Why our quotes surprise people
When I send a proposal, the price is usually around a fifth of what a Brisbane agency would quote for the same build. People often pause at that. They assume something has been left out, or that a lower price means a lower standard.
In fact the reverse is true. The price is lower because of the way software is now built, and that same change is what increases the quality. This article explains how.
What changed: testing
Most talk about AI and software is about AI writing code faster. It does, but the bigger change is in testing.
Every serious piece of software needs automated tests: additional code that checks the real app still works every time something changes. They are how you know a fix in one place hasn't stopped something else from working. Well-tested software has roughly one line of test code for every line of the app itself (Tahir and MacDonell, 2015). Written by hand, that close to doubles the code to be written, so tests are the first thing cut when a budget gets tight. A lot of business software goes live with very few tests, and the client or users find the problems instead.
In our builds, AI agents write the code and the tests together. Every change has to pass the full test suite before a person reviews it, and nothing goes live until a person signs it off. For example, the file-reading library behind our PathProof scheduling product has 141 automated tests covering 96.7% of its code, and it doesn't crash on corrupted files. That level of testing used to need a big budget. Now we do it on every build, and it is what lets us fix the price with confidence.
Why agency quotes are so high
A typical agency staffs a build like this with a project manager, a business analyst, a designer, two or three developers and a tester. Development is usually only 40 to 60% of the hours billed. The rest goes on coordination, design and manual testing. At Brisbane rates of $150 to $200 an hour, that adds up quickly. Most agencies also bill by the hour, so you don't know the final cost until the work is finished.
That is how software had to be built when every line was written and checked by hand. It isn't the only way any more.
What that means for the price
Across our recent proposals, our fixed price has come in around 80% below what we estimate a Brisbane agency would quote, based on published Brisbane rates and typical team sizes. These are substantial business platforms, not small tools. Agencies typically take six to nine months for work like this. We get a first working milestone in front of the client in weeks.
This is not cheap software
A custom build is a serious investment. The saving doesn't come from cutting corners. It comes from three things:
- No large team to pay for. The agents write and check the code. Our product engineers make the judgement calls: the architecture, the data model, the security, and what the software should and shouldn't do.
- Tests replace manual checking. They run on every change, not once at the end.
- One senior lead. Every build is led by a senior product engineer from the first workshop to launch, so nothing gets lost in handovers.
Security is never traded away either. Every project is built to our secure development standard, aligned with ISO 27001, whether or not your business needs that standard itself. AI has made attacks on software faster and cheaper to run, so there can be no compromise here. Before anything goes live, we also run our own white-box adversarial testing: we attack the software ourselves, with full knowledge of the code, looking for the weaknesses an outsider would try to exploit.
How fixed price by milestone works
We break the build into milestones. Each one is a piece of working software you can see and use. Each has a fixed price agreed before it starts, paid half at the start and half on delivery, so you know what you will pay before any work begins.
If the scope changes, we agree on the change and its price before starting on it. You are never surprised by an invoice.
You own everything. The code, the configuration and the data sit in your own cloud account, with separate test and production environments.
Three questions to ask any developer
Whoever you talk to about a custom build, ask these before you sign:
- How much of the code is covered by automated tests, and do they run on every change? If the answer is vague, your users will be doing the testing.
- Will I know the price before the work starts? With a fixed price per milestone, you will.
- Who owns the code, the accounts and the data when it is finished? It should be you, in writing.
If you have a build in mind and want to see what it would look like as fixed-price milestones, get in touch. The first conversation is about understanding your business, and your needs.