Straight answer

What it costs,
before you call.

Most of this industry answers “how much?” with “it depends.” It does depend — on about six things, all of which are listed further down. Here are the ranges anyway.

These are the bands our work actually lands in, not a starting price designed to get you on a call. If your project is outside them we will say so in the first conversation rather than in month three.

Everything is fixed-scope and fixed-price unless you specifically want time and materials. We quote after a paid discovery for anything large, because a number produced without understanding your data model is a guess with a decimal point in it.

Ranges by discipline

Marketing site $3,000 – $25,000: Bespoke design, a CMS your team can actually use, and the performance work that makes it rank.
Commerce $8,000 – $75,000: Checkout, tax, fulfilment and the payment edge cases. Higher than a marketing site because that is where the real work is.
Web application $25,000 – $150,000: Dashboards, SaaS products and internal tools, including the backend and the data model underneath.
iOS or Android app $40,000 – $150,000: Native, per platform. A single-purpose app over one API is at the bottom; offline sync, payments and a backend of its own is at the top.
Managed hosting $100 – $3,000 / month: On top of the cloud bill itself, which stays in your name. We do not mark up infrastructure.
Support retainer From $750 / month: A named engineer, an agreed response time, patching and upgrades, and a monthly block of development hours.

Three worked examples

Real shapes of work, anonymised. Figures are what the engagement cost, not a brochure average.

Marketing site for a professional services firm

Build: $8,000
Timeline: 3 weeks
To run it: $150 / month

14 page templates, bespoke design, copy edited but not written
CMS with structured fields, so nobody is styling text by hand
Contact routing to two teams, spam handled server-side
Analytics, schema and the Core Web Vitals work to make it rank

Multi-tenant analytics portal

Build: $55,000
Timeline: 5 weeks
To run it: $1,800 / month

Role-based access across tenants, with an audit trail
Scheduled reporting that replaced a three-day manual month-end
Data model designed first; the interface followed it
Staging that matches production, and one-command rollback

Native iOS field app with offline sync

Build: $115,000
Timeline: 2 months
To run it: $1,400 / month

Swift and SwiftUI, offline-first with conflict resolution
A backend built alongside it rather than bolted on after
TestFlight programme, phased rollout, App Store submission handled
Crash reporting and performance monitoring wired before launch

What actually moves the number

Integrations. One well-documented API is a week. Four undocumented internal systems is a quarter, and most of it is discovery.
Your data model. Clean and understood, we build on it. Fifteen years of accumulated exceptions, and untangling it is the project.
Who has to sign off. One decision-maker is fast. A committee that meets fortnightly sets the pace regardless of how quickly we build.
Content. Ready copy and photography, or we schedule around producing it. This is the single most common cause of a slipped launch.
Compliance. HIPAA, SOC 2 or PCI scope changes the architecture, not just the paperwork.
Whether it exists already. Rescuing a half-finished build can be cheaper than starting over, or considerably more expensive. We tell you which after we read the code.

Questions about cost

Why do you publish prices when nobody else does?

Because the alternative wastes everyone’s time. If your budget is $2,000 and the work is a $90,000 build, both of us want to know that in the first thirty seconds rather than after three meetings and a proposal. Publishing the ranges filters out the mismatches before they become calls.

Is it fixed price or time and materials?

Fixed scope and fixed price by default. We quote after a paid discovery on anything substantial, because a number produced before we understand your data model is a guess. Time and materials is available if you prefer it, and is usually the honest choice for open-ended platform work.

What does the discovery cost?

Discovery is typically $2,500 to $8,000 depending on the size of the system, and it produces a specification, an architecture and a fixed quote you own. If you take the build to someone else you still keep all three — it is not a loss leader with strings.

Do you charge for hosting on top of the build?

Yes, separately, and the cloud account stays in your name. Managed hosting runs $100 to $3,000 a month depending on traffic, environments and response commitments. We do not mark up the underlying infrastructure bill, and you can take the account elsewhere at any time.

What is the smallest project you take on?

Around $3,000. Below that you are better served by a specialist or a good template, and we will usually say so and point you at one. We would rather lose a small project than do it badly around larger ones.

Do you take equity instead of fees?

No. We are a development company, not an investor, and an equity deal quietly makes us a stakeholder in decisions we should be giving you neutral advice about.

Tell us what you are trying to ship.

A real technical opinion back within two business days — not a sales call.

Start a build