"How much will it cost?" is the first question everyone asks, and the answer is often "it depends". Here's what it actually depends on, with real numbers.
The short answer
At Pulseni, the first version of a web app, phone app or online subscription tool starts from £12,000. Most land between £25,000 and £40,000 and take 4 to 12 weeks. A website to launch and sell the product starts from £3,500.
Other studios and agencies will quote differently, but the things that push the price up or down are much the same everywhere.
What makes the price go up or down
- How many types of user. One kind of user (say, the surveyor) is simpler than three (the surveyor, their client and an admin), because each needs their own screens and permissions.
- Accounts and payments. Sign-in, subscriptions and taking card payments each add work, though good off-the-shelf tools keep this sensible.
- Connecting to other systems. Pulling data from accounting software, a government database or your existing tools adds time, especially if the other system is old or poorly documented.
- Web, phone or both. A web app works on every device. Separate iPhone and Android apps cost more. Many products start on the web and add phone apps later.
- Reports and data. Dashboards, PDFs, exports and charts all take care to get right.
- AI features. Drafting text, reading documents or sorting photos is now very achievable, but it needs testing so the results are reliable, plus a small running cost for each use.
- Rules and regulations. Health, finance and legal products need extra care around data, security and record-keeping.
Three example projects
To make those numbers real, here are three typical shapes of project and roughly where each lands. They're examples to help you picture it, not quotes. Your own price depends on the details.
Example 1 · A focused tool for one kind of user
A building surveyor's report tool. One type of user, works in the web browser on a phone or laptop. Take photos room by room, rate each defect from a set list, and produce a finished PDF report.
- What's in it: sign-in, photo capture, the surveyor's rating guide, a report template, PDF export.
- What's not: client accounts, team features, payments.
- Roughly: £12,000 to £18,000, about 4 to 6 weeks.
Example 2 · A subscription product for small firms
A compliance tracker that letting agents pay for monthly. Two types of user (the agency owner and their staff), card subscriptions, email reminders before certificates expire, and a dashboard showing what's due.
- What's in it: accounts for each firm, staff invites, subscriptions and invoices, reminders, a dashboard, a settings page.
- What's not: phone apps, links to other software.
- Roughly: £25,000 to £35,000, about 8 to 10 weeks.
Example 3 · Web plus phone apps, connected to other systems
A job management product for trades businesses. Office staff use the web, engineers use iPhone and Android apps on site, and invoices flow into the firm's accounting software.
- What's in it: three types of user, phone apps that work with a poor signal, job scheduling, photos and signatures, a link to accounting software.
- What's not: very much. This is a big first version, and we'd usually suggest starting smaller.
- Roughly: £40,000 and up, 12 weeks or more.
Notice what moves the price: more types of user, payments, phone apps and connections to other systems. The core idea can be just as valuable in Example 1 as in Example 3.
Costs after launch
Building it is the big cost, but not the only one. Plan for:
- Hosting and services. Usually small at first and growing as you get more users.
- App store fees. Apple charges a yearly developer fee and Google a one-off fee to publish phone apps. Both also take a share of in-app purchases.
- Updates and fixes. Phones and browsers change, and your users will ask for improvements. You can do this yourself with another developer, or agree ongoing support.
For a sense of scale: in the first months, a web product with a few hundred users often runs on hosting costing tens of pounds a month, not hundreds. AI features add a small cost each time they're used, so it's worth knowing how often your users will use them before you set your own prices.
How to spend less without cutting corners
- Start with one user and one job. Build the version that solves the main problem really well. Everything else can wait.
- Start on the web. One product that works on every device is often the smartest first step.
- Use proven building blocks for payments, sign-in and email, instead of building them from scratch.
- Be clear about the problem. The clearer you are about what goes wrong today, the less time is spent guessing.
Warning signs in a quote
- An hourly rate with no total and no cap.
- No clear list of what you get.
- Nothing in writing about who owns the code and the product.
- A big upfront payment before you've seen anything working.
How we price
We start with a free 30-minute call about the problem and who has it. Then you get one fixed price in writing: what we build, the timeline, and who owns what. You pay in stages, a deposit to start and the rest at agreed milestones, and you see it working before each payment. Pulseni isn't VAT registered, so no VAT is added.
A typical payment plan for a first version looks like this: a deposit to start, a payment when you've clicked through the designs and are happy with them, another when the working version is in your hands to try, and the last at launch. Each one comes after you've seen the progress it pays for.
For a strong idea that people clearly want, there's another option: we may build it for a share of the business instead of all or part of the fee. See how our paid development works or who equity partnerships suit.