Shimira ITCustom digital signage or kiosk software typically costs $10,000 to $50,000 or more to build. But with signage, the first question isn't "how much?" It's "build or buy?" Off-the-shelf signage products are cheap to start and charge per screen forever; custom software is a larger upfront cost that you own outright. Which one wins depends almost entirely on how many screens you run and how far your needs stray from the template. This guide works through both, with the arithmetic.
Key takeaways
- A handful of screens with simple, scheduled content: buy. Dozens of screens, many locations, or custom logic: custom usually wins within two to three years.
- A custom MVP costs $10,000–$20,000; a multi-location platform with offline playback and expiry costs $20,000–$40,000.
- The features that matter most are the unglamorous ones: offline playback, real-time push, and expiry enforced on the device.
- Signage succeeds or fails on content operations: if updating screens is painful, people stop doing it.
- Hardware and installation are separate from software costs.
In this guide: build vs. buy · worked example · custom build costs · feature costs · player hardware · open-source option · what cheap systems get wrong · interactive kiosks · content operations · scaling up · running costs · timeline · vendor questions
Build vs. buy, honestly
| Off-the-shelf | Custom build |
|---|---|
| Low to start, per-screen monthly fee forever | Larger upfront cost, then it's yours |
| Fine for simple, scheduled content | Handles custom logic, interactivity, and integration |
| Cheap at 5 screens, painful at 50 | No per-screen charge as you scale |
| You adapt to their product | It fits exactly how you operate |
| Their roadmap, their pricing changes | Your roadmap; you decide what changes |
A worked example: when does custom pay off?
Subscription signage products commonly charge somewhere in the range of $10–$50 per screen per month, depending on features. For this example we'll assume $25 per screen per month. Check current vendor pricing for your own comparison.
| 10 screens | 60 screens | |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription, per year | $3,000 | $18,000 |
| Subscription, over 3 years | $9,000 | $54,000 |
| Custom build (standard tier) | $20,000 – $40,000 once | |
| Custom: maintenance, per year | 15–25% of build cost: roughly $3,000 – $10,000 | |
| Verdict | Buy | Custom usually wins by year 2–3 |
Hosting is small for both and left out for clarity. The pattern holds more generally: subscription cost grows with every screen you add, while custom cost is mostly fixed. The more screens, locations, and years you plan for, the stronger the case for owning the software. The opposite is also true, and we'll tell you if a subscription is the better deal.
What a custom build costs
| Tier | What's in it | Timeline | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| MVP | Central content management, push to screens, basic scheduling | 6–10 weeks | $10,000 – $20,000 |
| Standard | Per-screen targeting, offline-first playback, expiry, multiple locations, roles | 2–4 months | $20,000 – $40,000 |
| Full platform | Interactivity, analytics, integrations, fleet monitoring, multi-tenant | 4–6 months | $40,000+ |
Feature-by-feature costs
| Feature | What it involves | Typical cost |
|---|---|---|
| Content management & scheduling | Media library, a calendar of slots per screen, previews, approvals | $3,000 – $6,000 |
| Player app | The full-screen client each display runs | $2,000 – $5,000 |
| Offline-first playback | Local caching of playlists and media, reconciliation on reconnect | $2,000 – $5,000 |
| Real-time push | Published changes reach screens in seconds | $1,500 – $3,500 |
| Targeting & playlists | Content per screen, per location, or per group | $1,500 – $4,000 |
| Expiry & dayparting | Time windows enforced on the device, including across time zones | $800 – $2,000 |
| Device monitoring | Heartbeats, screenshots, offline alerts, remote restart | $2,000 – $5,000 |
| Roles & audit trail | Who can publish where, and a record of every change | $1,000 – $2,500 |
| Proof-of-play reporting | What actually played, where, and when | $1,500 – $4,000 |
| Touch & interactive kiosks | Wayfinding, catalogues, check-in, or forms | $3,000 – $10,000 |
| Integrations | POS, pricing, inventory, booking, weather, social feeds | $3,000 – $10,000 each |
| Multi-tenant | Separate clients or brands on one platform | $3,000 – $8,000 |
Choosing the player hardware
- Full-screen web client. Runs on almost anything with a modern browser, which makes the software independent of the hardware. This is the approach behind Eyeon Portal.
- Android media players. Inexpensive and flexible, but consumer-grade devices vary in reliability and need to be locked into kiosk mode.
- Displays with built-in players. Commercial displays running platforms like Samsung Tizen or LG webOS remove the separate player box, at the cost of platform-specific development.
- Dedicated signage players and PCs. Robust and manageable, but more expensive per screen.
Our default recommendation is a web-based player plus whichever hardware you can source, manage, and replace easily. It keeps you free to change hardware later without rewriting the software.
The middle option: open-source signage
Between subscriptions and a fully custom build sits open-source signage software, such as Xibo or Anthias (formerly Screenly OSE). There's no per-screen licence, and for straightforward scheduled content it can work well. The trade-offs:
- You run it. Hosting, updates, security patches, and troubleshooting become your responsibility, or a vendor's on a support contract.
- Customization has limits. Changing core behaviour, such as how offline playback or expiry works, means working inside someone else's architecture.
- Operator experience varies. Tools built for broad audiences are rarely as simple as a calendar designed around your team's actual workflow.
Open source is a reasonable choice if your needs are standard and you have technical staff to run it. When the reason you're leaving a subscription is that the product doesn't fit how you operate, open source usually has the same problem.
What cheap systems get wrong
- Blank screens on bad networks. Shared Wi-Fi in malls and stores drops for minutes at a time. Without offline caching, the screen goes dark exactly when it's needed.
- Expired offers left glowing. If expiry is enforced only on the server, a disconnected screen keeps showing a finished promotion. Expiry has to live on the device.
- Slow publishing. Content that syncs overnight turns a flash sale into a missed sale. Real-time push gets changes to screens in seconds.
- No visibility. Without device monitoring, you learn a screen is down when a customer mentions it.
- Tools only IT can use. The people running campaigns are usually marketers. If scheduling doesn't feel like a calendar, they'll go back to posters.
- No emergency override. When something urgent happens, such as a closure or an evacuation notice, you need one button that replaces content on every screen at once, and a clean way back to the schedule afterwards.
Interactive and self-service kiosks
Touch kiosks for wayfinding, check-in, ordering, or catalogues are a different class of product from display-only signage. People use them directly, often in a hurry, so a few extra requirements drive the cost:
- Session handling. Every interaction has to time out and reset cleanly, so the next person never sees the last person's screen or data.
- Peripherals. Receipt printers, barcode and QR scanners, and card readers each need integration and testing on the real hardware.
- Payments. Using a certified payment terminal keeps card data out of your software entirely, which dramatically reduces your compliance burden compared with handling card details yourself.
- Accessibility. Reachable controls, readable contrast, large touch targets, and alternatives for people who can't use a touchscreen. In public spaces these are often legal requirements, not nice-to-haves.
- Offline behaviour. Decide in advance what happens to an order or check-in if the network drops mid-transaction.
That's why interactive kiosks sit at $3,000–$10,000 on top of the signage platform in the feature table, and toward the higher end when payments and peripherals are involved.
Content operations: the part that decides success
Signage projects rarely fail on technology. They fail when updating the screens is so tedious that nobody does it, and six months later every screen is showing last season's promotion. Budget time for these when you plan the build:
- Templates. Branded layouts that let staff drop in a headline, price, and image without a designer.
- Approval flow. Who can draft, who can publish, and which screens each person is allowed to change.
- Scheduling that matches the business. Dayparting for breakfast and lunch menus, campaign start and end times, and per-location differences.
- A named owner. Someone whose job includes keeping screens current. Software can make that easy; it can't make it happen.
On Eyeon Portal, this is what moved campaign turnaround from a week of printing to the same morning: marketers schedule content the way they would book meetings in a calendar.
Scaling from ten screens to hundreds
Software that works on ten screens can struggle at two hundred, and the problems are mostly operational:
- Provisioning. Adding a screen should take minutes: a pairing code on the display, entered in the portal, and it starts playing its assigned content. Anything more manual becomes a rollout bottleneck.
- Staged updates. Push player updates to a few screens first, then the rest, so a bad release never takes down the whole fleet at once.
- Bandwidth. Pre-download large videos outside opening hours so screens aren't competing with the store's own traffic.
- Fleet visibility. A single view of which screens are online, what they're playing, and which ones need attention.
Measuring whether signage works
Proof-of-play reports tell you what played and where. Tying that to results is the harder, more valuable part:
- Sales comparison. Compare sales of promoted items at locations and times where the content ran against those where it didn't, using point-of-sale data.
- QR codes and short links. A unique code per campaign or location gives you a direct response measure.
- Location tests. Run different content at comparable sites and see which one moves the number.
Security for unattended screens
Kiosks sit in public places, often on shared networks. Lock devices into kiosk mode so passers-by can't exit the player, make sure screens only accept content from your platform, keep admin access behind proper authentication and roles, and log every change. Remote restart and update let you fix problems without sending someone to each location.
Running costs
- Hosting and database for the management portal and backend, usually modest.
- Media delivery, which grows with video use and the number of screens. Offline caching reduces it, because screens download content once rather than streaming it repeatedly.
- Real-time messaging for instant publishing, usually a small monthly cost.
- Maintenance at 15–25% of the build cost per year, covered in our software maintenance cost guide.
- Hardware replacement, separate from software and dependent on your fleet.
How long it takes
| Phase | Duration | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Discovery | 1–2 weeks | Screens, locations, content types, network conditions |
| Build | 6–10 weeks (MVP) | Portal, player, and backend in two-week sprints |
| Pilot | 2–4 weeks | A few real screens in a real location, including network drops |
| Rollout | Varies | Location by location, with monitoring in place |
Questions to ask any signage vendor
- What does a screen show when its network drops for an hour?
- Is expiry enforced on the device or only on the server?
- How long does it take a published change to reach every screen?
- How do we add a new screen, and how long does it take?
- How will we know a screen is offline before a customer does?
- What does it cost at our screen count in three years, not today?
- If we leave, what do we keep: content, data, and screen setup?
Hidden costs to ask about
- Displays, players, mounts, and installation
- Network upgrades at locations with poor connectivity
- Content production: design, video, and ongoing campaigns
- Staff training, however simple the tools
- Integration work with POS, pricing, or booking systems
- Accessibility work for interactive kiosks in public spaces
Building on real experience
Eyeon Portal runs this in production across a mall group's kiosks. Published content reaches screens in under ten seconds, screens play from cache through Wi-Fi drops, expiry is enforced on the device, and marketing staff schedule weeks of content from a calendar with a full audit trail. Campaign turnaround went from a week of printing to the same morning. See how we approach digital signage & kiosk software, or tell us your setup for a real estimate.