Most agencies will not talk about money until you have had a meeting. That is a reasonable position for them and a frustrating one for you, because the first thing you need to know is whether this is a $30,000 problem or a $300,000 one — and you need to know it before you spend an hour on a call finding out.

So here is the estimator we would otherwise be running in our heads on that call. The ranges come from the same published pricing we quote from, and the questions are the ones that actually move a number: what you are building, whether it replaces something, who uses it, how big it is, what it has to talk to, and when it has to be live.

It will not be exact. Nothing is exact before the scope is written, and anyone who gives you a precise figure at this stage is guessing at you rather than for you. What it will be is honest about the range and honest about what drives it.