When I’m looking into a new product or service online, the pricing page is one of the first places I go. I like a company that lists its prices and lets me compare plans, and I’m glad that has become the norm for software subscriptions: the Pricing link is in the top menu or, failing that, in the footer. Professional services firms are another story. I’ll land on a consulting or development firm’s site and come away with no idea whether the thing I’m investigating costs $200 a month or $20,000, which means I have no idea whether it’s something I can afford or something way outside my budget. The last thing I want to do at that point is fill out a contact form, exchange a bunch of messages with a sales rep, and book a slot on somebody’s calendar, all to find out a number I can’t afford.
So this article does what I wish more firms’ sites did. It gives you ballpark figures for what custom business software costs in 2027, for the three ways we build it: Quickbase, Caspio, and custom code. On an initial call I can usually give a prospective client a range within 15 minutes. The cost often looms larger than any other question for buyers of business software, and that’s especially true for entrepreneurs and small businesses who are paying for development out of their own profits.
The $2,000 project
I learned the importance of being clear and upfront about costs early. Not long after I started Watkyn, I got a call from a residential solar installation company that wanted custom software to help them sell, plan, and execute installations. The woman who called made it clear they were growing fast and had a long list of features that nothing on the market did, and that every one of them was essential. I assumed (you know what that does) that anyone that insistent about what they needed must have the money to pay for it, and I skipped the most basic step in sales, which is qualifying the customer. After several long requirements meetings I presented a proposal, and learned that their budget for the whole project was $2,000 tops. Two thousand dollars, for something that would have taken at least 1,000 hours. Even on Upwork you won’t find someone who will work for $2 an hour. Even a greatly stripped down version of their grand vision would have come to far more than their budget would allow.
I’m not telling that story to make fun of the client. Nobody had ever told her what software like that costs, so she had no way to know, and the fault was mine for not asking about their budget or expectations. We all need to know prices to be able to make plans and good decisions, so here are some guidelines to give you a sense of what custom business software costs today.
Quickbase: about $20,000 for a typical build
We build Quickbase apps at a fixed price now, and a typical new build runs about $20,000, soup to nuts. That is considerably less than I would have quoted five years ago, and the reason is AI. The app is still planned and built by a professional Quickbase developer with years of experience, but the developer now works with an AI that assembles tables, fields, relationships, and forms through the Quickbase API faster than a person can click and type, so the drudge work that used to fill the middle of a project takes a fraction of the time. An extremely complex Quickbase project, with custom integrations to other systems, might cost as much as $75,000. But the typical project does one function or workflow very well, and it sits near the low end.
Caspio: $7,000 to $20,000
Caspio development costs a little less than Quickbase. A typical Caspio project runs $7,000 to $20,000. The platform is a good fit for a focused application, particularly one that has to be available to the public or to a large number of users, because Caspio isn’t priced per user the way Quickbase is. Because a Caspio app integrates with your own website and database, there is also slightly more of a technical maintenance burden with Caspio than with Quickbase.
Custom software: $20,000 at the low end, $50,000 to $200,000 typically
Custom software varies the most, because “custom” covers everything from a single screen that manages one process to a system that runs a company. Today it’s possible to get a custom application that manages one process for as little as $20,000. A typical project for a small or midsize business, a nonprofit, or a government office runs $50,000 to $200,000. Above that, projects go up into the millions of dollars, and what drives them there is predictable: highly specified requirements, complex integrations, regulated data, and migrations of years of records out of an old system. If your project has two or more of those, expect the higher end.
What you’ll pay after the build
Those are development costs. Every option also has an ongoing cost, and the shape of it differs. Quickbase and Caspio are subscriptions, and you’ll pay them for as long as the app runs; Quickbase’s is priced per user, so it grows with your headcount. Custom software has to be hosted and served from somewhere, on your premises or in the cloud (we mainly use AWS), and the hosting bill for a small-business application is almost always a good deal lower than a Quickbase or Caspio subscription, though it depends on the configuration and the usage. The catch is that hosting your own software comes with a real maintenance burden: updates, backups, security patches, the occasional reboot. You can do that yourself, and AI tools make it far more approachable than it was even two years ago. Or we can take responsibility for it; our maintenance plans start at $750 a month, which is still less than many Quickbase subscriptions.
How to choose
If you need a single function or workflow built, Caspio is usually the fastest and cheapest way to build it, and a custom application is the cheapest to own over the years, since there’s no subscription. Either one beats Quickbase when the application has to be open to the public or to a large number of users, because Quickbase is priced per user. If what you want is the lowest total cost of ownership and you don’t mind some technical maintenance (or paying us for it), go custom.
Quickbase’s sweet spot is an application with several of the following: (1) a complex workflow, or several of them, with lots of conditions, stages, or approvals in the process; (2) a moderate number of users, all inside your organization, say 100 or fewer as a rule of thumb; (3) a need for powerful, customizable reporting that your own staff can modify; (4) granular permissions by user role; and (5) no appetite whatsoever for technical maintenance, security, and backups, and a preference for a platform that handles all of it. If that describes your situation, Quickbase will get you there faster and cheaper than a custom build, and you’ll be able to change it yourself afterward.
At the extreme end of complexity, though, the comparison flips. A Quickbase app with dozens of tables, a web of pipelines, and integrations to three outside systems is harder to build and harder to maintain than the equivalent custom application, and at that point custom is both simpler and less expensive. We’ve built both, so we’ll tell you which side of the line you’re on.
What we can do
These rough numbers should give you a good general idea of the current cost of custom software development. If you want a more exact estimate to build your specific project, a 30-minute call (opens in a new tab) is usually enough for us to give you a range. That way you’ll know whether we’re in your budget. From there, the next step is a fixed-fee assessment with a written recommendation and a fixed price for the build. I explain how that fixed price divides the risk between us in fixed price vs. time and materials. If you’d be better served by an off-the-shelf product, or even just a spreadsheet, we’ll tell you that too.
