Straight answers, including the awkward ones.
Everything worth asking before you commit a six-figure sum. If your question is not here, ask it and it will be.
Where each kind of work usually lands
The span between the usual low and the usual high, excluding VAT. Yours depends on how far it reaches and what it has to connect to.
Every figure, written out, is on what we build. For your own situation rather than a typical one, the estimator takes about three minutes.
01Money
What it costs
Why does work start at £30,000?
Below that, the discovery and assurance that make a build worth having cost more than the build itself, so you would be paying for process instead of software. £30,000 is the point where this way of working starts paying for itself. Smaller than that, No Fear Tech does it properly and you pay less.
What does a typical project actually come to?
Most land between £45,000 and £120,000. Anything serving your own customers as well as your staff runs to £200,000 and beyond. Three minutes on the estimator gives you a figure for your own situation, the split across every phase, and a live date.
Is it fixed price or day rate?
Fixed, per phase. You approve the next figure before that phase starts, so your exposure is never more than the phase you are in. An underestimate is ours to absorb, which is where that risk belongs.
When do we pay?
On completion of each phase, thirty days. No deposit for the first phase. Longer builds are usually invoiced monthly within a phase, against progress you can see in your own account.
What does it cost to run afterwards?
Two separate things. Hosting and services run £80 to £400 a month depending on size, paid direct to the suppliers so you see the real cost. Looking after it runs between a tenth and a fifth of the build a year, quoted monthly and cancellable on ninety days.
Are there licence fees per user?
None. You own it, so your hundredth member of staff costs you nothing to add. For a growing business that is usually where a build overtakes a subscription on cost, and often it is the whole argument on its own.
02Time
How long it takes
How soon could you start?
Four to eight weeks from agreeing to go ahead. Only three builds run here at a time, which is why the people you meet are the people who build it, and why the diary sometimes has a wait in it. If your date is immovable, say so in the first conversation and you get a straight answer.
How long from starting to going live?
Fourteen to twenty-six weeks for most. Eight to twelve for the smaller ones, twenty-five to forty for anything serving your own customers. The estimator gives the range for yours, and that range becomes a fixed date at the end of the second phase.
Could we have part of it sooner?
Almost always, and it is usually the right move. The most valuable part goes live first and the rest follows, which starts the return months earlier and teaches both sides a great deal before the rest is built.
How much of our time will this take?
A day a week from the right people, more during discovery and in the weeks before going live. It is the single most underestimated part of any build, and where that day is not protected the calendar stretches even though the cost does not.
03Ownership
What you end up owning
Who owns what is built?
You do, outright, including the source code. It transfers to you as it is written, not at the end and not on final payment. There is no licence back to us and no restriction on what you do with it afterwards.
Could someone else take it over?
Yes, and they get help doing it. Everything runs on widely used, well-documented foundations rather than anything invented here, so any competent firm can pick it up. Your new supplier gets a day of handover at no charge.
What if you go out of business?
You already hold everything: the code, the documents, the accounts with each supplier in your own name. Where it runs is yours and every record in it is yours. Our disappearing would be inconvenient rather than catastrophic, which is deliberate and is the right test of any arrangement like this.
Do you reuse our work for other clients?
Never anything specific to you. General techniques and general components, exactly as any firm does. Nothing that is yours, nothing that identifies you, and nothing that is your competitive advantage.
04Risk
What happens when things go wrong
What if we do not like what you build?
You will have approved every screen before it was built and tried something working every fortnight afterwards, so it cannot arrive as a surprise at the end. Anything wrong gets fixed. Where the requirement itself changed, that is a change, priced before anybody does it.
What if we want to stop?
Stop at the end of any phase. You keep everything produced so far including the code, there is no exit fee, and nothing is withheld.
What if the person who built it leaves?
Nothing lives in one head. Everything is written down, reviewed by somebody else, and follows the same conventions on every project here, which is the entire reason those conventions exist.
Are you insured?
Professional indemnity and public liability, both current. Certificates come with any proposal, or before it if you would rather see them first. Ask.
05The build
How it gets made
Where does it run?
Wherever suits you: UK cloud, your own servers, or the arrangement you already have. The accounts are in your name and paid by you, so you see the real cost and can move it whenever you like. It gets recommended and set up for you, and nobody here takes a penny from the provider.
Is our data kept in the UK?
Yes, backups included, unless you ask otherwise. Where something has to involve a supplier outside the UK you are told which, why, and on what terms, before it is built that way.
Do you use AI to write the software?
Modern tools including AI ones, the way any serious firm now does, with every line reviewed and understood by the person whose name is on it. Where AI is part of what you are buying, such as a system that reads your documents, the relevant page says so plainly and gives you the real accuracy figure.
Will it work on phones and tablets?
Designed for them rather than shrunk to fit, and it pins to a home screen and behaves like any other app. A true Apple or Google store app is a different craft, and you get pointed at a studio that does only that.
Can it work without an internet connection?
Where the job needs it, yes. Your people keep working in a basement or a lay-by and it catches up the moment the phone is back on the network. It adds real cost, so the estimator prices it separately and you decide.
06Not answered here
Ask it directly and you get an answer the same working day. A question worth asking once is worth answering here, so it will end up on this page too.
Put a date on it.
Half an hour with whoever would build it gets you the shape of the work, a figure you can take to your board, and the week it could start. No deck, no discovery fee, no follow-up sequence.
Or ring 01603 552024. A person answers it.