Why the bracket is so wide
Two sites can look alike on the surface and cost ten times as much as each other to build. The difference is never the number of pages. It is what the site has to do behind the pages.
At the starting price you get a well built, fast, accessible public site: your services, your people, a contact form, a map, and a content editor your marketing manager can use without calling anyone. That covers most trades, professional services and community organisations.
The price climbs when the site has to talk to other systems or hold logic of its own. A booking calendar tied to your diary. Online payments. A CRM integration so enquiries land in the right pipeline. A members area. A quote calculator with your own rules in it. Each of those is a piece of software, and software costs more than pages.
Add several integrations, custom functionality and a serious content migration and the price climbs with them. Past a certain point it stops being a website and becomes a web application.
The from-prices, in one table
| What | From |
|---|---|
| Business applications (job tracker, quoting tool, CRM) | NZ$6,999 |
| Legacy app modernisation | NZ$6,999 |
| Customer applications (portals, booking services) | NZ$8,999 |
| Mobile applications (Apple and Android) | NZ$11,999 |
| Subscription software with billing | NZ$16,999 |
These are starting points, confirmed in writing. Every build starts with the same base: an app with user login, role based access control and user management, plus up to four main features across up to 15 screens and modals. We size your app in the first briefing, and the time it needs sets the price.
After launch you choose how to run it. Self-hosting is free, and managed plans run from NZ$249 a month; the process page has them all.
What a web app costs
A web application is logged-in software that runs part of your business in the browser: a customer portal, a staff portal, a job tracker, a compliance register. Applicable quotes these on a fixed scope too, starting at NZ$6,999 for a business application and NZ$8,999 for a customer-facing one.
Where a given project lands depends on four things:
- Roles. A tool with one type of user is far simpler than one with customers, staff and admins who each see different things.
- Integrations. Every external system you connect (Xero, your CRM, a payment gateway, an industry database) adds scoping, build and test time.
- Rules. Pricing logic, approval chains and compliance checks all have to be written down, built and tested.
- Data. Migrating years of spreadsheets or an old database is real work and is often underestimated.
A single-workflow app that replaces one spreadsheet-and-email process sits at the bottom of that range. A platform that runs a whole operation sits at the top.
What is not in the quote
Be wary of any quote that leaves these out without saying so:
- Hosting and domain names, which are ongoing and usually paid by you directly so you own the accounts.
- Third-party licences, such as a payment gateway, a mapping service or an email platform.
- Writing your content and taking your photos. Some clients do this themselves, some ask us to organise it, but it is never free.
- Ongoing maintenance and support after launch, which is a separate monthly retainer.
Applicable lists all of these in the scope document so you see the full cost of ownership before you commit, not after.
How to get a fixed price
You will not get a useful price from a form. You will get one from a conversation. Applicable's first call is for listening: what the business does, what is broken, what the site or app must achieve. We give you a ballpark bracket on that call so you know early whether we are in your range.
Scoping follows, sometimes with wireframes or a clickable prototype, and ends in a written scope and a fixed price. Changes after that are quoted in writing before they are built. One client, Advisory.Works, put it this way: "John and his team have been ahead of timeline, under budget and transparent for the duration of our projects."
How long it takes
You get something clickable in the first week and your team testing it with real work well before launch. Most projects go live in weeks, and the scope document says how many. Content is the most common cause of delay, so start writing it early.
Key takeaways
- A custom business application in NZ starts at NZ$6,999 and a customer portal or booking service at NZ$8,999.
- Price is driven by integrations, user roles, business rules and data migration, not by page count.
- Hosting, licences, content and maintenance sit outside the build price and should be listed in any quote.
- Applicable gives a ballpark on the first call and a fixed price after scoping, with changes quoted in writing before they are built.