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Rates and pricing are difficult to quantify for customized software development. We have different pricing structures depending on your project requirements, the scope of the project, the technology required for that project, and several other factors.

Defined Scope Projects

A Defined Scope Project is one where we will work with you to fully define the scope of your project, from the interface to the database, through the deployment and support requirements. These projects are "fixed price", which means that you will know the full cost of your project before we start work. Be careful, however, that you are comfortable with the scope - the price that we quote you is for the defined scope only, and any changes to that scope - no matter how minor those changes seem - will almost certainly escalate the cost. With very small projects, scope creep can be limited (normally around 10%), but with larger projects it is nearly impossible to fully scope the project, and scope increase costs can be substantial.

Project of this type vary in cost:

Projects that take approximately 1 - 3 months generally cost between $1500 and $3500

Projects that take approximately 3 - 6 months generally cost between $3500 and $10,000

Projects taking longer than 6 months would cost $10,000 and above. These are very broad ranges, of course, and the only way to get an accurate figure is to have us review your project for pricing.

Be aware, however, that quite often a Defined Scope Project will be "lowballed" by other companies. Many companies will provide you with vague or incomplete scope documents, and then quote you a price far lower than other development teams, knowing full well that they can make up the difference later, after the project is well under way. They'll have you over a barrel, since it would cost substantially more to mothball that project and start over with a different company than it would be to continue working with the lowball contractor. This is dishonest and unethical, and we don't work that way. Our scopes will be well defined, complete, and easily understood by everyone. We take great measures to insure that you are fully aware of any areas of potential conflicts, and advise you of the ramifications of those conflicts before you ever agree to the work.

Time and Material Projects

T&M Projects are projects which cannot be adequately scoped. This can be due to many things: lack of documentation, inability by the client to fully explain what they need, unknown external factors (for example, a web component that must be handled by a third party element), or several other factors. These sorts of projects can get very expensive very quickly, and are best suited for very small projects, like adding filtering functionality to an existing application, or adding an email component to existing projects.

Phased Projects

Phased projects are generally much larger than Defined Scope Projects, and may span several months or year. For example, you may wish to build a new inventory and ordering system, but the cost of the full project may be more than you wish to absorb at this time. A Phased Project approach generally works well - we'd break the project into phases, and implement them according to your timeline and budget. This often will break a larger project into much smaller chunks, which we can then price as a Defined Scope Project.

Phased projects generally cost more that a Defined Scope project, since quite often the scope will change between phases. The average cost of a Phased Project would be in the $5,000+ range.

Consultation

Consultation is defined as anything other than development work. For example, if you ask us to review your database design, or ask us to figure out why your report shows only Orders before May 15th, we'd do that work based on an hourly rate.

Currently our hourly rate is $85 USD per hour. Note this rate is subject to change, and you should verify the rate before entering into a project with our company.

Payments

We accept payment through PayPal, direct deposit, or through company checks. If paying by a company check or direct deposit, please note that work will not begin until the payment has cleared our bank.

We require some form of prepayment, based on the details below:

Project Cost		Payments
$500 or less		Full payment in advance
$501 - $2500		50% in advance, full payment on delivery
$2501 - $5000		40% in advance, 40% on first delivery, 20% on final delivery
$5000 or more		Per agreement by both parties, generally similar to terms above