap
By not asking for quotes on the basis of a description. When three parties have the same written scope, the same data model and the same screens in front of them, their prices suddenly sit close together. That is why I start with a paid discovery: those five days produce exactly that document, and after it the price is fixed instead of an estimate.
And after that?
Count on the build price not being your only cost. Hosting, domain and maintenance keep running. With me that is a fixed yearly amount for updates, backups, monitoring and small changes. What you really want to avoid is a licence on your own software: you buy maintenance, the code should be yours.