Quick answer
At Alpine Studio, a custom dashboard costs from $4,499 plus $79 a month and a client or job portal from $7,499 plus $99 a month. If an off-the-shelf app already fits how you work, use that instead. Custom earns its price when the job runs across several spreadsheets, inboxes and tools.
Alpine Studio builds custom dashboards and portals, from $4,499. See Custom Software, or run the free audit on your own site.
We build custom software for a living, so you would expect us to tell you to buy some. Plenty of small businesses should not. If an off-the-shelf job or booking app already fits the way you work, it is cheaper to start and it does a lot well. Use it, and spend the money somewhere else.
What Custom Software Means for a Small Business
Custom software is built for one business, around the way that business works. For a small business it usually comes down to one of four things:
- A dashboard. Your numbers, such as bookings, revenue, repeat clients or jobs, on one private page behind a secure sign-in.
- A client or job portal. A private website your customers, reps or crew sign in to so they can get something done: place an order, apply for an account or check a job.
- An internal tool. The spreadsheet, the whiteboard and the email chain, made into one tool your team signs in to. We run this studio on one of our own.
- A phone app. Installed from the browser to the home screen, with push notifications and no app store. Our own fare tracker scans flight fares once a day and pushes alerts to an iPhone.
The first thing we ask is where the job lives now. A spreadsheet usually wants a dashboard, a whiteboard an internal tool, calls and emails a portal, and a daily check a phone app that does the checking for you.
What It Costs
These are our published prices, in NZD. Other builders price differently, so read them as one worked example, not the going rate.
| Build | From | Then a month | First year, from | Each year after |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Business dashboard | $4,499 | $79 | $5,447 | $948 |
| Client or job portal | $7,499 | $99 | $8,687 | $1,188 |
The first-year column is the build plus twelve monthly fees, because that is the figure to hold up against what you pay now. You get a written scope and one fixed price before any work starts. A 50% deposit starts the build, and the balance is due on completion.
From means from. Connecting to another system, such as accounts, bookings or stock, depends on what that system allows and is quoted as its own fixed price, so a job with several connections costs more. Anything new that comes up along the way is quoted before it is built.
If a lump sum is the problem, either one can be paid monthly, with nothing to pay until the software goes live. A dashboard is from $473 a month for 12 months (total from $5,676) or $276 for 24 (total from $6,624), then $79 a month. A portal is from $756 a month for 12 months (total from $9,072) or $428 for 24 (total from $10,272), then $99 a month. That is the build split over the term plus 5%, plus the monthly fee, so it costs a little more in total than paying upfront.
There is one more route. Alpine Jobs is the job app our live demo builds, set up with your name, logo, colours, services and prices, for $199 a month with nothing upfront. It has a 12-month minimum, and leaving inside that costs $100 for each month left. After that, 30 days’ notice. Changes beyond its settings are quoted.
When It Is Not Worth It
Do not build custom software if any of these sound like you. If you ring us and one of them does, we will say so.
- An off-the-shelf app already fits. Stay on it. A few small annoyances are not worth thousands of dollars to fix.
- One spreadsheet does the job. If one person keeps it up to date and it answers your questions, keep it.
- You are still working out how the job runs. Software sets a way of working in place. If the process changes every few weeks, you would be paying to build something you are about to change. Let it settle first.
- The sums do not work. A dashboard with us is at least $5,447 in its first year. Put that next to what you pay now for the tools it would replace, and what the mess costs you. If you cannot see the cost of the mess, wait until you can.
- You need to own the code. We license our software and do not sell it. If owning the code is a must, for example because your own developer will take it over, go to a builder who sells it. We are the wrong pick.
When It Is Worth It
Custom software earns its price when the job has outgrown the tools. The signs we look for:
- You run the business across several spreadsheets, inboxes and tools, and the same details get typed into more than one.
- You pay for an app, and the job still runs across a spreadsheet, a whiteboard and a group chat.
- You pay for features you never use, and the one thing you need is missing.
- Customers, reps or crew keep ringing to ask things they could check for themselves.
It does not have to replace everything. A dashboard or portal can sit beside an app you already use, where that app allows a connection or an export. Those are different things: with an export, your page is only as fresh as the last one. We check before quoting, and you should ask anyone else the same.
We will not put a number on what it saves you, because nobody knows that until it is running. Be careful with anyone who promises hours saved before they have seen how you work.
A Worked Example: Peak Exterior Cleaning
Peak Exterior Cleaning is Logan Howard’s business: soft washing houses and roofs, and cleaning windows, gutters and driveways across East Auckland. The work was going well, but the admin lived in too many places: enquiries in his Gmail, customers in one system and quotes in another.
It started small. Logan asked for an app to take before and after photos that line up. On a call a few days later the real brief came out: one place to run the business from his phone, from a new lead to a quote to an invoice. That shift is why we start with a scoping chat and not a price.
We built a new website and a job app together. A quote request from the website lands in the app’s Leads list with a push alert on his phone, and a helper checks his Gmail every 5 minutes and brings enquiry emails in the same way. He writes a quote the customer accepts online, and the job goes into his Google Calendar. When it is done, one email from his own address sends the customer their before and after photos and the invoice, and the app keeps track of who still owes him.
His 109 customers came across on launch night. It all runs on Peak’s own Cloudflare account, and Logan can download all of Peak’s data from the app whenever he likes.
It went live on the evening of 29 October 2026, the night before we wrote this, so we have no long-run results to show and we will not guess at any. What Peak paid stays between us and Peak. The rest is in the Peak case study.
What to Ask Before You Pay Anyone
These four questions work on any builder. Get the answers in writing. Here are ours. The full wording is in our Terms, and the Terms are what counts.
Who owns the code?
With us, we do. Custom software is licensed, not sold: it stays Alpine Studio’s, and paying for the build does not transfer ownership. The licence lasts while the monthly fee is paid, and if you sell the business it can pass to the new owner, who takes over the fee.
Who owns the data?
You do: everything you, your staff and your customers put into the software. You can have a copy whenever you ask, in any common format you ask for, such as spreadsheet (CSV) files.
What happens if you leave?
You can leave at any time with 30 days’ notice. The licence then ends and the software is switched off, as it also is if the monthly fee goes unpaid for 2 months. Either way, we keep your data for 30 days so you can take a copy, and then it is deleted. The software stays with us, so you leave with your data and not the app. That is the real trade-off of a licence, and you should weigh it. On a pay monthly plan the term is the minimum, and leaving sooner means paying off what is left of the build.
What does the monthly fee cover?
Hosting on Cloudflare and looking after the software: security fixes, updates to the software and the third-party code it is built on, small fixes and ongoing maintenance. New features and bigger changes are quoted first, and so is each new connection to another system. The fee starts when the software goes live. Separately, for 30 days after go-live we fix bugs and breakages at no extra charge.
How Long It Takes
It depends on the information you have ready, but a typical dashboard or portal takes about a week from an agreed scope, and a first working version arrives early, on your own phone. That week starts once the scope is agreed, and getting there is the part that moves, so we will not promise a date before then.
How to Try It
Try the live demo: type your website and watch a working app build with your business name, logo and colours, filled with example data. It needs no meeting, and it is worth trying on your phone.
If you would rather talk it through, start a scoping chat: tell us what the job is, who does it now and what gets in the way. We are based in Queenstown and work with businesses anywhere in New Zealand by phone and video call. More is on the software page.