Calculators: get an honest estimate before you decide

The one whose situation looks most like yours. If you are unsure whether the problem is even big enough for a project, start there. If you already know something has to be built, but not what, take the one about the choice.

You can run several, and the order makes no difference. None of them builds on the answers from another.

It varies from tool to tool. Some manage with a handful, others need more, and a few questions are skipped when they do not apply to you. The counter above the question shows how far you are and how many are left.

You do not have to reach the end. The numbers in the panel update as you answer, so you can stop once the picture is clear enough for the decision in front of you.

Then the task is most likely too small for a project right now, and that is worth knowing before you spend more time on it. We turn down work ourselves when the numbers do not carry it, and we would rather say so straight away than halfway through a project.

That does not make the answer wrong. It makes it cheap. Measure the task for a couple of weeks and run the calculation again on real numbers: if it grows with the business, you reach the threshold with your eyes open instead of discovering it once the problem has become urgent.

No. The tools that work in money show a ceiling: how much a solution may cost before it stops paying for itself. Some of them also show the payback period that comes with the amount you set. It is a limit to measure a quote against, not a quote in itself.

What the solution will actually cost depends on what has to be built, and neither you nor we know that until the scope has been cut to size. We would rather put the number on it once we can stand behind it. If it has to be worked through properly, the next step is a digital pre-project at a fixed price.

They stay with you. The calculation runs in your own browser, and we see neither the numbers nor your email address unless you send them to us yourself.

If you share the calculation with a colleague, the answers travel inside the link in the email. They do not pass through us on the way.

Then skip the tool. Write a couple of lines about what is on fire and one of us will come back to you. The numbers can wait, and as a rule they are only needed once someone internally has to be convinced.