The beauty of the custom applications is that they may do whatever you want. The sky is the limit. But it is also true for the budgets. And, if you don't want to see your budget going to the sky, it is vital to balance your expectations and costs.

First, when you ask, "How much will it cost?" we will need to clarify what you mean by "it".

In other words, what must the product do, and how should it be integrated into other systems you use? There may be different levels of understanding:

Just an overall concept

If you have only an overall concept in your head, that's a great start. We may help you develop it and add missing details later. Even at this early stage, we may roughly estimate the possible range of budgets based on our assumptions.  

A high-level specification

It is the next level of understanding your requirements. You may do it yourself (in the following articles, we will discuss how to prepare a meaningful high-level specification. Please, subscribe for the updates in the right sidebar). Or we may help you develop it.

At this stage, the budget estimations may be more accurate. However not final yet.

A list of detailed user stories and data flows.

It is the most detailed level of your understanding of the product. Therefore, it will allow us to make an accurate estimation. Also, it minimizes the risk that we may not meet your expectations with the product.

To be continued

The following articles in our blog will discuss how to control the development budget and what typically causes budget overruns. So stay tuned and subscribe for updates.