Complexity tiers
- Tier 1 — One-way lead feed (website form, single portal, Meta ads → CRM): days of work. Capture, mapping, duplicate check, basic logging
- Tier 2 — Hardened multi-source intake (several portals + ads + forms with routing, queues, retries, monitoring): 1–3 weeks. This is most real estate projects
- Tier 3 — Two-way sync (ERP/accounting ↔ CRM with conflict rules, product rows, status flows): several weeks. Complexity lives in edge cases, not the happy path
- Tier 4 — Platform builds (client portals, local apps with UI, importers with validation and reconciliation): scoped as software projects
What moves the price
- Direction: two-way costs 3–4× one-way (conflict resolution, loop prevention)
- The other system's API quality: a clean REST API vs email parsing vs 'export to Excel'
- Data volume and history migration
- Field mapping complexity and transformation rules
- Reliability requirements: fire-and-forget vs queued/retried/monitored
- Who maintains it: handover documentation vs ongoing retainer
Keeping quotes honest
Ask every vendor the same four questions: What happens when the target system is down? How are duplicates prevented? Where do I see logs? What exactly is handed over? Quotes that cannot answer these are pricing a demonstration, not a production integration — and that gap is where projects overrun. Our audit call produces a written scope with these answers before any number is final.