Nearshore development: what it actually costs

The first question is never asked out loud, but everyone thinks it: if the work is the same, why is the price a third of what a London agency quoted?

It is a fair question, and a vague answer should worry you. This article gives the specific one, including the parts that are less comfortable for us.

Why the rates are lower

Three reasons. Only one of them is about quality, and not in the direction you might expect.

Cost of living and salaries. A senior developer in Yerevan, Tbilisi or Almaty earns a good local salary at a rate that would be junior-level in London. The salary buys a comparable standard of living. Nothing is being squeezed.

Overheads. No office in a capital city, no sales team, no account managers between you and the people doing the work. In a mid-sized Western agency those layers are a substantial share of the invoice.

Fewer people on the project. A local agency might staff a project with a project manager, a business analyst, a designer, two developers and a QA. We typically run with two or three people, one of whom talks to you directly.

That third point cuts both ways, and it is worth being clear about it. Fewer people means faster decisions and less overhead. It also means less redundancy: if one person is unavailable, the project feels it.

What is not a reason: lower quality standards. If someone offers rates far below the nearshore range, the difference is usually made up in scope disputes later.

What is in the estimate and what is not

The most common source of friction on any outsourced project.

Usually included: development, basic technical design, internal testing, deployment to your environment, and a warranty period for defects in what was built.

Usually not included, and worth confirming in writing:

• Third-party licences. Hosting, paid plugins, API subscriptions.
• Content and translation. We build the structure; the text is

yours or a translator's.

• Design from scratch, if the estimate was based on adapting a

template.

• Data cleanup. If your catalogue has duplicate codes, someone has

to fix that, and it is often the largest hidden cost on integration work.

• Ongoing maintenance after the warranty period.
• Changes to scope. Not a penalty, just a different piece of work.

Ask for the estimate broken into these lines. A supplier who cannot separate them has not thought the project through, and the gap will appear as a change request in week six.

Time zone overlap

The practical question behind "how will this actually work day to day".

From Yerevan, Tbilisi or Almaty, the working day overlaps substantially with UK and European hours. In practice you get a morning-to-afternoon window in which questions get answered the same day.

With the US East Coast the overlap is smaller but workable: our afternoon is your morning. With the West Coast it is thin, and this should be discussed honestly before signing rather than discovered in month two.

What actually matters more than the raw overlap:

A guaranteed response window. "We answer within your working day" is a concrete commitment; "we're flexible" is not.

Asynchronous by default. Decisions written down, not made in calls. This is good practice regardless of geography and essential across time zones.

A fixed weekly call. One scheduled conversation prevents most misunderstandings that a hundred messages will not.

Language of communication and documents

Be specific about this, because "we speak English" covers a wide range.

Three separate things to confirm:

Who you talk to. Whether the person answering your questions is the person writing the code, or a translator layer in between. We prefer direct contact, but you should ask rather than assume.

Written documentation. Specifications, technical notes and handover documents in English, not translated at the end.

Code and comments. Variable names, commit messages and code comments in English. This matters when another developer picks the project up later. It is a routine standard, but it is worth having in the contract.

Ask for a sample of previous written documentation before signing. Fifteen minutes of reading tells you more than any call.

Payment, contracts and IP

The administrative side, which is more straightforward than most people expect.

Payment. International bank transfer is standard for B2B. Confirm who covers intermediary bank charges — if that is not stated, the amount arriving can be lower than the invoice.

Currency. Agree one currency for the contract and stick to it. Splitting an invoice across currencies creates reconciliation work for both sides.

Contract structure. Fixed price suits well-defined work; time and materials suits work that will evolve. A common middle path is fixed price for a defined first phase, then time and materials once the scope is understood.

Intellectual property. This is the clause to read carefully. Source code, documentation and design files should transfer to you on payment, stated explicitly. Also confirm that you hold the hosting and repository access, not only the supplier.

We are not lawyers. The contract, the IP clauses and any data processing terms should be reviewed by your own legal adviser before signing. What we can do is provide the draft early rather than at the last minute.

What goes wrong, and how to prevent it

The honest section. Four failure patterns, all preventable.

Requirements that were never written down. The single biggest cause of overruns. It is not a nearshore problem specifically, but distance amplifies it: a misunderstanding that a local team would catch over coffee survives for two weeks here.

*Prevention:* nothing starts development until the scope is written and both sides have signed it off.

The disappearing supplier. Responses slow down, then stop.

*Prevention:* pay in stages tied to deliverables, keep the repository in your own account from day one, and treat a slow week as a signal rather than an inconvenience.

Handover that never happens. The project ends and no one else can work on the code.

*Prevention:* make documentation part of the acceptance criteria, not a favour at the end.

Scope creep on both sides. You add features, the supplier absorbs them silently and then the deadline slips without explanation.

*Prevention:* every change written down with its cost and time impact, even if the answer is "no extra charge".

When a local agency is the better choice

Genuinely better, not just easier.

When you need people physically present. On-site training, hardware installation, working alongside your staff.

When the domain requires deep local regulatory knowledge and you do not have that expertise in-house to direct the work. We can build to a specification your lawyer or accountant provides. We cannot write that specification for a jurisdiction we do not practise in.

When procurement requires a local supplier. Some public sector and large enterprise contracts do. That is not a technical question.

When the project is small. Below roughly €2,000 the coordination overhead of any external supplier eats the saving. A local freelancer is often the sensible answer.

If any of these apply, we will say so at the first call rather than after the contract.

Cost and timeline

Work	Price	Timeline
Landing page	from €500	1-2 weeks
Corporate website	from €900	2-4 weeks
Online store	from €1,250	2-4 weeks
CRM or accounting system	from €900	2-4 weeks
Integration work	from €700	1-4 weeks

Prices exclude VAT. Third-party licences are separate.

In summary

The rate difference comes from salaries, overheads and team size — not from cutting corners on the work itself.

Judge a nearshore supplier on three things: whether the estimate is broken down honestly, whether they will show you written documentation before you sign, and whether they tell you when a local agency would suit you better.

Tell us what you need built and what your deadline is. If this model does not fit your project, we will say so on the first call. Quote within one working day.