By Mo Hussein
2 min read
Why the quotes are all over the place
Ask three developers what a booking system costs and you might get three answers that differ by a factor of ten. That's rarely because someone's overcharging. Usually each of them has pictured a different system.
Custom software is priced by the work involved. The work depends on things that are easy to skip in a first conversation: how many kinds of user there are, what has to connect to what, and how much of the process should happen on its own.
What actually moves the price
In our experience, five things account for most of the difference:
- How many separate jobs the software has to do. A quote form is one job. A quote form, a diary and a customer portal are three.
- How many kinds of user there are. Staff, customers and managers each need their own screens and permissions.
- Integrations. Every connection to another system, like Xero or Stripe, adds work, and some are far easier to connect to than others.
- Existing data. Bringing years of spreadsheets across cleanly takes time, especially when the data's a bit inconsistent.
- How polished it needs to be on day one. An internal tool for five staff can be plainer than a portal your customers use.
How to keep the cost down
Start with the one workflow that eats the most time, and get that working properly before adding anything else. A smaller first version costs less and goes live sooner. It also teaches you what the second version should really include.
I'd be wary of a fixed price given before anyone's asked how your work runs. A price without a written scope either has a big margin built in for the unknowns, or it'll grow later.
Getting a real number
Our project estimate asks a few quick questions about your business and builds a price range and timeline from the work involved. It takes a few minutes, and you get a copy by email.
From there, a free discovery call confirms the scope, and the written proposal fixes the price before any work starts.
