Cost mostly comes down to scope. Automating one piece, such as replying to booking texts and holding a tentative slot until a deposit lands, is a smaller job than a system that also tracks the marine forecast, reschedules trips it affects, chases overdue deposits, and turns each day's catch photos into a posted recap. Every added piece needs its own integration (texting or booking app, calendar, payment processor, weather source, social account) and its own logic for what the system can just handle versus what it should flag to you. More pieces, more integrations, more cost.
The other big factor is whether you want it built once or built and then run. A weather reschedule sounds simple until you think about what it actually involves: checking a marine forecast, judging whether conditions are marginal or a clear no-go, messaging everyone booked on that slot, offering alternate dates, and handling the deposit either way. Writing the logic for that is one job. Watching it operate every week, catching the case it gets wrong, and stepping in when a real judgment call is needed (rough seas are a captain's call, not software's) is a separate, ongoing job. Precipitate operates what it builds rather than handing over a script and walking away, and that ongoing operation is usually a bigger share of the total cost than the initial build.
There's no fixed price list because the answer depends on your setup: how many boats and captains, how bookings come in today (phone, text, a booking app), how often you deal with reschedules and deposit chasing in a normal week, and how much of that you want a system to own outright versus just flag for you. Precipitate quotes each engagement on the value the system creates, not by the hour. A practical way to judge it: add up the hours a week you or your crew spend on booking calls, reschedule scrambles, and deposit follow-ups, then weigh that against what a captain's time is worth on the water instead of on the phone. A few hours a month probably isn't worth automating yet. Several hours a week, especially in season, is worth a short conversation about the specific workload.