Features
What is an integration in an app?
An integration is the work of connecting a new app to a system you already run, so that records move between them without anyone retyping: the accounting package that sends invoices, the database behind your website. Its cost is set by the other system, by how it lets software in and whether there’s somewhere safe to test.
- $38,000 – $54,000
- A customer app that stands alone
- $40,000 – $57,000
- The same app, connected to your accounting software
- $2,000 – $3,000
- What one integration adds
Measured against the estimator’s reference build: a customer app for iPhone and Android with accounts, two kinds of user, notifications, document uploads, and a web page for the office, with nothing built behind it yet.
Written by
WhatWillMyAppCost
We build the estimator this site runs on, and we design and build custom mobile and web software for a living. Every figure on this page is the estimator’s own output.
What does an integration do?
It lets two systems agree about the same facts without a person carrying them across. The job closes in the app and the invoice appears in accounting. The price changes in accounting and the app shows the new one. That takes four kinds of work.
Read. The app shows what the other system knows: the customer’s balance, whether they’ve paid.
Write. What happens in the app lands in the other system: a finished job becomes an invoice, a new customer becomes a new account.
Match. The same customer exists in both systems under different numbers, and something has to know they’re the same person.
Cope. The other system is down, slow, or rejects the record, and the app has to do something sensible instead of losing it.
Reading and writing are the quick part. Matching records and handling the other system’s outages is where the estimate comes from.
Why does the other system set the price?
Because your app hasn’t been built yet, so it can be shaped to fit. Their system already exists and won’t change for you. The work on your side is much the same whichever system you name. What varies is how much has to be discovered and worked around on theirs.
- “QuickBooks Online”
- A studio can read the published documentation tonight and quote the connection tomorrow, near the bottom of the range.
- “Our accounting system”
- Nobody can look it up. The quote carries the whole range, and the first weeks of the project go to finding out which end you’re on.
What it costs to connect to another system is decided by that system. A modern cloud product with a documented way in is about a week. A twenty-year-old ERP with nowhere safe to test and one person left who remembers how it was set up is a month. Your app is the same either way.
What does an integration cost?
$2,000 – $3,000 on the reference app: $38,000 – $54,000 standing alone and $40,000 – $57,000 connected to your accounting software.
That figure stays put when your own server already exists. The same app built on a working, documented backend of your own is $31,000 – $44,000, and connecting it to accounting still adds $2,000 – $3,000. Your side being done says nothing about theirs.
Run the description with the accounting connection in it. It’s filled in already. The only change from the reference build is the ending.
The everyday case is a trades business that invoices out of its accounting software. The field service guide prices that connection inside a full build, and the brief guide shows what leaving the connection out of the brief does to the number.
Integration or data migration?
Integration keeps two live systems in step, for as long as both exist. Migration moves records that already exist into the new app, once. Many projects need both, and the work is different.
- Integration
- Ongoing, often in both directions, and it has to survive the other system’s outages and updates. Priced by how the other system lets software in.
- Data migration
- One time, in one direction, and it’s over when the last record is checked. Priced by the quality of the data you already have: clean records are a script, years of exceptions are a research project.
If you’re replacing a system, you’ll usually migrate what’s in it and then integrate with whatever stays. The spreadsheet guide prices the migration half of that on a small build.
An integration connects a new app to a system you already run so that records move between them on their own. It reads, writes, matches, and copes with the other side’s bad days, and its price is set by that other system. On a $38,000 – $54,000 customer app, one connection adds $2,000 – $3,000, whether or not your own server already exists.
Name every system the app has to talk to, by product name, in the brief. A studio can look up a product. It can’t look up “our accounting system.”
Questions people ask next
How do I know if a system can be connected to?
Search the product’s name with “API” or “integrations.” Most cloud products have a page about it, usually under “developers” or “integrations,” and their support team can tell you whether other software can read and write what’s in their system. Put what you find in the brief. It’s the single fact that moves the price of a connection most.
Can the app import a spreadsheet export instead?
Often, for a first version. A nightly file out of the other system is a cruder connection and usually a cheaper one, and for many offices it’s enough. It stops being enough when the two sides have to agree within minutes instead of overnight.
What happens when the other system changes?
The connection breaks, and somebody fixes it. Vendors update how their software can be reached, and keeping the connection working is ongoing work that belongs in the maintenance budget.
Is connecting to QuickBooks cheaper than connecting to our ERP?
Usually. Widely used cloud products publish how to connect and give developers somewhere to test. Whether your ERP, the system that runs orders and inventory, does the same is the question, and if it doesn’t, the connection may need someone who knows that product specifically.
What does an integration cost if the system has no API?
More than the range on this page, mostly on the calendar. The range covers a system with a documented way in. One with none can run past the top of it, and a studio finds out in the first weeks of the project how far.