What custom software actually costs in Naira

Every first call ends with the same question, and most agencies dodge it. They say “it depends”, which is true and useless. This is how we actually work out a price, so you can sanity-check any quote you receive, including ours.

The three things that set the price

Strip away the jargon and almost every project is priced on three drivers.

1. How many distinct jobs the system does

Not screens, jobs. “Register a patient”, “approve a refund” and “send the monthly report” are jobs. Each one needs its own rules, its own error cases and its own testing. A system with ten jobs is not twice the work of one with five: the jobs start to depend on each other, and the testing grows faster than the feature list.

2. How many other systems it must talk to

Payment gateways, banks, SMS and WhatsApp providers, couriers, accounting packages, government portals. Every integration is a partner you do not control, with its own documentation (often out of date), its own test environment (sometimes missing) and its own outages. Integrations are where estimates go wrong, so a serious quote names each one.

3. How much of it is new

Logins, roles, a catalogue, a checkout, a dashboard: these are well understood and quick to build properly. A matching algorithm, a pricing engine or a workflow nobody has automated before needs discovery and iteration. If your idea has a genuinely novel core, expect the price to sit around that core, not around the screens.

What moves a project into the next band

Clients are often surprised by which requests are cheap and which are expensive. These are the usual reasons a quote goes up:

• Two native apps (Android and iOS) instead of one web app or progressive web app. That is close to two codebases to build and maintain.
• Offline working. Letting staff work without a connection and sync later is one of the hardest problems in software, and here it is often a real requirement.
• Roles and approvals. “Managers see everything, staff see their branch, finance approves above a limit” multiplies the testing on every screen.
• Migrating old data. Spreadsheets with ten years of inconsistent entries take real time to clean and import.
• Reports that must reconcile to the kobo with another system, such as your bank statements or your accounting package.
• A deadline earlier than the work allows. Speed costs more people, and more people cost more coordination.

And the requests that are usually cheaper than people fear: changing colours and layouts after the design is approved, adding a field to a form, or a new report on data the system already holds.

The costs that arrive after launch

Software that runs a business is never finished. It needs looking after, and that has a cost whether or not anyone planned for it. Over three years, the running costs commonly match or exceed the original build. They include:

• Hosting and databases, which grow as your usage grows.
• Domain names, certificates and email services, renewed every year.
• Third-party services: SMS, email delivery, maps, payment fees, error tracking. Many of these are billed in dollars.
• App store fees, if you have native apps.
• Security patches and updates. Phones, browsers and the libraries your system depends on change every few months, and an unpatched system becomes a liability.
• Support: someone who answers when it breaks, and someone who makes the small changes your team will keep asking for.

A care agreement turns these into a predictable monthly figure with a response time in writing. Without one they arrive as surprises, usually on a Friday.

The exchange rate is part of your budget

Most cloud hosting and software services price in dollars. When the Naira moves, your running costs move with it, even if nothing about your system changed. Ask any vendor for a list of every recurring cost, the currency it is billed in, and whose card pays for it. Then decide deliberately: some services have Naira-billed or local alternatives, and some are worth the dollar exposure. What matters is that you choose, rather than discovering it on a statement.

Why we quote after discovery, not before

We can give you a realistic range on the first call. We will not give you a fixed price until we have done discovery: one to three weeks of learning how your operation actually works, ending in a scope document, a timeline and a fixed quote. You own that document whether or not you hire us.

The reason is simple. A fixed price on a vague scope is not fixed. Either the vendor has padded it heavily to cover the unknowns, or they will meet the unknowns later and send you change requests. Discovery is how the unknowns get found while they are still cheap.

Five questions that expose a weak quote

1. What is the total cost over three years, including hosting, services and support? If they cannot answer, they have not thought about year two.
2. Which integrations are included, and what happens if a partner’s system does not behave as documented?
3. What exactly is out of scope? A good quote is as clear about what it excludes as about what it includes.
4. Who owns the code, the hosting account and the domain on the day we launch?
5. How often will we see working software? If the answer is “at the end”, you are carrying all the risk.

How to spend less without getting less

If the number is higher than your budget, cut scope, not quality. Launch with the jobs that make or save money on day one and schedule the rest. Start with a progressive web app before committing to two native apps. Buy commodity pieces such as accounting, email and payments rather than building them. Leave the reports until you have real data to report on. A smaller system that works and is looked after will beat a larger one that is shaky, every time.