What a custom website or app really costs in Nigeria

“How much for a website?” is a fair question. It is also impossible to answer without context. A five-page company site for a law firm in Garki is not the same job as a food vendor taking orders in three Abuja districts, and neither is the same as a membership platform with Paystack, SMS alerts and an admin dashboard.

In Abuja and Lagos we see the same pattern: two founders describe “an app” in one sentence, then discover one meant a brochure site and the other meant inventory, riders and reconciliation. This guide is for owners who want a realistic budget and a quote that still makes sense after you read the fine print.

What moves the number

Price follows work. These are the levers that change it most:

• Scope — brochure site, e-commerce, booking, internal tool or full product with accounts and roles
• Integrations — Paystack, Flutterwave, SMS, email, WhatsApp, accounting or an existing database
• Design — custom UI from your brand versus adapting a proven layout
• Timeline — a six-week launch and a “we need this before next month” launch are different plans
• Who builds it — senior teams cost more per day and usually ship with fewer rewrites

Costs that show up after launch

The build is not the whole bill. Budget for:

• Domain and hosting every year (we use edge hosting so pages stay fast on mobile data)
• Maintenance — security patches, small fixes, dependency updates
• Content — photography, copy, product data; placeholders do not convert
• Training — someone on your team needs to run orders, users or reports without calling the developer daily

If a proposal only lists “development” and nothing about year two, ask what happens when SSL renews or Paystack changes an API.

Ballpark thinking (not a price list)

We do not publish fixed prices because scope varies, but founders ask for anchors. A focused marketing site with clear service pages and contact flows is a different budget tier from multi-role software with payments. The useful exercise is to write your must-haves on one page and mark anything that touches money, identity or customer data — those features need proper testing and documentation.

How to get a quote you can defend

• Describe who uses the product and what they do on day one
• Split must-haves from “later” features so phase one can launch
• Share two live examples you like and one you dislike
• State your timeline and a budget range — it saves everyone time

Teamdioski, our software arm, responds with a scoped, itemised proposal: what is in phase one, what is not, and what ongoing support looks like. Request a quote with as much detail as you have; we will ask the rest on a short call.