Custom Build House cost
As one of the folks on the Planet Argon team who handles project inquiries, I’ve often fielded the question, “What does a typical web application cost to develop?” from potential clients who contact us.
Like a good software engineer, my response to this question begins with, “it depends.”
The Short Answer
It costs $80-300k+ to design, develop, and deploy a minimum viable product (MVP) in the form of a custom web application. But that's a pretty big range for software development, right?
The Long Answer
Custom software development is far from typical, which is why we use the word “custom.” There might be a handful of similarities between our projects…but each project is a unique little butterfly of ideas and business logic. Quite often, the only consistency between two custom applications is that some type of user can register, sign into an account, and “do stuff”. While I wish I could direct you to a handy dandy web application cost calculator or template, the actual process is based as much on our experience as our formulas. There is no canned, average cost of software development answer to give you.
And as much as I’d love to be able to respond to your question with a, "It depends, how much can you afford to invest in your web app?”…I understand that there is a reasonable chance that this is uncharted territory for you. It’s my responsibility to help folks like you understand the complexity involved in developing your application.
To help you understand where I’m coming from, let’s compare this process to a scenario where you were looking to build a house. We're not building you a model home, we’re embarking on the design and development of a custom house.
If you were to ask an architect to help you design a house—I am skeptical that you would be surprised if they asked, “What is your budget for this dream house?” Honestly, if an architect started working on blueprints before discussing your budget — I’d recommend that you find a different architect. If they started designing something that you could never afford — then you would have wasted both of your time and money. A budget affords the architect to think within a focused scope.
The same is true for building custom web applications.
How We Provide Ballpark Project Estimates
When an entrepreneur asks us for an estimate of how expensive their custom web application will be, we let them know that we can only provide a ballpark range for development up front. In order for us to determine this range, we run through a series of high-level conversations. These conversations allow us to discern each company's timeline, goals, and expectations. This allows our team to become acclimated with the goals of your project. Then we move onto developing cost estimations.
