Why software quotes double, and how to stop yours doing it

Nobody sets out to deliver a project at twice the quoted price. It happens for a small number of reasons, and most of them are visible before the work starts if anyone is willing to look.

What actually moves the number

1. How many people have to approve a decision.
2. How many of your screens are genuinely different from each other.
3. Whether your content exists yet, or we are waiting on it.
4. What the software has to connect to that we do not control.
5. How firm the launch date is.

Notice that only one of those is about design and none of them are about how clever the code is. Cost in this work is mostly organisational.

Integrations are where estimates go to die

A payment provider with good documentation is predictable work. A bank's internal system, reached through a contact who replies once a week, brings real uncertainty. We price that uncertainty openly.

A fixed price given before anyone has looked at your existing systems is either padded to protect us or optimistic in a way that will cost you later.

How to get more for the same money

• Name one person who can decide without a committee.
• Have your copy and images ready, or pay us to write them.
• Cut the number of page templates before cutting quality.
• Book earlier rather than compressing the timeline.
• Tell us your real budget so we can design to it.

That last one gets resisted more than it should. Your budget gives us the constraint we need to recommend the right shape of project instead of guessing.