What a Custom Web App Costs and How Long It Takes

There is no single price for a custom web application, the same way there is no single price for a building. It depends on what you are building. What you can do is understand the things that move the number, so you can plan a budget and a timeline that hold.

What drives the cost

A few factors do most of the work in setting the price:

• Screens: how many distinct screens and how complex each one is.
• Rules: the logic, validations and calculations the app must follow.
• Connections: how many systems it links to, such as your ERP or payments.
• Roles: how many user types, each with their own permissions and views.
• Data: how clean your existing data is, and how much must be migrated.

A simple internal tool with a handful of screens sits at one end. A customer portal wired into several systems, with many roles and a data migration, sits at the other.

How long it takes

For a focused first version, plan on roughly six to ten weeks to live. The timeline stretches when the app connects to an ERP, supports many roles, or depends on data that needs cleaning first. The way to keep it short is to scope the first version tightly and leave the extras for later.

What you pay for after launch

A web app is not a one-off. Budget for the running costs and the changes that come with real use:

• Cloud hosting, backups and monitoring.
• Small fixes and improvements as people use it.
• New screens and features as the business grows.

How to keep both under control

• Start with the one job that matters most and ship it.
• Reuse what your existing systems already do.
• Keep the first set of roles and screens simple.
• Tidy your data before you build, not during.

Adding features later in small steps is cheaper and safer than trying to build everything before anyone has used the app once.

Frequently asked questions