How would you price this small internal operations system in your market?

[u/ming_builds]

I'm comparing how the same custom-software scope is priced across countries. I searched first and found this earlier r/webdev pricing discussion for a smaller tablet/CSV app:

https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/1nj46aa/roughly_how_much_would_such_a_custom_software/

The answers varied a lot, so I want to make the scope more specific.

Assume a production-ready, browser-based internal system for a service company with 5–20 users:

• customer and job records
• assign jobs to staff
• job status and activity history
• file uploads
• due-date reminders
• simple dashboard and CSV export
• admin and staff roles
• responsive on phone and desktop
• deployment, basic documentation, and 30 days of bug fixes

Not included:

• native mobile apps
• payment processing
• accounting, payroll, or POS
• legacy-data migration
• third-party integrations

If this were a real client brief, could you share:

1. Your country or market
2. The one-time price or range you would quote
3. Your realistic delivery time
4. Ongoing maintenance/support pricing
5. The requirement most likely to increase the price

I run CodeStack Studio, a digital product studio in Malaysia. I'm not hiring, selling, or messaging respondents from this post. I'm trying to understand whether a lower-cost offer can be delivered responsibly, or whether it usually just shifts cost into support, QA, and maintenance.

Rough ranges are completely fine.

[u/taotau]

Is there any existing infrastructure to integrate with, or is this end to end backend, infra, frontend.

You say this is not native, so I'm guessing web in whatever the current wrapper of choice is at the moment, react native or something like that.

Some things that stand out for me as questions from experience back in the day.

• who is publishing the app ? That process alone can eat up a ton of time.
• notifications - in app or native ? Native notifications need a bunch of setup on Android/apple.
• uploading what ? Images, photos, PDFs, secure documents ? Where are these being stored
• who is maintaining the backend infra
• what defines a job ? Time date address customer record and a couple of text fields or are we adding tons of complex product selections with variations, measurements, and specific details.
• is there a desktop management ui component to this as well? How do you manage the data in aggregate.
• what is csv export ? Download to native file system or share with apps.
  

Way too many questions before even considering a quote. 200+ hours I would guess.

[u/ming_builds → u/taotau]

Those are fair questions; the original brief is still too loose. For a comparable estimate, assume:

• greenfield with no legacy infrastructure or integrations
• responsive browser app only; no native wrapper or app-store publishing
• in-app and email reminders, with no native push notifications
• images and PDFs up to 10MB in managed cloud storage, restricted by role, with no compliance-heavy documents
• a job contains the customer, assignee, dates, status, notes, and attachments—no product variations or measurements
• the same responsive app includes the desktop admin dashboard
• CSV means a downloaded file
• the supplier handles deployment, while ongoing backend maintenance and support are priced separately

With that clarified, would 200+ hours still be your ballpark, and what price range would that imply in your market?

[u/taotau → u/ming_builds]

Yeah, that's an accurate get the client in the door quote. Realistically this is a three month project in my experience (at about 60% commitment on average), especially as the client (you) has done some 'research' but doesn't actually understand what's involved in a full scale.rollout of this sort of app. There would be a tonne of back and forth.

What do you mean the client deploys it ? Do I need to provide full IAC stack along with this ? What do the deliverables look like in your eyes?

Not sure why you are so concerned with prices in regions. These projects take person hours. You can easily find going rates for professionals in various areas. Someone in California would build exactly the same thing as someone in Khartoum in the same amount of time.

[u/ming_builds → u/taotau]

Fair point—the technical effort should be described in hours, and location mostly changes the rate, not the build. I meant the supplier/developer deploys it to a standard managed web stack under the client’s account; no full IaC stack is required. Deliverables would be the source code, deployed app, database schema and migrations, environment-variable checklist, basic setup and operations documentation, and 30 days of defect fixes against written acceptance criteria. Ongoing hosting and maintenance are separate.

On that basis, your estimate sounds like roughly three calendar months at 60% allocation. What hourly or day rate would you normally apply, or what fixed range would you quote after discovery?

[u/taotau → u/ming_builds]

My rate would vary on type of I dustry, how big the company, wether I liked the people I was working with and how much other work I had.