We're all accustomed to buying a product or service that has a set price. The price tag is a convenient way to know if you can afford something before you purchase.

However, not everyone understands the cost challenges when it comes good software development. You may have to change your mindset a lot from what you're used to.

The direct answer to 'How much does it cost?' is unfortunately, there is no set up-front price.

A better question to ask might be: 'Is My Software Project Feasible?'

In order to determine if a project is feasible, we need to analyze it. We go about that in the following initial steps.

1. Discussion of your idea
2. Brainstorm & Analyze, we do this internally, and with you
3. Concept & Design Mock-up

Additionally for complex projects, or as your project moves along, we will also:

4. Prototype/Develop
5. Usability Test
6. Re-start the Process at Step 2

After flushing out ideas in the steps above, we'll have a better idea of what it will to take develop & further iterate on that work.

Software development itself is an ongoing process that just repeats these steps.

That's a great question. However, it is rarely distilled down to just yes or no, instead we ask 'is it feasible?' of each feature as we move through those steps.

That is, we're constantly analyzing what your needs are to discover the most feasible way of approaching a given solution.

For each challenge that we help you solve, we also want to give you the best cost to benefit ratio.

We work together on this. You tell us the business value of what you want, and we help you to understand the effort involved in that.

So far we've alluded to some reasons why there is no set price up front in software development. Namely, it's a creative process iterating on each idea to determine the best approach. That is more akin to the process of invention rather than purchasing an existing product.

There are even more reasons, such as security and maintenance requirements, which we will touch on later.

However, in order to make the process simpler and more cost effective, we've developed the Precision Intranet Framework.

It's a foundation of common features that have been used, tested and validated by all of our customers, provided to you for free as long as you're a Precision customer, significantly lowering the initial cost and risk of development to you.

If you're lucky, the idea you have is something you've seen or used AND there is good tooling built up for it. In that case, it's possible your idea will be relatively quick, easy and inexpensive. As part of the analysis and design process, we'll be able to begin narrowing down those costs for you.

On the other end of the cost spectrum, you may have a fresh idea that requires new tooling, in which case the cost is less predictable up-front, but will become more apparent as you go along iterating the concept. This will require a little more initial cost in order to analyze and prototype. That's a necessary process to discover how complex ideas can be made feasible.

You can check out our pricing page to get an idea of the starting prices. And as you start in with development, you may decide to shift up or down your monthly commitment depending on how quickly or slowly you want to push out new features.

We can also give you a better idea of the monthly commitment levels for initial development and ongoing maintenance you'd expect after going through the initial steps of idea discovery with us.

Start a Project

EVEN after going through analysis & design of a given feature, if we are able determine the relative cost of that feature, your commitment to software development doesn't necessarily end there.

Although the initial development typically costs more, there will be maintenance costs you should expect.

Not to mention, in 99% of successful projects, you will also have more ideas for improvements and new features.

Almost all good projects worth their time are also worth continual development.

New software always builds on layers of other software.

Your custom app is a complex system that requires many software libraries & programming languages.

And the security threat landscape is ever evolving.

This is one area where the Precision Intranet Framework really shines. Simply by being an active retainer customer, we provide security updates for free as a service, or a low monthly rate if you decide to stop development (see pricing page).

The incessant drumbeat of technology advances, and you need to update with it.

While we do our best picking components that have proven to be valuable, stable, and reliable; we can't predict the future. Your software likely needs to be updated to keep up with modern devices and newer technologies.

Doing this helps to ensure longevity of your investment.