What does a quote portal cost, and when does it pay for itself?

The honest version: with us a quote portal costs around €14,500 to set up, plus a monthly fee from €450 for hosting, maintenance and support. There is also a spread option with a lower starting amount and a higher monthly fee over three years.

That is an amount you have to swallow. So let us first look at whether it makes sense for you at all, because for some companies the answer is no.

The sum is simple. Count how many quotes go out each week, including the small ones. Estimate how much time goes into each — not just the calculating, but reading the request, looking up a price, the back and forth about a detail that was not mentioned. Multiply that by what an hour of office time costs you, including employer contributions.

Twelve quotes a week, 35 minutes on average, at €45 an hour: that is well over €14,000 a year. On work that appears on no invoice and that you cannot pass on to any customer.

A portal does not remove all of it. Filling it in shifts to your customer, but checking stays, and exceptions stay. Count conservatively on just over half. That puts the payback at about two years — and after that you keep it every year.

What the sum does not show is what comes on top. The quotes you currently skip because it is too much work for a small order. The customer who walks because he waits three days for a price while a competitor needs one. And the "where is my job?" call, which stops by itself once someone can follow it themselves.

When it does not make sense: if you make fewer than a handful of quotes a week, if every job is so different that there is nothing to automate, or if you mostly sell from stock at fixed prices. I will say so too, preferably beforehand rather than after.

Want to work it out for your own business? Our calculator lets you fill in your own numbers. Nothing is sent; it simply calculates in your browser.