Pricing
What it costs, and how we get to the number
We don't publish a price list, because the same feature can be a week or a quarter depending on what it has to connect to. What we can be specific about is how we charge, what moves the figure, and what you get without asking.
Four ways to work with us
Most projects use one of these, and some move between them - discovery into a fixed-scope build, a build into ongoing care.
Discovery and scoping
Turn an idea into something you can actually cost.
- Best for
- Anyone who knows the problem but not yet the shape of the solution, or who needs a defensible number before asking for budget.
- How it's priced
- A fixed fee for a short, bounded engagement. It stands alone - you can take the output to another team, and some people do.
What's included
- Sessions with you and whoever else holds the requirements
- A written scope: what is being built, and explicitly what is not
- Technical approach, with the significant trade-offs named
- A cost and timeline estimate with the assumptions listed
- Deducted from the project fee if you go ahead with us
Fixed-scope project
Most commonA defined deliverable, a fixed price, a date.
- Best for
- Marketing sites, defined integrations, a specific module, a rebuild of something that already exists. Work where the requirements are genuinely settled before it starts.
- How it's priced
- One quoted figure, paid against delivery milestones rather than elapsed time. Change requests are quoted before they are built - never absorbed silently, never invoiced as a surprise.
What's included
- A working environment you can open at any point during the build
- Written progress updates at an agreed interval
- Testing and accessibility work inside the quoted price
- Deployment and handover documentation
- An agreed period of post-launch fixes
Sprint-based product work
For products that will change as they meet real users.
- Best for
- Ongoing product development where the roadmap will move, and teams who need capacity for months rather than one deliverable.
- How it's priced
- An agreed rate per sprint, with scope reviewed at the start of each one. You know the monthly cost; the priorities inside it stay yours to change.
What's included
- A named team you work with directly, not through an account manager
- Priorities set with you at the start of each sprint
- Working software at the end of each one
- Your repository, review process and tooling if you have them
- Notice period rather than a fixed-term lock-in
Care and support
Keeping something live, updated and monitored.
- Best for
- Anything in production - whether we built it or inherited it - that needs to stay secure and current without a full-time engineer.
- How it's priced
- A monthly fee covering maintenance plus a defined amount of change work. Entirely optional, and it can be cancelled without affecting your access to anything.
What's included
- Dependency and security updates
- Uptime monitoring and incident response
- Bug fixes on the live system
- An agreed allowance of small changes each month
- A quarterly note on what is ageing and what to plan for
What actually moves the number
Two projects described in the same sentence can differ by a factor of five. These are the things that decide which one you have - worth knowing before you ask anyone for a quote, including us.
- User roles and permissions
- One kind of user is straightforward. Four, each seeing different data with different rights, multiplies both the build and the testing.
- Integrations
- Talking to systems you already run - payment providers, ERPs, hospital systems, legacy databases - is usually where the unpredictable time goes. Undocumented APIs are the expensive case.
- Platforms
- Web only, or web plus Android and iOS. Cross-platform narrows the gap but does not close it, and each store brings its own review and release overhead.
- Design
- Working from your existing brand and design system is faster than starting from nothing. Original interface design for an unfamiliar problem is real work in its own right.
- Data migration
- Moving off an old system is rarely a copy. Reconciling inconsistent historical data is frequently larger than the feature work around it.
- Regulated data
- Health, financial and personal data at scale bring audit trails, retention rules and access controls that belong in scope from day one. Retrofitting them costs several times more.
- Scale and uptime
- A tool for forty internal users and a public platform expecting traffic spikes are different engineering problems, even when the screens look identical.
In every project, at no extra cost
Some of these are sold elsewhere as add-ons. We think a site that people can't use with a keyboard isn't finished, so it isn't a line item.
There are no licence fees payable to us, no per-seat charges, and nothing that stops working if you stop paying us.
- Accessibility built in - keyboard operation, visible focus, contrast in every theme
- A performance budget agreed up front and held to, not measured after launch
- Security practice as standard: validated input, server-side authorisation, managed secrets
- Your own repository access from the first commit, not at handover
- Written updates covering risks while they are still small
- Full ownership of the code and infrastructure configuration on final payment
How a quote happens
No obligation attaches to any step, and nothing is chased. If it isn't the right time, say so and we'll leave it there.
Tell us what the problem is
A paragraph is enough. A specification is welcome but not expected.
A conversation
Usually 30 to 45 minutes, to understand the constraints - budget, deadline, existing systems, who has to sign off.
Scope, or a direct quote
Small and well-defined work can be quoted straight away. Anything larger goes through discovery first, because a number without scope is a guess.
A written proposal
Deliverables, price, timeline, assumptions and payment schedule, in a document you can take to whoever holds the budget.
Questions about cost
How much will my project cost?
We quote per project, after we understand what's being built. Anyone who gives you a number before that is guessing.
The things that actually move the figure: how many distinct user roles there are, how much of it integrates with systems you already run, whether it needs mobile as well as web, and how much design work is starting from nothing. Scoping produces a number you can plan around.
Do you work fixed-price or time-and-materials?
Fixed price where the scope is genuinely fixed - a marketing site, a defined integration, a well-specified module. You get a number and a date.
For product work where requirements will change as you learn from users, fixed price tends to punish both sides: we pad the estimate, and you can't change your mind without a variation order. There we work in sprints against an agreed rate, with scope reviewed as we go.
How long does it take?
It depends on scope, and we won't pretend otherwise. What we will do is give you a timeline with the assumptions written down, so when something slips you can see exactly which assumption broke.
The single biggest factor is usually not our speed - it's how quickly decisions and feedback come back from your side.
What happens if the scope changes mid-project?
It usually does, and that's fine. What matters is that a change is visible rather than absorbed silently.
When you ask for something new, we tell you what it costs in time or money before we build it, and you decide. Nothing gets quietly dropped to make room for it.
What do you need from us to stay on schedule?
One person who can make decisions, and reasonably quick answers to blocking questions. Access to whatever systems we need to integrate with, arranged early rather than the week we need it.
Most delays come from waiting on access or a decision, not from the engineering.
More on how we work is on the FAQ page, or email hello@nexifer.com.