Is Custom Software Expensive?

The short answer here is yes. Great custom software isn’t cheap, although it depends on the company that wants it.

A beautifully designed intranet with lots of features, for example, would probably be way out of budget for a start-up. But, for a larger company, the value would far, far outweigh the costs.

It depends on the size and complexity of the software

This seems obvious, but, if you’re on a tighter budget, it’s something that will take a lot of consideration.

If there are a lot of people using the software, or if there are lots of pages, it will be more expensive. It pays to list all of the features you would ideally want in the software and run through them with the development team. With their help, you can eliminate the features that will be the least useful.

As they will be able to look at your business and your workflow from an objective point of view, they’ll have the ability to identify features that won’t have much effect on your overall productivity. By cutting down on how many features are included, you can also cut the cost of the overall project.

Running through the features with the development team is useful for another reason too. Sometimes, you’ll think that a small feature will be pretty easy and low-cost to add, when in reality it’s something that will take hours to implement.

We come across this in almost every project we take on. A client asks us if we can “just” add a drag and drop feature, or “just” integrate it with their existing software. Often, we can’t “just” do it – it’s a lot more complicated than you would think!

It depends on the design

It goes without saying that we’d all like software that looks nice and it easy to use. But a great design can’t be just included in the price of the software development.

An attractive piece of software with excellent usability takes more hours of planning and implementing. Just as you would pay for the design of a website, you have to pay for the design of your software too.

And, if you want your design to be top-notch, the cost will have to reflect that.

Do you need to migrate existing data?

If you need to move data across from your existing systems (as most companies will), you’ll probably need custom scripts to migrate the data and adapt it to the new software.

This usually isn’t a huge job, so it probably won’t be the most expensive part of the project, but it’s something to take into consideration when budgeting for your new software and meeting with your development team.

If you’re not sure…

The best thing to do is to speak to a development team (like ours, hint hint!) and tell them what your budget is and what kind of software you’re after.

Even if you don’t get the software of your dreams, the likelihood is we’ll be able to whip up something that fits your budget and does what you need it to.

This can also be developed so that you can add more features to it as and when you can afford to. There are also monthly payment options to help you out – although software will almost certainly pay for itself due to increased productivity, we understand it can take a while to see results.