How much does custom software cost?

If someone gives you a number for a system without asking a single question, that number means nothing. Not because it is expensive or cheap, but because nobody knows what is being bought.

A system is a set of decisions about how your business works. Two hardware stores of the same size can need different things: one sells at the counter, the other delivers to construction sites. Both ask for "a system for a hardware store", and it is not the same.

The good news is that those differences can be listed and priced. That is what my calculator does: you tick what you need and the total appears by itself.

In order of impact:

1. How many modules. Tracking sales only is not the same as sales, inventory, invoicing and reports. Each module is a part of the system that has to be built, tested and maintained.
2. Users and roles. One owner who sees everything is simple. Owner, cashier, warehouse and salesperson with different permissions is another job.
3. Integrations. Connecting to a tax authority, a payment provider, a scale or the client's legacy system changes the effort far more than people expect.
4. Data migration. If you have 4,000 products in a spreadsheet with inconsistent prices, someone has to clean them. That work is not programming, but it is paid for too.
5. Reports. A listing is easy; a report crossing sales by period, margin per product and projected stock requires the data to be modelled properly from day one.

All of that turns into modules with prices. There is no magic and no "expert judgement" you cannot review.

The base system is USD 699 (CLP 699,990) and includes the minimum for something to be a system rather than a screen: an admin panel and user management. Modules are added on top.

The same three cases, with an AI assistant answering questions using the business data, add CLP 180,000 each.

On top of these values, and paid by the client: monthly hosting, the yearly domain and the cost of keeping the system running (updates, backups and fixes). It is not a hidden expense: it is a cost that exists for any system in production.

If you want your exact combination, the quote calculator does the sum live and leaves you the breakdown in writing.

This section does not help me commercially, which is exactly why I write it: there are cases where custom software is the wrong decision.

If your process is standard, use standard software. If you run a salon, a small clinic or a small restaurant and what you need is to book and charge, there are tools costing less than USD 30 a month that work well. Building that from scratch would be throwing money away.

Custom software is justified when your operation has something that does not fit the existing tools: your own way of quoting, a particular calculation, several locations with different rules, or a process that today lives in three spreadsheets and a notebook.

The question I always ask is: what do you do today that no off-the-shelf system does? If the answer is "nothing, but I want it to be mine", custom software is not the priority — selling more is.

It is not "one good, one bad". They are two different things:

That last point is the most honest one: custom software also carries a dependency risk, and there is only one way to mitigate it — the code has to be yours. If the provider disappears, someone else can take the project over.

A hardware store needed to sell at the counter, control stock, quote tradespeople and deliver to job sites. All of that lived in a spreadsheet and in the memory of whoever was at the counter.

What was built: point of sale, inventory with alerts, price lists per customer type, quotes and delivery orders. Twelve integrated modules on a single database, instead of four programs that do not talk to each other.

This is exactly the kind of case where custom software is justified: the process did not fit any off-the-shelf product, and bending the business to the software would have cost more than bending the software to the business.