Estates fail on three things: brand drift nobody is accountable for, autonomous systems nobody can explain to a regulator, and a software estate assembled from vendors who each raise their price the year you cannot afford to move. Saffron Designs governs the first. Saffron Automations records the second by construction. Saffron Apps replaces the third with assets you own outright.
Three questions. Thirty seconds. We will tell you which one you are, and you can check our working afterwards.
There is a single Saffron ladder, and every rung has exactly one name and one price everywhere it appears. This card shows the rungs that fit you. This is the top of the ladder. Rung 07 is scoped individually against the estate; every rung below it appears at this same price on the other two cards. You are looking at Card III of III — Enterprise & Multi-Brand.
Every subscription you hold is a price somebody else controls, indexed to how many people you hire, how many sites you open and how much you take in card payments. That is a defensible thing to buy. It is not always the right thing to buy, and almost nobody does the arithmetic before signing.
Put in what you pay for software today and what a build would realistically cost. This applies 10% annual software inflation, 18% of build cost a year in maintenance, and no credit for anything else. If it says keep renting, keep renting — that is the answer we would give you in the room.
It fails more prospects than it passes, and we publish it anyway. A three-location med spa on $1,350 a month of software should not commission a $90,000 booking platform — that is 117 months of payback, and we would say so. A three-user trade business on $249 a month should not commission a $45,000 dispatch system — it never pays back. A twelve-truck contractor on $4,500 a month should commission a $90,000 field-operations platform — it pays for itself in month 27. We would rather lose the build than sell you one that never pays back.
The honest reference class for this work is not another agency. It is the payroll you would otherwise run. To do in-house what The Dominion does, you would be hiring a six-person internal team — two engineers, a designer, a content lead and two operators — and you would still be buying the software.
Below is that arithmetic, done conservatively. It excludes recruiting fees, management time, ramp-up, turnover, software licences and the months where the role sits empty. Add those and the gap widens.
The one thing a software vendor can never offer you, and most agencies quietly avoid putting in writing. Here it is in writing.
| The source code | Yours | The repository, in your organisation, from the first commit — not at handover. |
| The data and the schema | Yours | Your database, your export, any time, in a format another engineer can read. |
| The accounts and credentials | Yours | Cloud, domains, app stores, API keys. In your name, billed to you, from day one. |
| The documentation and runbook | Yours | Written so another firm could take over on a Monday. We test that by writing it that way. |
| Saffron's shared engine components | Perpetual licence | The parts we reuse across clients stay ours — licensed to you perpetually, royalty-free and transferable if you sell the business. |
| Leaving | No charge | No exit fee, no handover fee, no data-export fee. Thirty days of transition support included. |
There is a second-order argument some finance teams care about: development costs of owned software can often be capitalised and amortised, where subscription fees cannot, which changes reported EBITDA even where the cash out is similar. The treatment depends on your reporting standard and your circumstances, and not every cost qualifies. Ask your accountant. Do not take it from us, and be wary of anyone who states it as a certainty.
Every tool below was built in-house, by us, for us, before it was ever offered to a client. Three of them are free and need no sign-up, no call and no card. Open one now, in another tab, before you read another word of this document. That is the demo — working software you can use in the next ten minutes, rather than a case study about somebody else.
Live Lighthouse diagnostics on any URL, including your competitors'.
Whole-site integrity engine. Audits every page, breakpoint and interaction, continuously.
Finds where your operation leaks revenue, before anyone tries to sell you anything.
Interviews you, then designs an enterprise-grade CRM architecture. No login, no call.
Ten specialist agents hunting revenue you are already losing, and recovering it.
Your business, answering questions in Telegram. Briefing you at 7am, every day.
Ten production-ready automation workflows. Point us at your stack and watch them go live.
The engine behind the builds. We made it for ourselves before anyone else saw it.
Every site we ship scores 95 or better on all four Lighthouse categories and carries zero axe violations on the pages we author. If it does not, the build is free. We publish our worst audit run of four, not our best.
If your first automated system is not live and producing verifiable action records within thirty days, that month is refunded. One email to billing. No forms and no retention call.
Code, data, accounts, credentials and documentation are in your name from day one, exportable at any time, with no exit fee. Twenty-six engagements delivered, zero disputes.
You do not need any of this to choose a tier. It is here because somebody on your team will want to check our working, and we would rather they could.
A bundle price means nothing until you can see what you are bundling. Every line below is sold on its own at the price shown. The tiers exist because the three houses compound — not because we will not sell them apart. Lines marked Published already appear openly at saffronautomations.com and are reproduced here unchanged.
Every line is sold separately at the price shown. This works out what the same scope costs à la carte, and whether a house tier covers it for less.
Name the thing. Two working days after the kickoff call you get a working, clickable prototype of its core flow, on real infrastructure, yours to keep whatever happens next. Miss the date and we refund it. Credited against any build commissioned within twelve months.
Data model, screens, integration map, build sequence and a fixed price with a fixed date. Written so another firm could build from it. Yours either way — we do not hold the plan hostage to the build.
Fixed after the Blueprint, against the scope written in it. A weekly demo of working software rather than a status report. Nothing on the web ships until Lighthouse and axe come back clean; native apps ship against the equivalent platform accessibility audit.
Hosting, monitoring, security patching, dependency upgrades and a support line. Indexed to CPI at renewal and to nothing else — not your headcount, your locations or your card volume.
Tell us the one flow that matters most — the booking, the intake, the quote, the dispatch. Two working days after the kickoff call we send you a link to a working, clickable prototype of it, on real infrastructure, in your brand. Not a mockup and not a slide: software you can put in front of a member of staff and watch them use.
It costs $1,500. Miss the date and we refund it. Commission a build within twelve months and it is credited in full. If you never build anything with us, you keep the prototype and the code anyway. We charge because free prototypes attract people who were never going to build — not because we need the money.
| Line | One-time build | Fee |
|---|---|---|
| Designs | Flagship + Multi-Market Rollout Flagship build, design system and rollout across every market and brand. |
from$140,000 |
| Designs | Enterprise Design System Tokens, component library, documentation and governance. Standalone engagement. |
from$70,000 |
| Automations | AI Readiness & Roadmap Paid discovery. A costed, sequenced plan you own whether or not you build it with us. |
from$25,000 |
| Automations | Automation Infrastructure Multi-agent architecture with compliance, observability and audit trails. |
from$150,000 |
| Automations | Complex Systems Integration Hub architecture across legacy estates. Bidirectional, reconciled, monitored. |
from$80,000 |
| What we build | Typical | Fixed fee |
|---|---|---|
Franchise / multi-tenant operating platform
Per-brand tenancy, royalty engine, skill-based dispatch, network reporting. |
20–28 weeks | $120,000–$250,000 |
Custom CRM — complex
Bespoke data architecture, orchestration layer, migration from legacy. |
16–24 weeks | $100,000–$150,000+ |
Enterprise portal
Partner, franchisee, supplier or member. SSO, roles, audit trail, at scale. |
6–12 months | $150,000–$400,000 |
Inventory with ERP integration
Demand forecasting, RFID, multi-entity, straight into the ERP. |
24–40 weeks | $150,000–$250,000+ |
Membership platform at scale
Millions of records, tiering, entitlements, revenue recognition, analytics. |
8–12 months | $250,000–$500,000+ |
White-label product you resell
Your product, your margin, your customers. We build it and stay invisible. |
4–12 months | $80,000–$300,000 |
Multi-agent automation infrastructure
Agent orchestration with compliance, observability and replayable audit trails. |
6+ months | $150,000–$250,000+ |
Legacy hub integration
One hub, many legacy systems, bidirectional, reconciled, monitored. |
3–8 months | $80,000–$150,000 |
Bands are ours, benchmarked against published US market rates for 2025–26. The figure you get is a single number with a date on it, not a range — fixed at the Blueprint, against the scope written in it. Scope changes are re-quoted before they are built; the date moves only for changes you ask for, or for access we are waiting on. Rush delivery adds 15–30%. Anything not on this list, ask — the list is what we are asked for most often, not the limit of what we do.
| The Citadel$21,000 | The Dominion$45,000 | The Sovereign Estatefrom $85,000 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What the customer sees — Saffron Designs | |||
| Your website one-time build, owned outright | Flagship build and design system | Flagship build and design system | Flagship build and design system |
| Site care & integrity from $1,800/mo alone | Care + CRO cycle | Estate governance | Estate governance |
| Search & content from $5,000/mo alone | Content engine, 8–12 assets/mo | Multi-market operations | Multi-market operations |
| Social & video from $5,000/mo alone | 4–5 platforms + shoot day | Multi-brand, per-market | Multi-brand, per-market |
| Paid media from $3,000/mo alone | Search, social, retargeting | Multi-market, incrementality | Multi-market, incrementality |
| What happens after — Saffron Automations | |||
| AI agents from $3,000/mo alone | Voice + chat suite, all sites | Voice + chat suite, all sites | Voice + chat suite, all sites |
| Business intelligence from $1,000/mo alone | Concierge, daily briefing | Concierge, daily briefing | Concierge, daily briefing |
| Automation depth from $10,000/mo alone | Unlimited, prioritised | Dedicated fleet, private infra | Dedicated fleet, private infra |
| Software you own — Saffron Apps | |||
| Custom software & integrations from $2,500/mo alone | Product Care + roadmap | Product Care + roadmap | Dedicated product pod |
| Service & assurance | |||
| Human response | 7 working hrs + named lead | 4 hrs, 24/7 | 4 hrs, 24/7 |
| Engineering response | 24 hrs, prioritised | 4 hrs, 24/7, credited | 4 hrs, 24/7, credited |
| Reporting | Daily + unified monthly + board | All of the above + monthly executive | All of the above + on-site quarterly |
| New automated systems included | Unlimited + 1 flagship/qtr | Unlimited, prioritised + flagship/qtr | Unlimited; flagship builds in scope |
| Code, data and accounts in your name | ● | ● | ● |
| Month-to-month after 90 days | ● | ● | ● |
Every row is a capability, not a product line — so a higher tier always holds at least as much of every row as the tier below it. Nothing is ever taken away as you move right. The figure under each row name is what that capability costs bought on its own.
Enterprise engagements begin with a paid AI Readiness & Roadmap — from $25,000, delivered in four weeks, and yours whether or not you build it with us.