Short answer: at Vortwood, custom software projects start at US$ 10,000. A system that organises a single area, such as orders and stock, tends to sit closer to that floor. One that connects production, stock, dispatch and invoicing is a mid-size or large project and costs several times more. The exact figure comes out of a discovery phase and is closed before the first line of code is written.
What drives the price
The price of custom software does not depend on how many screens it has, but on how much business logic sits behind them. These are the factors that move it most:
- How many processes it covers. Digitising order intake is not the same as connecting orders, production, stock and dispatch in a single flow.
- The operation's own rules. Customer-specific price lists, production recipes, approvals by amount, units that change along the process (bought in kilos, sold in pieces). Every rule has to be modelled and tested.
- Integrations. E-invoicing, accounting, scales, barcode scanners or an ERP that is already running. Each integration adds work, but it is usually what saves the company the most time.
- Data migration. Moving years of spreadsheets into a clean database takes cleaning, merging and validation.
- Users and sites. Several plants, warehouses or shifts, role-based permissions, use from tablets on the floor or with poor connectivity.
Fixed price or hourly
There are two common ways to bill a project. Hourly, the vendor invoices the time spent and the company carries the risk of the project running long. With a fixed price, scope is defined up front and the vendor carries the risk of its own estimate.
We close scope, architecture and price before kick-off. To do that, every project starts with discovery: we map the operation as it actually runs, agree what to fix first, and only then quote. That means no surprise change orders halfway through. If the company wants to add something later, it is quoted separately as a new stage.
Costs that don't show up in the quote
When comparing proposals, the quoted figure is only part of the picture. Also ask about:
- Licences. Do you have to pay per user or per year to keep using the system? With custom software, the code should belong to the company, with no hostage licences.
- Support and maintenance. Every system in production needs someone looking after it. It should be a monthly cost you know in advance.
- Infrastructure. Servers or cloud: whose name they are in and what they cost per month.
- Vendor dependency. If the code and data don't stay with the company, switching vendors later becomes very expensive.
How to think about the investment
The useful question is not only what the system costs, but what it costs to keep going without it: admin hours spent building reports by hand, stock that never adds up, orders lost between WhatsApp and spreadsheets, invoicing errors. That is why we recommend starting with the most expensive bottleneck. The first stage pays for itself with the problem it solves, and the system grows from there.
A first version is usually in production within 2 to 4 months, with a working demo every two weeks, so progress is visible from the first month.
In short
- Custom projects start at US$ 10,000; those spanning several areas cost more.
- Price is driven by processes, specific rules, integrations and migration, not by the number of screens.
- Ask for a fixed price after a discovery phase, and ask about licences, support and infrastructure.
- Make sure the source code and data stay with your company.
For an estimate for your case, see how we work and our FAQ or write to contact@vortwood.com.
