What does custom
software cost?
The honest answer is: it depends. The unsatisfying answer is a range ten thousand euros wide. So here is the sum itself: tick what you need and you see the amount and the lead time straight away. No email address, no call afterwards.
Your sheet out, a system in its place
- Your sheet read through: what counts as a client, an order, a line item here
- Your data migrated and cleaned up, history included, nothing flattened
- Login, user management and one record type with list, filters, search and detail
- Switching over while the business keeps running, plus hosting, delivery and two weeks of aftercare
- Time to launch
- 3 weeks
- Hosting and maintenance p/m
- € 100
Nothing ticked yet. The base is the project itself: picking your sheet apart, migrating it and switching over without downtime. Start with the things you do by hand today; most companies land somewhere in € 4,500 to € 9,000.
This is an indication, not a quote. The components below are scope, not surcharges: what you tick decides how big the project is. After a thirty-minute intake you get one fixed amount per milestone. If the scope turns out different, you hear it before we start and not afterwards on the invoice.
Why do these prices vary so much?
The number of exceptions
Two companies ask for the same system and the price still differs. That sits in the sentences starting with 'except when'. Every exception is a rule that has to be built and tested.
How much you record
One list of orders is one screen. Orders plus suppliers plus locations plus contacts is four times the building and three decisions about how they hang together.
Whether integrations are involved
Talking to your bookkeeping or your webshop is rarely hard, but it is always work. What it costs depends on how well the other side documented their API.
What happens to your existing data
An empty database is free. Importing five years of history from a spreadsheet, de-duplicating it and getting the dates consistent is a job of its own.
Who gets in and what they see
Everyone sees everything is the cheapest variant. The moment an engineer should see different fields than the office, a permission model gets added.
How it has to look
Working screens in my own components with your logo cost nothing extra. A design that gets drawn first costs design time.
How the amount becomes final.
You do the sum
The calculator above uses the same amounts as my quotes. What you see is not a teaser price that creeps up later, it is where the conversation starts.
Thirty minutes of checking
We walk through your process and I dig into the exceptions. Usually part of your list turns out to be unnecessary and something that was not on it turns out to matter.
One fixed amount per milestone
No billing by the hour and no range. You know per part what it costs and when it lands, and you pay once that part works.
If the scope changes, you hear it first
Think of something extra halfway through and you get a separate amount for it before I start on it. Not afterwards on the invoice.
- ✓The code and the hosting are in your name
- ✓One fixed amount per milestone, known up front
- ✓No per-user licence, however many people you put in it
- ✓Handover with an explanation, not with a manual
- ✓Thirty days of warranty on what was built
- ✓Hosting and maintenance separate, per year, not as a percentage
Login, one record type with a list and a detail screen, hosting and delivery. Everything above that you tick yourself.
If your question is not in here, or you are unsure whether it should be custom software at all, describe it in the form, or email me your spreadsheet or a screenshot, and you hear what I think within a day. Including when the answer is that you are better off buying an existing package.
Four configurations, worked out
To make that calculator a bit more tangible: these are four combinations as they come up in practice, with the amount that follows from them. All amounts exclude VAT and include delivery.
If you recognise your own situation in one of these four, the wider story sits on its own page: custom inventory software, a quotation system, a client portal or a dashboard. If it is specifically a portal, the amounts per scope are on what a client portal costs. Replacing a spreadsheet? Start at from spreadsheets to software.
Wholesaler replaces the stock sheet · € 5,940, 6 weeks
Base plus two extra record types for suppliers and locations, roles and permissions, a dashboard with key numbers, phone scanning and a bookkeeping integration. Migrating the existing sheet sits in the base.
Installer moves quotes out of Word · € 5,060, 5 weeks
Base plus two extra record types, PDFs in your own branding, automatic emails to the client and statuses with an approval step for amounts above a threshold.
Clients check their own file · € 4,290, 4 weeks
Base plus a client portal where each client sees only their own data, and a permission model so your own people do see everything. Without that permission model it is € 3,520, roughly what a client portal costs on its own.
One planning board for three locations · € 5,170, 5 weeks
Base plus two extra record types, separated data per location with one overview for management, a dashboard and an integration with Google Calendar or Microsoft 365.
Why the same system costs € 25,000 elsewhere
At an agency your project carries an account manager, a project lead, a designer, two developers and a tester, plus an office in a expensive city. That is not a scam, that is their cost structure. You are the one paying for it, including the meetings you were not in.
I build alone. That means less coordination, no handover between people who do not know each other's code, and a price that matches. It also means I cannot take on a six-month project with eight people; you are better off at an agency for that. Which of the three routes fits you is written out on agency, freelancer or building it yourself.
If you do not know exactly what it should become yet, that is not a problem: that is where the conversation starts. The full rate structure sits on pricing, and why quotes for the same question vary so wildly in what custom software really costs.
What the price covers, and what it does not
The indication above is the build: from empty screen to a working system your people can log into. What comes after sits deliberately separate, because it is recurring work with its own cost and not a percentage of your project.
Hosting and maintenance therefore cost the same on a three-thousand-euro system as on an eighteen-thousand-euro one. What that covers sits on maintenance and support. What to watch for so maintenance does not become a licence on your own software is in why you want to own the code of your own software.
- ✓Build, testing and delivery: in the price
- ✓Hosting for the first year: in the price
- ✓Explaining it to your team: in the price
- ✓Thirty days of warranty: in the price
- ✓Maintenance from year two: separate, per year
- ✓Third-party licences like Mollie or Exact: you pay those yourself
- ✓New features after delivery: separate amount, agreed up front
What gets built for amounts like these in the real world
Clients rate me
5 stars on average.
Translated from the Dutch originals on Google.
I am Bas Voets. Since 2021 I have been building websites, client portals and business software for small and mid-sized companies, from Hazerswoude-Dorp in the Netherlands. From first call to launch you talk to me, not to an account manager.
What do I get for that amount?
What does custom software cost on average?
Is that indication actually accurate?
Why does another page show a different starting price?
Do I pay per user?
What does maintenance cost per year?
How long until it is live?
Can I pay in instalments?
Would a no-code tool not be cheaper?
Tell me what you
want to build.
A half-hour call. You get an honest answer about what it costs, how long it takes and whether building it is smart at all.