If a client has asked your agency for a 3D product configurator and 3D is not something you build, do not quote it yet. The price and the launch date depend on five things: what actually changes on the product, what files already exist, where the result has to run, what it has to connect to, and who owns it afterwards. All five can be answered in a single call with the client. Quote after that call, not before it.
This matters more for an agency than for anyone else in the chain. The client will hold you to the number you give, and whoever builds it will price from the same five answers. If you quote before you have them, the gap comes out of your margin.
1. What actually changes on the product?
“Configurable” can mean a colour swatch or an entire machine assembled from optional modules. Ask the client to list every option a buyer can choose and every rule between them.
Two things drive the work. The first is the number of distinct parts and finishes that have to be modelled. The second is the logic: options that only appear when another is selected, combinations that are not allowed, parts that change size with each other. Four colours, three sizes and a choice of five accessories make sixty possible products, but they may only need a dozen modelled parts and finishes. A short list of dependent rules can add more work than a long list of colours.
Ask the client for the order form or price list the sales team already uses. It usually encodes the real rules better than anyone’s memory does.
2. What files already exist?
This is the question that moves the price the most.
If the manufacturer has CAD files, such as STEP, SolidWorks or Inventor, the geometry exists, but it is not ready for a browser. CAD software stores shapes as precise mathematical surfaces. Converting them into the polygon meshes a browser can draw produces very heavy models. Soft8soft, which makes a web 3D toolkit, notes that tessellated CAD can come out at “millions of polygons” and that internal parts nobody will ever see stay in the file, “inflating the size of the target asset and reducing rendering performance”. Its own toolkit expects meshes of around 100,000 triangles.
The target is small. Shopify’s standard for product models is a total file size of “about 4 MB”, with textures no larger than 2048 by 2048 pixels for the mobile web. Getting an engineering assembly down to that size, without losing what the buyer needs to see, is skilled work, but it starts from accurate geometry.
If there are no CAD files, the models are built from drawings, photographs or the physical product. That is slower and needs more review rounds with the client, because nobody can check accuracy against a source file.
Ask for a sample file for one representative product before you quote. Whoever builds the configurator will want to open it.
3. Where does it have to run?
A configurator on a product page is one deliverable. The same product in augmented reality, on a trade show kiosk or on a sales rep’s tablet without a connection is several.
Augmented reality on a phone, without an app, needs two file formats: USDZ for iPhone and iPad, and GLB for Android. A kiosk or an offline tablet needs a standalone build that does not depend on a website being reachable. Each of these is a reasonable request, and each changes the scope. Find out now which ones the client expects, including the ones they have not mentioned yet because they assume they come free.
4. What does it have to connect to?
A configurator that shows the product is a visual. A configurator that prices it, sends a quote request to the sales team or adds the result to a cart is an integration project as well.
Ask where a finished configuration has to go. A simple form that emails the chosen options is quick. Live pricing from an ERP system, a quote that lands in a CRM, or a cart on an e-Commerce platform each add work and add a dependency on someone else’s system and someone else’s timetable. If the client’s IT team or another vendor controls that system, put them on the next call.
5. Who owns it afterwards?
Clients rarely ask this, and they always care later.
There are three common arrangements. A subscription platform hosts the models and the configurator, and the experience stops when the subscription stops. An enterprise platform does the same on an annual contract. A built-to-order configurator can leave the client with their 3D models in open formats, so they can use them anywhere, whether or not the original vendor is involved.
Agree in writing what your client receives at the end: the models, in which formats, the hosting arrangement, and whether the code is included or available to buy. It is a five-minute conversation now and a difficult one in two years.
Turning the answers into a quote
With the five answers, a builder can give a fixed scope, a fixed price and a launch date. Without them, you get a range, and ranges are where agency margins disappear.
As a guide to timing, in our own projects a single product configurator takes three to four weeks, and a facility-scale digital twin or multi-product showroom takes six to ten. Integration and missing source files are what usually stretch a date, which is why questions 2 and 4 deserve the most time on the call.
Two habits protect the agency. Write the five answers into the scope document the client signs, so that a new option or a new screen is a change request rather than a favour. And quote a fixed price for that scope rather than an hourly estimate, so the client is buying a result and you are not absorbing the cost of finding out what they meant.
Where we sit
We build interactive 3D, configurators and AR as a white-label partner for marketing and technology agencies, under NDA and under your brand. We work through exactly these five questions on one scoping call, and our clients keep their 3D models in GLB and USDZ. If a client has just asked you for something you do not build, our partner page explains how that works.