What a senior-only software boutique actually costs in Australia

Most software agency websites have a Pricing tab that leads to a contact form. Mine used to, then I got sick of it.

The reason agencies hide pricing is not strategic. It's defensive. If they posted a number, you'd compare it to the cheaper number from someone else, and they'd lose the deal before they got to explain why their number was higher. So they hide the number and force you onto a sales call, where they can do the explaining in real time.

That model works for them. It wastes your time. Here's exactly what Voltari Digital charges, what's included, what isn't, and the honest math on why senior-only costs more upfront and less overall.

The total cost of ownership problem

The number on the proposal is not the number you pay.

A $4,500 website from a freelancer who disappears after launch ends up costing you $18,000 by year two, once you add the rebuild, the lost leads during the gap, and the migration cost. A $12,000 site from a junior agency ends up at $25,000 to $30,000 by year three, once you factor in the maintenance retainer you didn't budget for and the rebuild at the eighteen-month mark because the codebase rotted.

The cheapest sticker price almost always becomes the most expensive total cost. Senior-only inverts this. Higher upfront, lower lifetime, no rebuild at month eighteen.

That's the thesis. Now the actual numbers.

The three tiers

Voltari Pilot, $9,500 upfront + $390 per month

What's included: - Five-page marketing site, custom-designed and custom-coded - Mobile-first responsive build, performance-optimised (sub-two-second loads) - On-page SEO baseline (schema markup, sitemap, Search Console submission) - One inbound form wired to your CRM or inbox - Hosting, SSL, daily backups, security monitoring (the $390/month) - Senior developer for the build, fixed timeline of six weeks - Written money-back clause if we miss the launch deadline

What's NOT included: - Custom integrations beyond a basic form - Multi-language or multi-region setup - Booking systems, payment processing, member logins - Content writing (we can recommend a writer, we don't write it) - Ongoing design or development beyond what hosting covers

Who it's for: - AU SMB owner-operators who need a working, professional site and have been burned before - Service businesses, trades, clinics, consultancies, single-location retail - $1M to $10M revenue, where the site is a credibility and lead-capture tool, not the product

Voltari Operator, $24,000 upfront + $1,400 per month

What's included: - Everything in Pilot, plus - Custom web application functionality (booking, member areas, internal tooling, customer portals) - Two to three AI integrations (receptionist, follow-up nudge, content pipeline, or similar, your choice from the menu) - CRM or ERP integration with your existing stack - Up to three custom forms with logic and routing - Performance monitoring and conversion analytics setup - The $1,400/month covers hosting, security, AI usage costs, ongoing minor changes (under two hours per month), and quarterly review calls

What's NOT included: - Native mobile apps (iOS/Android) - Heavy back-office systems (full ERPs, multi-tenant SaaS platforms) - Custom AI model training or fine-tuning beyond standard API integration - Marketing campaign execution (we build the tools, you run the campaigns)

Who it's for: - AU SMBs at $5M to $50M revenue who need real software, not just a brochure site - Owner-operators replacing a tangled stack of subscriptions with one custom platform - Businesses with a workflow that's outgrown spreadsheets and Squarespace

Voltari Fractional CTO, $6,500 per month

What's included: - Senior CTO time, roughly one to two days per week - Architecture decisions for in-house builds or vendor selection - Code review on work done by your existing developers - Hiring help when you bring on engineers - Quarterly tech roadmap and budget planning - Direct access via Slack or email, response within four hours business days

What's NOT included: - Hands-on coding (this is advisory, not delivery, if you need both, pair it with Operator) - Twenty-four-hour on-call coverage - Full-time exclusivity (this is fractional by definition)

Who it's for: - Founders running a tech-enabled business without a CTO - Operators with a small internal dev team who need a senior to keep them honest - Companies between $3M and $30M who need senior tech judgement without paying $300K base

Why senior-only is cheaper over three years

This is the part that justifies the upfront premium. Real numbers, not vibes.

A junior agency build typically requires a structural rebuild at the eighteen-month mark. The reasons are predictable. The codebase wasn't structured for change, the database schema doesn't fit the second year of business growth, the integrations were hacked together rather than designed. The rebuild costs roughly seventy to ninety percent of the original build.

So your $12,000 junior agency site becomes $12,000 plus a $10,000 rebuild at month eighteen. Total over three years, $22,000 minimum, before maintenance.

A senior-only build at $9,500 (Pilot tier) doesn't need rebuilding. The structure was right the first time. The total over three years is $9,500 plus thirty-six months of $390 maintenance, which lands at $23,540.

That's similar, but with one big difference. With the senior-only build, you have a working, current, expandable site for thirty-six months straight. With the junior build, you have eighteen months of working site, a painful rebuild period, and eighteen more months of the rebuilt site, which is now subject to the same eighteen-month risk again.

The Operator tier math gets even more lopsided. A junior agency custom build at $18,000 to $25,000 almost always becomes a $40,000 to $60,000 rebuild within two years, because the gap between "junior custom build" and "production-ready custom platform" is wide and expensive to close. Senior-only avoids the second cheque.

The premium is real. So is the saving.

The honest math on Squarespace plus a freelancer

I'll be fair to the alternative because pretending it doesn't exist would be insulting.

If you're at the lower end of SMB and you genuinely just need a brochure site with one form, Squarespace plus a $1,500 freelancer designer is a defensible choice. You'll pay roughly $35 a month for Squarespace, $1,500 once for the design and setup, and you'll have a working site for under $2,000 in year one.

The honest comparison is this. That setup works until it doesn't. The moment you need a real booking system, a member area, a custom integration with your CRM, anything beyond what Squarespace's built-in modules offer, you hit a wall. The freelancer is a designer, not a developer. The platform won't bend that far. You end up either paying a developer to wrestle with Squarespace (expensive and brittle) or migrating off it entirely (also expensive).

If you're confident your site is and will always be a five-page brochure, Squarespace plus a freelancer is fine. If you suspect you'll need real functionality within twelve to eighteen months, you're going to pay the migration cost on top of the original build, and the math stops working.

Voltari isn't trying to compete with the $2,000 Squarespace setup. We're trying to be the right answer for the business that's outgrown it, or knows they will.

The money-back guarantee

Every Voltari engagement carries a written money-back clause for missed launch deadlines. The specifics are in the contract, the headline is this: if we miss the agreed launch date by more than two weeks for any reason that isn't your delay (content, approvals, scope changes you requested), you get a refund schedule that scales with how late we are.

The reason it exists is straightforward. I'd rather lose a project than ship late and pretend everything's fine. A guarantee makes that commitment binding instead of marketing copy.

This is the question every developer should be able to answer in one sentence and most can't. We can.

Where to go from here

If you have a defined scope, send it to /contact and we'll price it in writing before any call. The copy on that page is literally "Tell us your scope, we'll price it before any call," because the sales-call-first model is the thing this post is trying to break.

If you want more detail on how the delivery works, the process is documented at /how-we-work, and the full pricing breakdown lives at /pricing with the same numbers as this post, kept current.

Whichever tier fits, you'll see the number before you ever talk to me. That's the point.