A 75-person services group asks a fixed-price development agency for its system. The offer is honest and, in 2026, common: a first working version in about three weeks for a fixed fee, then every further feature scoped and priced as a phase of its own. Here is the same year against Arkemodi.
The first version is a genuine bargain, and it is one slice: one workflow, a few screens. The nine areas Arkemodi builds as one system (people, planning, timesheets, leave, forms, the field app, clients, quotes, import) are nine fixed-price phases at the agency, one after another. Arkemodi is one build: part on signature, the balance when it passes your acceptance tests.
After handover the code is yours, and so is running it: hosting, patching, a maintenance retainer, and someone to call. Published 2026 retainers for a bespoke application sit between £1,000 and £3,000 a month, before any new feature. Arkemodi's monthly is licence, hosting and support in one figure, with the core kept current and new features built in days, not phases.
The agency's first version lands fast, and your people are using one piece of a system while the rest is still phases on a quote. One record of people, jobs, time and customers arrives when the last phase does.
The whole system: £34,000 less to set up, as one build, with the balance paid only when it passes the acceptance tests you agreed.
One system from month 4 instead of month 8. Four more months of benefit in year one.
Day one: sign-in, roles, the audit trail, your brand, built-in guidance, search, data import and your own assistant are already in the platform. No first version includes them, and building them is phases of their own.
The next need is a feature built into the same system in days, not the next fixed-price phase.
Three-year system cost: Arkemodi £147,500 · agency build about £99,000 plus about £70,000 to run it.
The honest part: for one tool with one job, a fixed-price first version from a good agency is the right buy, and the price is real. The sums turn when the thing you need is the system your business runs on: nine areas, one record, and a foundation that has to be enterprise-grade before the first login. Agency figures are scaled from fixed-price offers published in 2026 (about £11,000 for a first version in three weeks, each later phase assumed the same price and length, built in sequence, then £2,000 a month to host and maintain); Arkemodi figures illustrative pending a scoped proposal.