People are often surprised when they request a quote for an app or a custom software project. They expect a solid number, of course, but not one that feels so… real.
Something that looked simple on a whiteboard suddenly becomes a five-figure or six-figure investment. And the first reaction is almost always the same: “How can it cost that much?”
The short answer is that software is a lot like construction work. You see the finished house, not the plumbing, wiring, permits, structural engineering and the dozens of people who make it livable. Apps work the same way. What you see on the screen is only the last layer of a much bigger machine.
Here’s what people don’t see at first glance.
The moment you go beyond a template, the real work begins
There are great no-code tools out there, and they’re perfect for small internal tools or prototypes.
But the moment a business needs something specific — a workflow that isn’t standard, a connection to an ERP, a custom checkout, an unusual data model — the template stops helping and the engineering starts.
I once worked with a company convinced their app was “just a mobile version of our website.” On paper, yes. But they needed real-time inventory, personalized recommendations and an offline mode for field workers. None of those things existed in their template.
Two weeks later, the prototype had turned into a real custom project.
Customization isn’t cosmetic. It’s where most of the value is created, and where the cost begins.
Good design prevents expensive mistakes
A lot of people want to skip strategy and UX because they “already know what they need.” The problem is that users rarely behave the way the team imagines.
I remember a project where the client brought a fully designed interface made in Figma. Beautiful screens, very polished. During the first user test, we found that the main feature — the one the whole app was built around — was misunderstood by every single tester.
If that mistake had been discovered after development, it would have cost three or four times more to fix.
Design isn’t decoration. It’s risk reduction.
Content has to live somewhere
An app that can’t update its content without a developer becomes unusable within months.
Prices, descriptions, promotions, articles, dashboards… all of this changes constantly. That means you need a CMS, and the CMS needs to talk to the app reliably, quickly and securely.
Sometimes the CMS isn’t enough.
A middleware layer is needed to merge data from several sources, reduce the load on the app, avoid API limits or transform messy legacy data into something usable.
Nobody sees that layer, but without it, the app feels slow or fragile.
This invisible plumbing is one of the biggest cost drivers in serious software.
The backend is where the complexity hides
The interface looks simple. A list here, a button there, a chart on top. But every action hits a backend that validates, calculates, secures, logs, synchronizes or transforms something.
There was a project where the mobile app was built in three weeks. The backend took three months.
Not because it was poorly designed, but because the app needed clean data, permissions, audit logs, role management, and integrations with two external services that weren’t exactly modern.
When software looks simple, it’s usually because the hard part is hidden underneath.
Connected devices multiply the engineering effort
Any app that talks to a physical object — a wearable, a sensor, a machine — requires a different level of precision.
Latency, battery usage, signal variations, data integrity… nothing is stable, and everything has to be anticipated.
You don’t just “pair” a device. You test dozens of edge cases. That’s why IoT projects cost more than they seem.
Security is not optional
A security breach can cost more than the entire project.
If the app handles personal or financial data, every part of the system has to be designed with security in mind.
Authentication, encryption, access control, API protection, compliance — these are not add-ons. They’re foundations.
Security doesn’t make the app prettier, but it keeps the business alive.
Software is not a one-time purchase
There’s also maintenance.
Operating systems change. APIs change. Security rules change. Features get refined. Bugs appear. Hardware evolves.
A software that isn’t maintained slowly breaks, even if nobody touches it.
And then there are infrastructure costs. Servers, databases, monitoring tools, certificates, cloud environments…
It’s like paying utilities for a building. If you stop paying, the lights go out.
The real question
When people ask why custom software costs so much, the honest answer is that you’re paying for far more than the interface you interact with every day. You’re paying for the architecture that keeps your data consistent, the security that protects your users, and the invisible groundwork that makes the product feel reliable. Most of that isn’t obvious when you’re scrolling through a clean set of screens, but it’s what determines whether the app will still function smoothly in six months or break under the weight of small changes.
The cost also reflects the number of decisions your team doesn’t have to make alone. Every project comes with hundreds of forks in the road. Do we store this data locally or in the cloud? How do we structure permissions so they don’t become a bottleneck later? What happens if the third-party service we rely on changes its API? These questions don’t appear in the proposal, yet they shape the project more than any visual feature.
Experienced teams make these choices early and quietly, long before they turn into expensive emergencies.
And finally, there’s the long-term view. Software isn’t something you finish; it’s something you manage. If the foundation is solid, the next feature is easier to add, the next integration smoother, and the next redesign cheaper. If the foundation is weak, every improvement becomes a negotiation with the past. That difference — the one nobody notices until later — is often what you’re truly paying for. Custom software is an investment in stability, not just functionality, and that’s what sets it apart from the quick, inexpensive options.