What will it actually cost to build my custom portal or dashboard?

This is always the first question, and it's the right question to ask. Let me give you honest, straight answers about what custom portal and dashboard development costs for businesses like yours.

The Real Numbers

For most small and mid-size businesses, custom portal development typically falls into these ranges:

Simple internal dashboard: $30,000-$50,000 This is usually for tracking your own business data—pulling information from a few systems you already use, presenting it clearly so you can make better decisions. Think sales dashboards, operations tracking, or basic reporting that currently takes your team hours to compile manually.

Customer or partner portal: $50,000-$75,000 When you need customers or partners to log in and access information, manage their account, or interact with your business digitally. This includes secure login, document sharing, basic self-service features, and integration with your CRM or other business systems.

Comprehensive business platform: $75,000-$150,000 More sophisticated portals with multiple user types, complex workflows, extensive integrations, and features that directly generate revenue or save significant costs. This is when the portal becomes central to how your business operates.

I know these numbers might make you take a deep breath. But let's talk about what you're really comparing this to.

What You're Actually Paying For

You're not just buying software—you're buying someone to understand your business, solve your specific problems, and build something that works the way you work.

Understanding Your Business I spend time learning how your business actually operates. Not how I think it should work or how some generic software wants it to work, but how it really works. This means asking questions, watching your processes, and understanding what matters to you and your customers.

Solving Your Specific Problem Off-the-shelf software forces you to adapt your business to fit their system. Custom development adapts the technology to fit your business. That difference is worth something—usually quite a lot when you calculate the real cost of workarounds and inefficiencies.

Building for Your Future I'm not just building for today. I'm building so you can grow, add features, and evolve as your business changes. That takes planning and thought that goes beyond just writing code.

Being Available When You Need Help After we launch, I'm still here. Questions come up, small tweaks are needed, business needs change. You have someone who knows your system and can help quickly, not a support ticket system in another country.

What Actually Drives Cost

Let me break down what makes some projects cost more than others, in plain English:

How Many Systems We Connect Every connection to your existing software (CRM, accounting, email, etc.) takes time to set up properly. If you're just showing information from one or two systems, that's straightforward. If we're pulling from six different places and synchronizing data between them, that's more complex.

The good news: you probably don't need to connect everything on day one. We can start with the most important connections and add others later.

How Many Types of Users You Have If everyone sees the same information, that's simple. If you have customers who see one thing, employees who see another, and managers who see everything—that's more complex because we need to carefully control who can access what.

Real-Time vs. Daily Updates If you need information updating every few seconds, that's technically more complex than if overnight updates work fine. Most businesses don't actually need real-time for everything, even though it sounds nice.

Custom Features vs. Standard Functionality Displaying data in charts and tables is straightforward. Building custom workflows where users take actions, approve things, or trigger automated processes—that takes more development time.

The Honest Cost Comparison

Here's what I tell every business owner considering custom development:

Calculate what you're spending now. If three employees spend 10 hours a week doing manual work that software could do, that's about $45,000 a year at $75/hour. A $50,000 portal that eliminates that work pays for itself in about a year, then saves you that money every year after.

Count the opportunities you're missing. How many customers don't work with you because you can't provide self-service? How many deals slow down because information isn't accessible? How much business could you handle if your team wasn't buried in manual processes? These costs are harder to quantify but very real.

Consider the alternative. Off-the-shelf software looks cheaper at $200/month. But that becomes $2,400/year, forever. Add integration costs, workarounds, limitations, and frustration—and it's often more expensive over 3-5 years than custom development that solves the problem properly.

How Payment Works

I structure payment around project milestones to protect both of us:

• 30% when we start - Covers planning, design, and early development
• 40% halfway through - After core features are working and you can see it in action
• 30% at launch - When everything's tested, polished, and ready to use

This means you're not paying everything upfront and hoping for the best. You see progress before each payment.

Working With Your Budget

Not everyone has $100K sitting around, and that's fine. Here's how we work with real budgets:

Start with the core problem. What's the one thing that, if solved, would make the biggest difference? We build that first. Additional features can come later when you have more budget or when the initial investment pays off.

Phase the work. Launch something useful in 6-8 weeks that solves your biggest pain point. Then add features over time as budget allows and as you learn what's actually most valuable.

Be honest about constraints. Tell me what you can afford. I'll tell you what's feasible within that budget. If your budget is too small for what you need, I'll tell you that too—and suggest alternatives or ways to get there.

Questions You Should Ask Me

"Can you show me examples of similar projects?" Yes. I'll show you what I've built for other businesses and explain how those relate to what you need.

"What happens if I can't afford everything I want?" We prioritize. I help you figure out what delivers the most value and what can wait. Most businesses are surprised how much they can accomplish with focused scope.

"What if it costs more than you estimated?" Fixed-price means fixed-price. If I quote $50,000, that's what you pay. If I underestimated, that's my problem, not yours. The only way cost changes is if you ask for different features mid-project.

"What about ongoing costs after it's built?" Hosting usually runs $200-500/month depending on your traffic and data. If you want ongoing support for questions, updates, and new features, that's optional but most clients do it. Plans start around $750/month.

Let's Talk About Your Specific Situation

Every business is different. Your exact cost depends on what you're trying to accomplish, what systems you need to work with, and what makes sense for your budget.

The best way to get accurate numbers is to have a conversation. I'll ask about your business, what you're trying to solve, and what your constraints are. Then I'll give you honest guidance about what's realistic.

Schedule a free consultation and we'll talk through your specific situation. No pressure, no sales pitch—just an honest conversation about what makes sense for your business and what it would actually cost.

You'll walk away understanding your options clearly, whether we end up working together or not.