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 NZ$4,000 end 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.
By NZ$50,000 you are usually looking at a site with several integrations, custom functionality and a serious content migration. Above that it stops being a website and becomes a web application.
The from-prices, in one table
| What | From (NZ$ + GST) | Typical | Build time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business website | 4,000 | 8,000 to 25,000 with integrations | 4 to 8 weeks |
| Website with booking, payments or CRM | 12,000 | 15,000 to 50,000 | 8 to 12 weeks |
| Custom web app, one workflow | 15,000 | 15,000 to 40,000 | 6 to 10 weeks |
| Customer or staff portal | 30,000 | 30,000 to 100,000 | 10 to 16 weeks |
| Online ordering or B2B ecommerce | 20,000 | 40,000 to 120,000 | 10 to 16 weeks |
| Large multi-role platform | scoped | up to around 250,000 | agreed at the sprint |
Every from-price becomes a fixed price at the end of a two-week Prototype Sprint (NZ$5,000, credited against the build). Monthly plans after launch run from NZ$350 for a website to NZ$1,999 fully managed for a web app; the pricing 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, and the bracket runs from the low tens of thousands up to around NZ$250,000 for a large multi-role system.
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
A public website is typically a matter of weeks once content is ready. A single-workflow web app is usually a few months. Larger portals run longer, and the scope document will say how long. Content is the most common cause of delay, so start writing it early.
Key takeaways
- A custom small business website in NZ costs NZ$4,000 to NZ$50,000+ plus GST; a custom web application runs up to around NZ$250,000.
- 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.