# The number, in writing

> See what we need to write a quote and how a brief becomes a fixed monthly price. Learn what the price includes and what accepting it means.

Source: https://customhosted.com/quote/

№ 01 The quote

Not the estimate you build yourself. Not the invoice you get once you're a customer. The number in between — and everything it does and doesn't cover.

№ 02 Two numbers

## Only one of them is a quote

Both are honest. Only one of them is a promise.

- An estimate — A number you build yourself, on the spot, from the posted rate card. The estimator and the selector both produce one, and a spec sheet gives it a shareable link. Nobody on our side has seen it yet.
- A quote — A number we send back, in writing, for the workload you actually describe to us — within one business day. It is what this page is about.

№ 03 What we need

## Four fields and a paragraph

No discovery call required to get a number back.

- Name — Required — Who to send the quote back to.
- Email — Required — Where it arrives.
- Company — Optional — Optional — only if there is one.
- Workload — Optional — A rough shape: static site, dedicated instance, both, custom, or not sure yet.

One paragraph: the stack, rough traffic, and anything odd. That, plus the fields above, is the whole ask.

№ 04 Brief to number

## Hop by hop

Within one business day, from the first hop to the last.

1. 1 — You — You send the brief — Name, email, a rough workload shape, and one paragraph — through the quote form, not a scheduled call.
2. 2 — CustomHosted — We match it to a plan, or flag it as custom — Named plans cover most workloads. Anything that doesn't fit gets designed instead — see "When it does not fit a plan" below.
3. 3 — CustomHosted — The number comes back, in writing — Within one business day. That is a target we hold ourselves to, not a clause in the SLA — see the honest limits below.
4. 4 — You — You accept, or ask a follow-up question first — A complicated or undocumented app can need one round of questions before the number is final.

№ 05 The lines

## What's actually on it

One example configuration, priced the same way the estimator and the invoice price it. A specimen for illustration, not a real customer's quote.

| Line | Detail | Rate |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Static Pro | Multiple sites & environments · staging · redirects/headers — Fair use: ~500 GB transfer/mo | $15/mo |
| Iteration — CodeHerder loop | Brief a change in plain words. An agent opens a pull request, a person reviews it, and the same pipeline ships it. | +$25/mo |
| DB Standard | Postgres · 2 GB RAM · 40 GB storage — 7-day PITR | +$25/mo |

The **Iteration — CodeHerder loop** line above ($25/mo) is the only line on that table that buys a process rather than a resource. This is the process — the same path Patching walks through for a flagged dependency:

1. 1 — A routine scan flags a dependency — The same kind of check that watches the infrastructure layers, run against your application’s own dependency list. — CustomHosted
2. 2 — It's triaged as application-level, not infrastructure — A library your own code imports isn't ours to patch silently — it can change how the app behaves. — CustomHosted
3. 3 — Briefed as a change — Written up the same way any other change request is. The iteration add-on is what covers it. — CustomLabs
4. 4 — An agent opens the pull request — The upgrade lands as a real pull request against the repository, with the test suite run against it. — CodeHerder
5. 5 — A human reviews and merges — Someone reads the diff before it goes anywhere near production — nothing here is auto-applied blind. — CustomLabs
6. 6 — It ships through the same pipeline — The same pipeline that deploys everything else on your stack ships this too — no separate process to babysit. — CustomHosted
7. 7 — You're told it's done — A note confirming what changed and that it merged, in the same shape as every other note on this site. — CustomHosted

№ 06 Not included

## What the number doesn't cover

Said plainly rather than found out later.

- Costs you owe somewhere else — A domain registration, a payment processor's own fee, anything a third-party service bills you directly. See [Domains](https://customhosted.com/domains) and [Outside services](https://customhosted.com/outside-services).
- Building the software itself — Designing or building an app is a CustomLabs job, priced on its own. If you've got a half-built app, a prototype, or nothing written down yet — CustomLabs designs and builds the first version.
- Anything past fair use — Static Starter: ~100 GB transfer/mo. Static Pro: ~500 GB transfer/mo. Past that, we reach out before anything on the account changes.

№ 07 What it commits you to

## Nothing, until you say yes

A quote is a number, not an order.

- Nothing, until you accept — A quote is not an order. Nothing is provisioned and nothing is billed until you say yes.
- Cancel — Either side can end the service at any time. It stops at the close of the current monthly cycle, with no early-termination fee.
- No lock-in — You receive the full pack and stand it up wherever you like — another provider, or back in-house. Free, documented, no rebuild required from us.

№ 08 When it changes

## What moves the number, once you're on it

The same ledger Billing keeps, from the quote's side of it.

Moves it

- Adding a plan, add-on, or database — The new line appears on the next invoice, at its posted rate.
- Removing a plan, add-on, or database — The line drops off the next invoice. The capability itself stops the day you ask, with no pro-rated charge and no pro-rated credit.
- Changing tier — Moving between tiers works the same way as adding or removing a line: the new rate appears on the next invoice.
- A posted rate change — Rates can change, with 30 days' notice before a new one takes effect on your account.
- Tax, where it applies — Shown as its own line on the invoice — never folded into the rate itself.

Never moves it

- A traffic spike — The rate is flat, up to the plan's posted fair-use transfer allowance.
- How many deploys you ship — Deploys are not a metered event on this platform.
- How many changes you brief to the agent — The iteration add-on is a flat monthly line, however many changes you brief in a month.
- A restore — Pulling a backup back in is part of the service, not a billable event.
- A support request — Writing in through the quote channel costs nothing extra, however many times you do it.
- Patching, or a certificate renewal — Routine maintenance the rate already covers.
- An incident, or a rollback — Both are handled at no extra charge. A long enough outage moves the number the other way instead, as a service credit.

№ 09 When it doesn't fit

## Nothing here forces a workload into the wrong tier

The rate card's **Custom** row promises exactly one thing: Fixed monthly quote within one business day. A queue, a full stack, several databases — anything a named plan wasn't sized for gets designed to the workload instead, then quoted the same way as everything else on this page. See [Custom](https://customhosted.com/custom) for what that path actually covers.

№ 10 Worked artifact

## This site's own quote path

What actually reaches us, not a description of it.

1. 1 — Configure it — The estimator or the selector builds a QuoteSpec — a plan, its add-ons, and a database, if any.
2. 2 — It travels in the link — encodeSpec turns that configuration into a URL query string — the same one a spec sheet permalink carries.
3. 3 — The form reads it back — The quote form calls parseSpec on load. It fills in the spec plate, the hidden fields, and a starting paragraph — visibly, before anything is sent.
4. 4 — You add the rest — Name, email, and anything the configuration alone doesn't say.

№ 11 After you accept

## The quote is only the start of it

See [Onboarding](https://customhosted.com/onboarding) for the full hour-by-hour timeline.

1. Day 1 — Stack goes up as code — The agreed shape is provisioned from an infrastructure definition, and a copy of the site or app stands up alongside it for you to check.
2. Day 2–3 — Rehearsed cutover, go-live — DNS and TLS switch over on a schedule you set, checked against the standing copy first, with a rollback ready.
3. Week 1 — First briefed change ships — Brief a small change in plain language; an agent opens a pull request and CI ships it once it's reviewed. Anything larger goes to CustomLabs instead of through the loop.
4. Ongoing — Monitoring, backups, patching — Running quietly from here on, with a named human if anything ever needs a decision from you.

- No console to learn — nothing to click through before you can even ask a question.
- No CI pipeline to write. The one already running here ships every merge.
- No on-call rota. A named human carries that instead of you.
- No ticket queue — the quote form is the one channel, in both directions.
- No per-request bill to model. One flat number, agreed before anything starts.
- No renewal to remember: TLS, patching, and backups just keep happening on their own.

№ 12 Said plainly

## The honest limits

No invented commitment. No number without an artifact behind it.

- A target, not an SLA clause — Within one business day is what we hold ourselves to for a reply. It is not a term in the binding document, which covers availability rather than reply speed. See [the SLA](https://customhosted.com/legal/sla).
- A complicated app can need a question first — Most quotes need nothing further. An undocumented or unusual workload can need one round of questions before the number is final.
- The number assumes the workload you described — A different workload — more traffic, a different shape — gets a different number.
- Not a software build quote — This number prices hosting — the plan, add-ons, and database. Designing or building the app itself is priced separately, by CustomLabs.
- Costs owed elsewhere are not in it — The number covers what we run. Anything a third party bills you directly sits outside it — see "What the number doesn't cover" above.

№ 13 Keep reading

## What the quote connects to

- [Limits Every limit on this quote and every other page, collected in one list — read it before you ask for a number.](https://customhosted.com/limits)
- [Pricing The posted rate card and the estimator this page's specimen quote is built from.](https://customhosted.com/pricing)
- [Spec sheet The shareable estimate sheet — the number you build yourself, before you ever ask for a quote.](https://customhosted.com/spec)
- [Billing What happens once the quote becomes an account: the invoice cycle, and the same specimen lines as a real bill.](https://customhosted.com/billing)
- [Get a quote The quote form itself, and where a submitted brief actually goes.](https://customhosted.com/contact)
- [Onboarding What happens hour by hour once you accept the number this page describes.](https://customhosted.com/onboarding)
- [Custom The bespoke path this page's "when it does not fit a plan" section points at.](https://customhosted.com/custom)
- [Compare How the number this page describes stacks up against rolling it yourself or hiring an agency.](https://customhosted.com/compare)

## Ready for a real number?

Tell us what you're running — a fixed monthly quote, back within one business day.

[Get a quote →](https://customhosted.com/contact)