“It depends” is true, but it is not much help when you are trying to decide whether a conversation is worth having. So this guide uses Inferred’s published prices. Other suppliers will price differently. The questions at the end work for any quote.
The short answer. Our business system and automation builds start from £1,495 for a small, single-purpose system, at a fixed price agreed in writing before work starts. Hosting is either your own server or ours from £45 a month. Support is optional, with Care from £195 a month. Prices exclude VAT.
What the starting price buys
A starting price only helps if you know what sits at the bottom of the range. For us, it is something like a simple job or booking log for a single team:
- a few screens for entering and finding records;
- the fields you already track, laid out the way the team works;
- logins for the people who use it;
- a documented handover.
It does not include moving old data in or connecting to other software. That is an example of scope, not a package. Every project is quoted on its own.
What makes a build cost more
Most projects are larger than the starting example. The price rises with the work involved, and the work usually comes from six places.
Moving existing data
Years of spreadsheets or an old database rarely import cleanly. Duplicates, half-used columns and different spellings of the same customer all need deciding before they can be moved, and the people who know the data need to be part of that.
Connections to other software
Sending invoices to your accounts package, reading orders from an online shop or loading a supplier’s price list each add work. We confirm a connection is possible before we promise it.
Permissions
One shared login is simple. Different people seeing and changing different things, with a record of who did what, takes more design and more testing.
Offline working
Tablets or phones that record work without signal and catch up later have to deal with two people changing the same record. Doing that safely is a real part of the build.
Customer access
A portal, ordering screen or status page used by people outside your business needs more care over security, wording and support than a tool used only by your own team.
Reporting
Dashboards and regular reports are often where the value shows. Each one has to be agreed, built from reliable data and checked against the figures you use today.
Three separate costs
When you compare quotes, separate the three things you may be paying for. Mixing them together is how a cheap build becomes an expensive arrangement.
- The build. A one-off fixed price. With us, you own the result, the source code and the documentation.
- Hosting. Run it on your own server with nothing to pay us, or on hosting we manage from £45 a month, on your own instance that is never shared with another customer.
- Support. Optional. Our Care covers monitoring, updates, tested backups and small fixes, on a rolling month. Larger changes are scoped and quoted as work.
We do not charge per-seat licence fees for the systems we build. Third-party software, such as an accounts package you connect to, is agreed separately.
Do you need an audit first?
Not if you know what you need. If you can describe the job and how the work moves through the business today, we can quote from a short written brief after a free conversation.
When the problem is less clear, our £895 Operations Audit measures where the hours go and ranks what is worth doing first. The report is yours, whoever you hire, and it can conclude that you should buy nothing.
Five questions to ask about any quote
- Is the price fixed? If it is a day rate, ask what happens when the estimate is wrong.
- What is included? Data transfer, training and testing with real jobs are easy to leave out.
- What will it cost over three years? Add the build, hosting, support and any per-user fees.
- Who owns the code? If you do not, ask what happens when you stop paying.
- Could someone else support it? Ask for the documentation and handover to be part of the scope.
When bespoke is the wrong answer
Sometimes a ready-made product, a clearer process or some training is cheaper and good enough. Bespoke software earns its place when your rules and handovers keep forcing people back to manual work. Our guide to bespoke versus off-the-shelf software sets out how to tell.
Get a price for your own job
Send two lines about what you want built or improved. We reply by the end of the next working day, and we can keep it to email.
About this guide
Prices are Inferred’s published prices in October 2026, excluding VAT. The starting example describes scope, not a fixed package. See the pricing page for the current figures.