How much does custom software cost?
Three ways to buy the same platform, and none of them is per user. A self-serve lease is $300 a month plus tokens. A guided lease is $1,800 a month plus tokens. A custom build, where we do the work and you own the result, runs $100,000 to $400,000 one-time plus 10% a year for support. The price is how much of us you get.
What are the three tiers?
Each tier is the one before it plus more of us: the AI alone, then a person, then the whole team.
Lease · by invitation
Self-serve lease
$300/mo + tokens
Tokens ~$1–2K, mostly during setup
- Users
- Unlimited*
- Who builds
- Whoever owns your spreadsheets
- Own the code
- Buyout option
- Tokens
- ~$2K to set up; $1–2 per item
- Typical 3-year cost
- ~$13K, tokens in
AI only. You build at your own pace.
- The platform: backend, UI, ticketing, documents, notes, reporting, calendar
- The AI builder for fields, workflows, reports, and dashboards
- Hosting, with CPU and storage that scale with use*
Lease · by invitation
Guided lease
$1,800/mo + tokens
$300 platform + $1,500 guidance
- Users
- Unlimited*
- Who builds
- Your team, with us on weekly calls
- Own the code
- Buyout option
- Tokens
- ~$2K to set up; $1–2 per item
- Typical 3-year cost
- ~$67K, tokens in
Everything in Self-serve, plus a human.
- A weekly decision call, run by us: what your team builds next, and what to fix from last week
- Discovery interviews with your people, so what gets built follows the process you actually run
- Your guide is one of the people who build our custom systems
- Custom domains, so the system lives at your address
- AI workshops: seats for your team
Build · you own the code
Custom build
$100K+one-time
$100,000–$400,000 + 10%/yr support
- Users
- Unlimited
- Who builds
- We do
- Own the code
- Yes, code and copyright
- Tokens
- None billed; we absorb them
- Typical 3-year cost
- $130K–$520K
Everything in Guided, plus we build it.
- Custom modules, written for how your business actually runs
- Data import from the system you're leaving
- Custom integrations and hardware support: barcode scanners, label printers, the legacy system
- Hosting by us, or on your own infrastructure; your choice
- 10% a year support: bug fixes, questions, quarterly steering
The lease tiers are available by invitation while our closed beta runs; the prices are real.
* The $300 covers the software for as many people as you put in it. The server underneath is the only thing that grows: CPU and storage scale with your use, at a nominal cost increase.
Is pricing per user?
No. Every tier is flat: from $300/mo flat, unlimited users.*
Per-seat pricing grows with your headcount and again at every renewal; ours doesn't. The people who need to be in the system are in the system.
*The software has no ceiling on users. On the lease tiers, the server underneath is the only thing that grows: CPU and storage scale with your use, at a nominal cost increase.
What does the self-serve lease include?
We always wanted to be able to give somebody software for ten thousand dollars, and this tier does it. You get the platform: the backend, the user interface, and the basics, which are ticketing, document management, notes, the reporting system, and the calendar. Your own accounting-side or quasi-IT person builds on that, adding fields, workflows, reports, and dashboards put together from existing components.
It's available by invitation while the closed beta runs. The price is real: $300 a month plus tokens, unlimited users.* The asterisk is CPU and storage, which scale with your use at a nominal cost increase; the software doesn't cap out.
What does the guided lease include?
You trade elbow grease for the money you'd have paid us. We run the same process on periodic calls; your team does the building. The same process means the discovery interviews and the weekly decision meeting from the custom build, on a call cadence instead of on site. The person running those calls is one of the people who build our custom systems. The guidance also brings custom domains, so the system lives at your address, and seats in our AI workshops, the online seminars where your team learns to build the way we do.
Same closed-beta line: by invitation for now, $1,800 a month ($300 platform plus $1,500 guidance) plus tokens, unlimited users.* Same asterisk: CPU and storage scale with use at a nominal cost increase.
How much does a custom ERP, CRM, or PSA cost?
For a 40-person company of ordinary complexity, a build usually lands between $150,000 and $200,000. What moves the number is how many processes the company runs and how much of the work is discovering them, not the headcount; a large group with one uniform process can be the cheapest build we do. The range runs from $100,000 for a single line of business to $400,000 when there are several, or a legacy system to dig data out of.
Weeks 4–6
A working system with your data in it
6–10 weeks
The build
After go-live
Tuning runs longer, by design
What each system replaces is on custom ERP, custom CRM, and custom PSA.
How much does a custom CRM cost?
The same range: $150,000 to $200,000 for a 40-person company of ordinary complexity, $100,000 to $400,000 across the range. For a pipeline on its own, buying is usually cheaper and we'll tell you so. The math changes when the CRM has to carry delivery, billing, or a member portal, or when the license tier your people actually need is two steps above the one you were quoted. More on custom CRM.
What are tokens and what do they cost?
Tokens are what the lease tiers spend when your team builds. They're a setup cost more than a running one: most of the spend happens while the system is being put together, and it tails off once it's in use.
$1–$2
Per built item, say a dashboard widget with charts, filters, and export
Under 100
Items in a full system; it rarely exceeds that
~$2,000
Setup token spend in total, wrong turns included
That's why the 3-year figures on the lease cards fold tokens in as about $2,000: $10.8K in platform fees becomes roughly $13K for self-serve, $64.8K becomes roughly $67K for guided. Tokens aren't part of the custom build price; we absorb them.
What does the 10% support cover?
Us, staying on the system after go-live.
Ten percent of the build price a year, and for it the people who built the system keep looking after it. That's four things:
- Bug fixes. If it's ours, we fix it, and it isn't quoted.
- Questions. Your people email or call when something doesn't do what they expected. They get an answer from someone who knows the system, usually the person who built that part.
- Quarterly steering. A meeting every quarter with your decision-makers: what's changed in the business since the last one, what's drifted in the system because of it, and what to do about it. This is where the small changes get queued.
- Minor drift. The added field, the new column on a report, the workflow that needs one more step. The changes a business accumulates in a normal year, done under the 10% rather than quoted one at a time.
A genuinely new subsystem is scoped separately, typically in $5,000–$10,000 increments, and the quarterly meeting is where it gets scoped.
How does this compare to a platform quote?
The honest comparison is the assembled price, license plus implementation plus what arrives after you sign, not the seat price. We ran the market's numbers and ours through one formula, at 20 seats over three and five years, in Customizable ERP vs Custom ERP: What You'll Actually Pay and, for services firms, What PSA Software Actually Costs for a 30–50 Person Firm.
Ready to talk numbers?
Tell us what isn't working. We'll tell you what's possible.
Email us at
info@purpleowl.ioQuestions from sales calls
How much does custom software cost?
A self-serve lease at $300 a month plus tokens, a guided lease at $1,800 a month plus tokens, or a custom build at $100,000 to $400,000 one-time plus 10% a year for support; all three are flat, unlimited users, as in the tiers above. One caveat on the lease tiers: unlimited is the software, not the hardware. CPU and storage scale with your use, at a nominal cost increase.
How much does a custom ERP cost?
$150,000 to $200,000 for a 40-person company of ordinary complexity; $100,000 to $400,000 across the range. What it replaces is on Custom ERP Systems.
How much does a custom CRM cost?
The same range as an ERP, and for a pipeline on its own, buying is usually cheaper and we'll say so. The longer answer is above and on Custom CRM Solutions.
Do we own the code?
Yes. You get your own code and copyright, plus a license to the platform code it's built on.
What does the asterisk on unlimited users mean?
That the users are unlimited and the hardware isn't. The $300 covers the platform for as many people as you put in it. The CPU and storage underneath scale with how much you actually use, and the cost moves with them by a nominal amount. It isn't a per-seat fee in disguise; it's the server bill.
Can we buy out the lease?
Yes. The lease tiers have a buyout option for running locally: you take the system your team built, with the code and a license to the platform it runs on, and run it on your own infrastructure. That's the answer to lock-in. Nothing you build on a lease is stuck with us.
What happens if you get hit by a bus?
We'd rather you ask what happens when everyone here wins the lottery, but the worry is fair. You own your code and its copyright, it runs on infrastructure you can move, and the platform license goes with it.
Further Reading
Customizable ERP vs Custom ERP: What You'll Actually Pay
What customizable ERP and custom ERP really cost: assembled pricing, the costs no quote shows, and three tables you can check against your own quotes.
What PSA Software Actually Costs for a 30–50 Person Firm
Discover the true cost of PSA software for mid-sized firms. Compare PSA software pricing, implementation fees, and TCO in our detailed guide.
Your People Are the Integration Layer (And It's Costing You Everything)
Is your team acting as human middleware? Discover the 6 hidden patterns of integration failure costing your business time and money—and how to fix them.