Key takeaways
- The honest cost bands
- Where timelines actually blow up
- Architecture decisions you cannot undo cheaply
The honest cost bands
A production-ready MVP with authentication, billing, core workflows and an admin panel lands between $15K and $60K for most scopes. Below $10K you are buying a prototype, not a product - fine for fundraising decks, fatal for paying users. Above $100K before first revenue means scope creep won the kickoff meeting.
The variables that move price hardest: payment complexity (subscription logic doubles billing work), integrations (each third-party API adds surface area), and mobile requirements (web-first with responsive design ships months faster than dual native apps).
Where timelines actually blow up
Timelines rarely die from coding speed. They die from decision latency (two-week approval loops on button colors), scope re-entry (cut features returning through stakeholders), and integration surprises (the vendor's API documented one thing and does another). Weekly demo sprints exist precisely to surface these killers early.
- Scope workshop: cut to the revenue path ruthlessly
- Prototype before heavy build: validate flows clickable
- Weekly demos: progress visible, drift caught early
- Launch criteria defined upfront: no moving goalposts
Architecture decisions you cannot undo cheaply
Multi-tenancy done wrong is a rewrite waiting to happen. Auth modeled casually becomes a breach postmortem. Billing coupled to feature logic turns every pricing experiment into surgery. Spend real thought here even when everything else stays minimal - these three decisions compound for years.
Own your source or do not build
Every Zorvent build hands over complete repository ownership, infrastructure accounts and documentation from day one. If your development partner's contract says otherwise, you are renting your own product - negotiate this before signing anything, not after.
