"It depends" is the honest answer and a useless one. So here are real numbers, including ours, and the reasoning behind them — because the point of this article is that you can read a software quote and know whether it's fair.
The short answer
| What you're buying | UK price band | Typical timeline |
|---|---|---|
| A single automation (a report, a merge, a matching job) | £250 – £1,500 | 1–2 weeks |
| A focused internal tool, one process, a handful of users | £2,000 – £6,000 | 3–6 weeks |
| A proper system: multiple users, roles, history, reporting | £6,000 – £25,000 | 6–14 weeks |
| A platform your business runs on, or a product you sell | £25,000 – £120,000+ | 4–12 months |
| Agency or consultancy equivalent of the middle two rows | £40,000 – £250,000 | 6–18 months |
For reference, our own work starts at £250 for spreadsheet automation, £6,000 for a hosted team application and £9,500 for a CRM and workflow system. Most full engagements land between £5,000 and £40,000. Every one is a fixed, itemised price agreed before work begins.
Why the agency row is so much higher. Not better engineering — more people. A typical agency project carries an account manager, a project manager, a designer, two or three developers and a QA lead, each billing a day rate, plus overhead. You're paying for coordination between those people. A founder-led build removes most of that cost without removing the work.
The five things that actually drive the price
1. How many distinct things it does
Not "how big" but how many separate jobs. A tool that records timesheets is one job. A tool that records timesheets, approves them, feeds payroll, flags overtime and reports on utilisation is five. Cost scales with the number of jobs far more than with the number of screens.
2. Who uses it, and in how many roles
One role is cheap. Three roles — staff, manager, admin — means permissions, and permissions mean every screen has to be reasoned about three times. Adding customers as a fourth role, with their own login, is usually the single biggest jump in a quote.
3. What it has to connect to
Integrations are priced per system and vary enormously. A modern tool with a documented API is straightforward. An older on-premise system, a bank feed, or something with no API and only a CSV export is where the hours go. Name every system in your enquiry — that single list changes quotes more than anything else you can tell a developer.
4. Whether your existing data has to come with you
Migration is the most consistently underestimated line in software work. Ten years of a spreadsheet with inconsistent names, merged cells, three date formats and a "notes" column holding critical information is real work to bring across cleanly. Expect a genuine line item for it, and be suspicious of a quote that has none.
5. How careful it has to be
Software that handles money, personal data, safety or regulated records costs more — not for features, but for verification, audit trails and testing. A tool that produces an internal chart and a tool that produces an invoice sent to a customer are priced differently, correctly.
What the price should include
- Scoping and process mapping — understanding what you actually do, including the workarounds.
- Design of the screens, not just the database.
- The build, with you seeing working software during it rather than at the end.
- Migrating your existing data, stated explicitly.
- Testing — including the awkward cases, not just the happy path.
- Deployment and hosting setup, in accounts you own.
- Handover — a written explanation and a session with your team.
- A defined period of fixes after launch for things that are genuinely wrong.
If a quote doesn't mention migration, testing or handover, those costs haven't disappeared — they'll appear later as extras, or they'll be skipped.
The ongoing costs nobody mentions on the first call
- Hosting — genuinely small for most internal tools. £5–£50 a month covers a lot. Be wary of anyone quoting hundreds without explaining why.
- Maintenance — dependencies and platforms change. Budget something annually, even if it's small, or plan on a review every couple of years.
- Changes — your business will change and the software should follow. Ask for a per-item change price rather than a retainer you may not need.
- Support — decide up front whether you need a response time or just an email address. The first costs much more than the second.
Fixed price versus day rate
A day rate with an estimate attached puts the entire risk of a wrong estimate on you. If the developer misjudges by 40%, you pay 40% more. A fixed price puts that risk on the person best placed to judge it — which is why we quote that way, and why we spend real time on scoping before giving a number.
The trade-off is honest: fixed prices require a defined scope. If you genuinely don't know what you want yet, pay for a short scoping engagement first, get a specification you own, then take that out for fixed quotes. That's cheaper than discovering the scope at a day rate.
Does it pay for itself?
Do this on the back of an envelope before you speak to anyone.
- Hours saved per week across everyone involved, honestly estimated.
- × your true hourly cost for those people — salary plus employer costs, not the headline wage.
- × 46 working weeks.
- Plus subscriptions you can cancel, annualised.
- Plus the cost of the errors this currently causes — a wrong invoice, a missed booking, a duplicated order.
A system that saves one person six hours a week at a £22 true hourly cost returns roughly £6,000 a year. Against a £9,500 build, that's payback inside twenty months and free thereafter — before you count the errors or the cancelled subscriptions. If your numbers don't get near payback in two years, the honest answer is don't build it yet.
Three ways to spend less
- Start with one process. The single most expensive habit is specifying everything you might ever need. Build the one thing costing you the most hours, use it, then decide.
- Automate before you replace. Spreadsheet automation from £250 often removes 80% of the pain for 5% of the cost of a system.
- Bring clean data. Tidying your own spreadsheet before migration is free for you and expensive for someone else to do.
Questions to ask any developer
- Is this a fixed price, and what would make it change?
- What's explicitly not included?
- Who owns the code and the data at the end?
- What happens if you're unavailable in two years?
- Can we see something working before the final payment?
- What will hosting and maintenance cost annually?
- What would you tell me not to build?
The last one matters most. Anyone willing to talk you out of scope is worth more than someone who agrees with everything.
If you've already decided custom is the answer, our bespoke software development page sets out what we build and how a project runs. If you're still weighing it up, read bespoke software vs off-the-shelf first.
Get a fixed, itemised number.
Describe the process that's costing you the most time. We'll tell you what it would take to fix — or that it isn't worth building yet.