One-off build fee
Fixed scope, fixed price, agreed before a line of code is written. If we get the estimate wrong, that is our problem, not a change order.
✦ Pricing
What bespoke software actually costs
Two numbers, not a price list: a one-off fee to build it, and a low monthly retainer to host, support and improve it. No per-seat licence, no annual uplift, no paying for the 80% of a product you never open.
✦ The model
The cost of software development, in two parts
Most software costs are hidden inside a licence that grows every time you hire. Ours are visible and they sit still.
Low monthly retainer
Hosting, monitoring, backups, security updates, bug fixes, support and a monthly allowance of small changes. One predictable line on the budget.
No per-seat licence
Add ten users or a hundred. The software costs the same. Growth stops being a reason to ration logins.
✦ Numbers
Why there are no figures on this page
We do not publish price ranges, because a range wide enough to be honest is too wide to be useful, and a range narrow enough to be useful would be wrong for most of the people reading it.
A single-process tool for one team and a multi-module system that runs your whole operation are different orders of magnitude. Until we know which one you need, any number we print is a guess dressed up as a quote.
So we do it the other way round. Thirty minutes on a call, then a half-day scoping session, then a written scope with a fixed price against it. You get a real number early, and you get it before you have committed to anything.
✦ The retainer
What the monthly retainer covers
Specifics, so you can compare it against what you pay today.
- Hosting on your cloud account or ours, with the running costs itemised either way
- Uptime monitoring and alerting, with someone actually on the end of it
- Automated backups, tested restores, and a documented recovery process
- Security patching of the framework, libraries and infrastructure
- Bug fixes at no extra cost - if we built it and it is broken, we fix it
- Support for your team by email and a shared channel, with an agreed response time
- A monthly allowance of small changes: new fields, new reports, tweaks to a workflow
- A quarterly review of what to improve next, based on how the software is actually being used
✦ Not included
What sits outside the retainer
Named up front so there is no awkward invoice later.
New modules and major features
Anything that is a project rather than a change gets scoped and quoted separately, at a fixed price, before it starts.
Third-party costs
Cloud hosting above the agreed allowance, SMS and email providers, mapping, payment processing and app store fees are passed through at cost.
Work on systems we did not build
We will happily take on your existing software, but we scope that as its own piece of work rather than absorbing an unknown into a fixed monthly fee.
✦ Cost drivers
What pushes a build price up
If you recognise several of these in your project, expect the higher end of whatever we quote - and ask us to explain which ones are avoidable.
Integrating with legacy systems
A modern API is an afternoon. A twenty-year-old system with no API, an undocumented database and no test environment is a project of its own.
Data migration
Fifteen years of records with inconsistent formats, duplicates and free-text fields takes real work to move and validate. It is usually underestimated.
Offline mobile
Software that has to keep working in a basement or a field needs local storage and conflict resolution. It is worth it when the work demands it, and expensive when it does not.
Number of user roles
Every distinct role is another set of permissions, screens and edge cases. Four roles is normal. Fourteen usually means the process needs simplifying first.
Compliance requirements
Audit trails, data residency, retention rules and formal sign-off flows all add work. Tell us early; retrofitting them costs more than building them in.
Number of integrations
Each system you connect adds build time and something to monitor. We will tell you which connections earn their keep and which can wait.
✦ The comparison that matters
Owning software versus renting seats
Look at five years, not year one. Per-seat pricing is cheap when you are small and quietly becomes your third-largest software line as you grow.
| Per-seat SaaS | Software you own | |
|---|---|---|
| Year one cost | Low. This is the year it looks like a bargain. | Highest. The build fee lands up front. |
| Cost of hiring 20 people | Twenty more licences, every year, forever. | No change. |
| Annual price rises | Set by the vendor. Usually announced, rarely negotiable. | None. The retainer is agreed with you. |
| Fit to your process | You adapt to the product, or you buy plugins. | The software is built around how you already work. |
| Missing feature | Vote on the roadmap and wait. | Scoped, quoted, built. |
| If you stop paying | Access ends. Your data comes back as a CSV export. | You keep the software, the source code and the data. |
✦ Ownership
What you own
The software, the source code, the documentation and the data. All of it, from the first commit, in a repository with your name on it.
The retainer buys you a team that keeps it running and keeps making it better. It is not a lease, and it is not the thing that keeps your software working. If you ever want to take it in-house or hand it to another firm, you can, and we will help with the handover rather than making it painful.
✦ Questions we get asked
Pricing questions, answered plainly
Why a retainer instead of a one-off payment?
Because software that nobody maintains degrades. Libraries get security patches, cloud providers deprecate services, browsers change, and your business changes faster than any of them. The retainer means someone is watching, patching and improving it every month, rather than you calling a developer in a panic two years later.
What happens if we stop paying the retainer?
You keep the software and the source code. We hand over the hosting, the credentials and the documentation, and you either run it yourself or give it to another firm. There is no kill switch and no exit fee.
Can we host it ourselves?
Yes. We can deploy to your own cloud account so the infrastructure sits under your billing and your security policies, and still handle the monitoring and maintenance under the retainer.
Do you charge for every change?
No. The retainer includes an allowance of small changes each month - new fields, new reports, adjustments to a workflow. Anything large enough to be a project gets scoped and quoted separately, so you always know the cost before we start.
Fixed price or day rate?
Fixed price on the build, agreed after the scoping session. Day rates put the risk of a bad estimate on you and reward slow work, which is a strange thing to ask a client to fund.
What does a typical first project look like?
One process, done properly, live in weeks rather than quarters. It is deliberately not the whole system: a first release that people use every day tells us more about what to build next than another month of planning would.
Is the scoping call chargeable?
The first 30-minute call is not. We will tell you on it whether we think custom software is the right answer, including when the answer is that you should buy something off the shelf instead.
Want a number? We'll tell you what we'd build.
Bring us the process and we will scope it. You get a written scope and a fixed price for the build, plus the monthly figure to run it - before you commit to anything.
No pitch deck · We map your process · You own the software