What actually drives the price
The number of distinct things the system must do — screens, roles, workflows — is the core driver.
Each external system (accounts, payments, couriers, calendars) adds connection work.
Clean CSVs are quick; a decade of creative spreadsheet history takes care.
Internal tools can be plain and proud; customer-facing systems earn their design budget.
Typical ranges (fixed price, agreed before we start)
Every business differs — these are real 2026 ranges from actual builds, not teaser rates (web apps & portals start from £2,500, as on our pricing). No subscriptions, no per-user fees, you own the result.
Internal tools & dashboards
Replacing a spreadsheet-driven process with a focused tool: typically £2,500–£6,000.
Booking systems
Online booking with reminders, deposits and client records: typically £3,000–£8,000.
Client portals
Secure document exchange, status tracking and approvals: typically £4,000–£10,000.
Custom CRMs
Pipeline, automations, reporting and migration: typically £5,000–£15,000.
E-commerce & ops platforms
Orders, inventory, dispatch and channels: typically £6,000–£20,000.
Multi-module platforms
Directory-scale or several systems in one (think Rooplex): £15,000+, scoped in stages.
UK bespoke software prices, band by band
The same ranges as above with the build time and the things that most often push a quote towards the top of its band. Every figure is a fixed price, agreed in writing before any work starts.
| What you’re building | Typical price | Build time | What pushes it up the band |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI assistant or workflow automation | from £450 | 1–2 weeks | Connecting it to live systems rather than a fixed knowledge base |
| Business website | from £495 | 2–4 weeks | Page count, copywriting from scratch, bespoke illustration |
| Online shop | from £1,800 | 3–5 weeks | Product variants, stock rules, and how many products need loading |
| Internal tool or dashboard | £2,500–£6,000 | 2–4 weeks | Number of data sources it has to read from and reconcile |
| Booking system | £3,000–£8,000 | 3–5 weeks | Staff and resource rules, deposits, and two-way calendar sync |
| Client portal | £4,000–£10,000 | 4–6 weeks | Permission levels, e-signature, and how much clients self-serve |
| Custom CRM | £5,000–£15,000 | 5–8 weeks, staged | Automations, reporting, and migrating years of existing records |
| Ops or e-commerce platform | £6,000–£20,000 | 6–10 weeks, staged | Every extra integration — couriers, accounts, marketplaces |
| Multi-module platform | £15,000+ | Staged; first module live in 4–6 weeks | Scoped and priced one module at a time, so it never lands as one number |
Anything past about six weeks is delivered in stages, so you are using the first part of the system while the rest is still being built. Ongoing: hosting and care from £30/month — or nothing at all if you host it yourself. You own the code either way.
Hourly rate, day rate, or fixed price?
This is the question underneath the price question, and it moves the final number more than the technology does. Here is what you will typically be quoted in the UK, and who carries the risk in each case.
Hourly and day rates
UK freelance developers commonly quote around £35–£75 an hour, UK agencies typically £500–£1,200 a day, and offshore teams often £15–£30 an hour. The trouble is that a rate tells you almost nothing on its own: the bill is rate × hours, and at the point you sign, nobody has committed to the hours. Every misunderstanding, every bit of rework, every “while we’re in there” is billed to you. A cheap rate attached to a vague scope is the most expensive way to buy software.
Time and materials, with a cap
A halfway house: billed by the hour, but with a ceiling. Better than open-ended, though in practice the cap has a habit of becoming the price, and the awkward conversation simply moves from the start of the project to the end of it. It also leaves you with no lever on scope creep, because you are the one holding the risk of the scope growing.
Fixed price — how we work
We scope the work properly first, then quote one number, in writing, before anything is built. If it takes longer than we thought, that is our problem and not your invoice. It forces the scope to be clear on day one, which is the single biggest reason software projects run over. New ideas mid-build are welcome — they are quoted as their own fixed-price increment, so you always decide with the number in front of you.
A useful sanity check on any quote: divide it by a realistic hour count. A £6,000 build is roughly a fortnight of senior developer time at UK rates. If a quote works out at two days of work, ask what has been left out. If it works out at four months, ask what is being built that you did not ask for.
What the price includes — and what it doesn’t
Most unpleasant surprises in this industry are not overcharging. They are things a client quite reasonably assumed were already in the number.
In the fixed price
- The tech audit and scoping that produce the spec — free, and yours to take elsewhere
- Design and build of every screen in that spec
- Testing on real phones, tablets and browsers, not just a developer’s laptop
- Migrating your existing data across from spreadsheets or your current system
- Go-live, with us there on the day rather than gone
- Full source code, documentation and a handover walkthrough — owned outright
Not in it — budget separately
- Hosting and care after launch: from £30/month, or host it yourself
- Third-party fees you would pay regardless — card processing, SMS, mapping, e-signature
- Copywriting and photography, unless you ask us to include them
- Features invented after the spec is agreed — quoted separately, always fixed price
- Advertising spend and any ongoing marketing retainer
The three-year sum nobody does before signing
A subscription always looks cheaper on the day you buy it. The comparison that actually matters is what each option has cost you three years later, and what you own at that point.
| Running total | Subscriptions at £300/month | Bespoke build at £6,000 |
|---|---|---|
| Up front | £0 | £6,000 |
| Year one | £3,600 | £900 care plan |
| Year two | £3,600 | £900 |
| Year three | £3,600 | £900 |
| Three-year total | £10,800 | £8,700 |
| What you own at the end | Nothing. Stop paying and it stops working. | The system, the source code and the data. |
Assumptions, so you can argue with them: £300/month is a mid-sized stack of three or four business tools with a handful of users, and per-user pricing means that column grows as you hire while the bespoke column does not. The £900 a year is our £75/month Care plan. Neither column counts your own staff time, which is usually where the real difference turns up.
When bespoke isn’t worth it
We would rather say this now than take a deposit for something you should have bought off the shelf. If any of these describe you, the honest answer is don’t.
Payroll, filing statutory accounts, email, video calls. These are solved problems and the off-the-shelf versions are excellent. Bespoke earns its money where your process is unusual — which is normally the part you have been quietly apologising for.
Nothing worth owning gets built in days. If the deadline genuinely will not move, buy a subscription now, live with it, and build the replacement properly once the pressure is off.
For anything with logins, data and permissions that is not enough to do it safely, and software done unsafely is worse than no software at all. Websites are a different matter — those genuinely do start at £495.
If two people share it and it works, keep it. The moment to build is when it is being emailed round, there are three versions in circulation, or only one person understands it.
Building something to run your own business and building something to sell to thousands of others are different projects with different budgets. Worth saying out loud at the start rather than eighteen months in.
From "this is doing my head in" to shipped — in weeks
Free tech audit
We map how you work today and pinpoint exactly what's costing you time or customers.
Fixed quote
A clear scope and a fixed price, in writing. You know the number before we start.
We build
Delivered in weekly increments you can see and steer — no black box, no drift.
Launch
Tested, your data migrated, live in weeks. We're there for the go-live, not gone.
It's yours
Full source, docs and UK hosting. Own it outright — grow it with us or anyone.
Software that fits you — not a subscription you fight
Off-the-shelf
- Monthly per-user fees that grow with your team, forever
- You bend your process to fit the software
- The features you need are locked to the "enterprise" tier
- Your data lives inside someone else's roadmap
Bespoke, built by us
- Fixed price up front — owned outright, no licences, no per-seat fees
- Shaped precisely around how your business actually works
- Only the features you need, so it stays fast and simple
- UK-hosted, GDPR-first, and it grows when you do
Questions we get asked
Why fixed price instead of day rates?
How does bespoke compare to SaaS subscriptions?
What about ongoing costs?
Can we start small?
How much does bespoke software cost in the UK?
Do you charge an hourly rate for bespoke software?
What is the cheapest useful bespoke system?
Why are quotes for the same project so different?
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