The short answer: a small business can expect to pay roughly €3,000–15,000 ($3,200–16,000 / £2,600–13,000) for a first working version of custom software, with ongoing care around €50–300/month after that. A mid-size business with several integrations lands closer to €15,000–60,000. The spread comes down to three things: how many systems need to talk to each other, how many user roles exist, and how much old data has to move. These are market reference points, not our quote — our exact price comes after a free 48-hour assessment of your brief.
Now the slower version, because "how much" is the wrong first question. The right one is "which of three paths fits me."
| Option | Time to start | Typical cost | Ongoing cost | Ownership |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Off-the-shelf SaaS (CRM, booking platform) | days | €0–50 setup + €20–300/mo per user or module | grows with every seat and add-on | the vendor — your data lives in their format |
| No-code (Bubble, Airtable, Zapier chain) | 1–4 weeks | €500–5,000 build + €50–400/mo hosting and automations | jumps sharply as traffic or editors grow | partly you — the platform sets the ceiling |
| Custom build | 3–8 weeks to a first version with agreed scope | €3,000–60,000 depending on scope | 8–15% of build value per year for maintenance (market reference) | entirely you — code, access, data |
When does owning beat renting? Here is a sample calculation, not a market law: a team of 10 paying €45 per user per month for SaaS plus €150/month in add-ons spends about €21,600 over three years. A €12,000 custom first version with €150/month for care and hosting comes to about €17,400 over the same period. Change the assumptions — fewer users, a bigger build, heavier integrations — and the answer can flip. That is exactly why we run the numbers on your case, not on an average. If you will run the system for five or six years, the math looks very different than for a business testing a model for three months.
An illustrative calculation, not a finished project of ours: a three-location salon chain wants online booking, an owner's dashboard on the phone, SMS reminders, and automatic waitlist fill-in for no-shows. No ERP integration, no mobile app. Rough figure: €4,000–7,000 for a first version, 4–6 weeks, €60–100/month for care and hosting. The same chain, but with accounting software integration and a self-check-in kiosk at the front desk, moves to €9,000–14,000 — the kiosk alone adds hardware handling, offline mode, and a separate interface.
We don't build the whole system in one go. We build the piece that stops the bleeding today — usually bookings or lead response, because that's where money leaks most visibly — and ship it in weeks, not quarters. Then we add the next module on top of a working foundation, shaped by real users telling us what's missing. A big-bang project with a fixed scope from day one is the most common reason custom software ends up expensive and late — because nobody knows exactly what they need until they've touched something real.
You describe the idea — you see it sketched in the conversation itself, before you've paid anything. Then a free 48-hour assessment of your brief — scope, risks, and a realistic range for time and cost — before any hourly meter starts running. The code is yours from day one — concretely: the source in a repository you own, documentation, every admin access and your data. Third-party libraries, AI models and outside services (payments, SMS) stay under their own licences and subscriptions, and we list them up front. If we disappeared tomorrow — which isn't the plan — another developer could pick up the project, because we write standard code with documentation, not magic only we understand. Backups are encrypted and tested by actually restoring them, and our own server panel can keep a warm standby on a second machine if your business can't afford a quiet hour — that's a choice we'll talk through, not a default.
If you're under 10 people, your processes haven't settled yet, and an off-the-shelf SaaS covers 80% of what you need — buy it. Custom makes sense when you're paying a subscription for features you don't use, when your data is locked in someone else's format, or when your growth is hitting a ceiling the vendor has no reason to raise for you. If you're not sure which camp you're in, that uncertainty itself is a good question to bring to a 48-hour assessment.
If you have a concrete problem — even just one sentence like "bookings run through three apps and I lose people between them" — describe it to the live agent at pentimento.pro and see what the system would look like before deciding whether to build it.
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