Came here to post this, well said (along with all the others so far). While the post does raise some valid points about ROI being a key consideration, that doe

Came here to post this, well said (along with all the others so far). While the post does raise some valid points about ROI being a key consideration, that doesn't change that for most businesses initial capital expenditure is still a very significant consideration. As you say, the fundamental point of a ballpark basically is "so around how many zeros?" It's very easy for a client who honestly has minimal idea of underlying foundations behind every day services or tools to ask for something that genuinely seems simple to them on the surface but is insanely complex, even if they're not in starry-eyed dream mode (or inspired by a ludicrously overoptimistic simplified trade magazine article they read). An experienced contractor should be able to at least say "other clients similar to you have been in ranges from $N to $10xN". It's worth emphasizing that there can be significant ability to scale up or down by an order of magnitude in response to ROI, expected scaling requirements, etc. But this isn't asking about fundamental physics or the development of a new operating system or something. There are unknowns and more importantly there is tailoring to the clients needs and budget, but the unknown unknowns should be minimal, that's why they're interested in hiring you. There is a big difference between the author's "well $10k vs $50k and what about ROI" versus "What you just asked for sounds like what $MEGACORP started two years ago with an initial budget of $12 million and last I heard it is now up to $30 million". Most development jobs do have a range of budgets they can be tailored to but that range isn't infinite; some requests are just clearly going to be flat out impossible for a given business and they shouldn't have to spend any capital, economic or human, chasing a total dead end. I also think the author very much overstates software being some inherently different, special thing. He wrote: "you’re asking me to figure out what it will cost to build something that, by definition, has never existed before." That's silly, unless it's something extremely cutting edge or aimed with vast scalability requirements, "websites" have absolutely existed before. Not this specific one sure, but lots of others similar to it, made for businesses with needs that also share similarities. The real world is also full of projects that are even more potentially unbounded, like real estate or construction. That sort of place is exactly where the whole question of "ballpark estimates" originates, because it's all too easy for a concept guy to design out some "beautiful and organic structure" that in terms of architecture and engineering is obviously going to be budget busting. A basic reality check matters. Precise estimates are what comes when a project goes out to bid, but any decent professional in the business should be able to eye a bridge or building design and feature set and quickly come up with a rough idea of whether it's even worth pursuing or is just silly. Edit: Tried to use typical asterisk as multiply symbol, forgot that added emphasis.