When the software is the product. Web applications with user accounts, permissions, dashboards and billing — built properly, scoped honestly, and owned entirely by you.
Building starts. Requirements surface that nobody thought about — permissions, edge cases, what happens when two users do the same thing at once. Timelines slip. The budget doubles. Everyone ends up unhappy with something that mostly works.
The other failure is quieter and more expensive: the thing gets built and shouldn’t have been. A configured combination of existing tools would have done the same job for a tenth of the cost, and nobody said so because saying so meant a smaller invoice.
We’d rather tell you that at the scoping stage. It costs us a project and saves you £30,000.
Work through these honestly before commissioning anyone.
Airtable, Notion, GoHighLevel, Zapier and similar tools now cover an enormous amount of what used to require custom development. If your requirement is “a database, some forms, a few automations and a dashboard”, you probably don’t need software written. You need tools configured properly, which is a much smaller job.
If you’re selling access to it, custom is likely right. If it’s an internal tool that saves your team time, configured platforms usually win on cost and on how fast you can change your mind.
Every business feels its process is unique. Most aren’t, at the level software cares about. The genuinely unusual parts are worth building; the rest can often be handled by something existing.
Custom software isn’t a purchase, it’s a commitment. Version one is roughly half the total cost over three years. If the budget only covers the build, it will decay.
Custom code needs updating, hosting, monitoring and occasional fixing. Budget for that or plan to inherit a problem.
Many of the businesses that ask us for custom development leave the scoping call with a cheaper recommendation. That’s a good outcome, and it’s why the scoping call is worth having even if you go elsewhere afterwards.
We map what the software must do, what it must not do, and what could be handled by existing tools.
A written spec covering features, data model, integrations and constraints — agreed and priced before development starts.
Interface design and an interactive prototype you can click through, so problems surface before they cost money.
Developed in phases with working software at each stage, rather than disappearing for four months.
Functional testing, security review, load testing where relevant, then deployment and handover of everything.
Ongoing development, monitoring and maintenance, because version one is never the finished thing.
It probably doesn’t fit if a configured platform would do, if the budget only covers version one, or if the requirement isn’t clear enough to specify yet. We’ll say which of these applies at the scoping call — and CRM & Automation is often the cheaper answer.
A SaaS product usually needs a separate marketing site for phase two, since application interfaces aren’t indexable content. And phase three matters more, not less — a product with signups needs onboarding sequences, trial follow-up and churn handling, which is CRM work.
If you’re building a SaaS product, phases two and three are how you get users, not optional extras.
| Tier | Price | Timeline | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Working Core Most Popular | £4,950 | 3–4 weeks | One user type, the single feature that matters most, real data, genuinely usable |
| Starter Platform | £11,950 | 5–7 weeks | Internal tool, single user type, forms, database, reporting dashboard |
| SaaS MVP | £19,950 | 8–12 weeks | Multi-user, authentication, roles and permissions, billing, admin panel |
| Full Platform | £34,950 | 14–20 weeks | Complex logic, third-party integrations, multiple user types, built to scale |
| Enterprise | From£55,000 | Scoped | Bespoke architecture, compliance requirements, high scale |
Ongoing: Maintenance £395/month · Development Retainer £2,250/month (4 days) · day rate £595.
Design only: Web App Interface Design at £2,950, if you’re building elsewhere.
A written technical specification, data model, interactive prototype and a fixed build price.
We charge for this because a proper specification takes days rather than minutes, and because free scoping is how custom projects end up vague. Vague is how they double in price halfway through.
If you decide not to build, or to build with someone else, the specification is yours. It’s a genuinely useful document to take to any developer.
Most custom software goes wrong because the entire thing was priced before anyone understood the scope. Building the core first means you see working software within a month, then decide whether to continue — with real information rather than a specification document and a hope.
You can stop at any stage. Everything built is yours regardless.
For context: a comparable MVP typically runs around £55,000 from a UK team of this kind, and £85,000 from a full London agency. The difference is that you’re not funding an office — not that we cut the timeline or the team.
Book a scoping call. We’ll map the requirement, tell you which parts genuinely need custom development and which don’t, and give you a realistic cost — including when the honest answer is that you shouldn’t build it.
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No spam, no pitch deck.