How much does custom software cost

It is the first question on every call and almost always the last one answered: what does it cost to have software built for you?

The honest answer is a little uncomfortable, so we put it first.

The short answer

At Avanzia, custom development starts at $4,000 USD for a first working version. A full system with several modules, integrations and data migration lands between $25,000 and $70,000 USD.

• MVP or small build: $4,000 – $15,000 USD
• Custom software, ERP or CRM: $25,000 – $70,000 USD
• Maintenance and evolution: from $1,000 USD per month
• Dedicated developer: from $4,000 USD per month
• Discovery call: free

If that range is far from what you had in mind, we just saved you three meetings. We mean that without any attitude: there are shops that build things for a fraction of it, and there are companies for which that is the right price. We are not those.

Why we publish the price

Almost no software company publishes numbers. The stated reason is that every project is different, which is true. The real reason is that a price opens the conversation from a weaker position.

We prefer the opposite problem. A public range filters before the call: whoever keeps reading already knows the ground they are standing on, and whoever closes the tab just saved a month of proposals going nowhere.

It also holds us accountable. It is harder to inflate a quote when the starting point is written on your own site.

What you are actually buying

The most expensive mistake when pricing software is believing you are paying for lines of code. You are paying for four things, and only one of them is programming.

Understanding the process before touching it

Before anything gets written, someone has to understand how the company works today: who enters data, who approves, where it stalls, what gets solved over chat because the system does not allow it. That part never shows up on screen, and it decides whether the project is useful.

A system that automates a poorly defined process does not fix anything. It makes it faster and harder to correct.

Building

This is where the programming happens. It is the most visible part and no longer the most expensive one: writing code today is fast and cheap for everyone, us included.

Which is exactly why speed stopped being a selling point. When anyone can have something running in two weeks, what separates a system that lasts three years from one that collapses in the first quarter is everything around the code.

Actually shipping it

The distance between "it works on my machine" and "your team uses it on Monday" is where most projects die. Migrating old data, onboarding people, defining permissions, training someone who has done it another way for fifteen years. That is work, and it gets billed.

What happens afterwards

Custom software is not delivered, it is operated. That is the part almost nobody quotes.

What the cheaper proposal leaves out

Two quotes can describe the same screen and differ four times in price. The gap is rarely in what the system does. It is in what happens when it grows, when someone tries to reach data they should not, and when it breaks.

Here is what is included at Avanzia and is not up for negotiation:

Security, from the first table

• Every table ships with row-level access rules enabled. No exceptions, no "we'll lock it down later". A user can only reach the data that belongs to them, and that is enforced in the database, not in the interface.
• No key or password lives in the code. Secrets go in a separate vault, so a leaked repository is not a breach.
• Everything coming from the user is validated on the server. Validating only in the browser is a courtesy to honest users, not a control.
• Dependency vulnerability review before every release, with zero critical findings in anything that reaches the end user.

A badly secured system gives no warning signs. It works perfectly until the day it does not.

Reliability, which is not the same as "it never fails"

Every system fails. What you are buying is how fast you find out and how fast it gets fixed.

• Every database change is versioned in the repository, not applied by hand in production. You can tell what changed, when and why.
• It gets tested before release, not after a client reports it.
• Backups exist and are verified. A backup that was never restored is a hypothesis.

Scalability, measured in year three

Making something work with a thousand records and three users is easy. Design shows when you open the second location, when the catalog goes from a hundred to twenty thousand products, or when the team doubles.

That is why we separate business logic from the channel it arrives through. In a bot we run for one of our clients, the brain knows nothing about channels: WhatsApp, the website and Instagram only translate messages in and out. Adding a new channel does not force a rewrite.

That decision is invisible on delivery day. It pays for itself in year two.

Quality you can audit

Strict typing, code review before merge, and automated tests on the paths that move money. Not because it looks good, but because it is what lets you change a production system without praying.

The right question for any vendor, us included, is not how fast they can ship. It is how comfortable you are touching it six months later.

Maintenance is not an add-on

When someone asks why maintenance starts at $1,000 USD a month, the shortest answer is: because software that is not maintained dies, and it dies precisely when you already depend on it.

What that retainer covers is not "in case something breaks". It is:

• Security updates. The dependencies your system uses publish vulnerabilities every week. Someone has to review and apply them.
• Business changes. You opened a location, the approval flow changed, a regulator moved something. The system has to keep up with you.
• Data grows. What answered in half a second with a thousand records crawls at a hundred thousand. That gets fixed, not tolerated.
• Integrations that break on their own. A vendor changes their API, a token expires after sixty days. Your system stops talking to the world without anyone touching it.
• Someone answering. When something fails on a Tuesday at nine in the morning, the difference between half an hour and three days is the agreement.

A project delivered without maintenance looks cheaper in the proposal and costs more within the year. We see it in systems we inherit: rescuing one usually costs more than maintaining it would have.

When custom software is NOT for you

This section has cost us projects. We keep it because it has brought us better ones.

When something already does it

If what you need is invoicing, accounting, email campaigns or an online store, there are mature products that cost a fraction and have been refined for a decade. Commissioning your own invoicing system is paying to reinvent something that already works.

The useful question is not "can this be custom built?" but "which part of my operation is so specific that no product covers it?". That part is worth building.

When the process does not exist yet

If the workflow changes every month because the business is still finding its shape, custom software freezes it too early. Stabilize the process first, even in spreadsheets. Automate after.

When the real budget is different

If the number you actually have is a thousand or two, a custom build will not get there, and nobody does you a favor by pretending otherwise. What usually happens is that the project ships half finished, runs out of maintenance, and eight months later you are worse off than when you started, now with your data trapped in a system nobody can touch.

There are real middle paths: automating one part of the process, connecting tools you already pay for, or starting with the module that hurts most. That can be done with less.

The math against a subscription product

The honest comparison is not "custom versus SaaS". It is three years out, with every number on the table.

A subscription product charges per user, per month. Fifteen users at sixty dollars is around eleven thousand a year, and that number grows as your team grows. Over three years you are in the same range as a custom build, without owning anything.

Custom puts most of the investment up front and then drops to maintenance. You own the code and the data, and every change you request is your decision, not a request to a vendor's roadmap in another country.

That said, SaaS clearly wins in two cases: when your process is standard, and when you need something running this week. Neither of those is a bad thing.

How long it takes

An MVP, meaning the first version real people actually use, takes four to eight weeks once the scope is closed. A system with several modules, integrations and historical data migration runs three to six months.

What moves that number is almost never the programming. It is the availability of whoever knows the process on the client side, and how clean the data being migrated is.

We could deliver sooner. We do not, because the weeks you cut always come from the same place: testing, permissions and data migration. In other words, from what holds the system up once nobody is watching.

If someone promises a complete system in two weeks, what you will get is a good-looking demo without the production part. Anyone can build that demo today. Keeping it alive for three years is another matter.

How we get to the number

Our process has been the same since the first project: we listen, we define, we build, we expand.

Discovery is free and it is not a sales call in disguise. We leave it with three things written down: what problem the system solves, what it will NOT solve in the first version, and what it costs. If we conclude in that conversation that you do not need a custom build, we say so right there.

From that comes a closed scope. We do not bill by the hour, because billing by the hour rewards taking longer.

Frequently asked questions

Do I own the code?

Yes. The code and the data belong to the company paying for the development, and they are delivered in your own repository. We do not work under arrangements where the client is tied to the vendor to touch their own system.

What happens if we stop working together?

You keep everything: repository, database, documentation and access. That is the whole point of building custom.

Can I start smaller and grow it?

That is what we recommend most of the time. Start with the module that hurts most, ship it, and grow it with what you learned by using it. It works better than defining a complete system on paper that nobody has tested.

Where is your team based?

In Puebla, Mexico. We work with companies across Mexico, the United States and Canada, in a timezone that overlaps with the entire US working day. If you are comparing against a US agency, we wrote up how nearshore development actually works for teams in the States.

Is maintenance mandatory?

It is not mandatory, but we will not hand over a system pretending it does not need any. If you would rather maintain it with your own team, we document it so they can.

What do I need ready before the first call?

Nothing prepared. It helps a lot if someone who performs the process every day joins, not only whoever runs it.

One last thing about the price

The range above is not a rate card, it is a filter. We work with companies that already have an operation, that lose measurable money in a manual process, and that can sustain the system after delivery.

And the price does not buy speed. It buys a system that holds when it grows, company data that is genuinely locked down, and the ability to change something two years from now without fear. That costs more to write and far less to maintain.

If that describes you, the conversation is worth having even if you do not hire us. If it does not, we would rather tell you today than in meeting four.

From idea to production, without the rigidity of a consultancy.