How much does that 9am meeting with six people around the table actually cost? Most Belgian companies have no idea. This is the problem that MeetingCost.be solves: it calculates in real-time the total cost of a meeting, based on the number of participants, their average hourly wage, and the effective duration of the encounter. Here is how and why I built it.
The initial idea: putting a price on invisible time
The useless meeting is a universal problem in Belgian companies. One hour of meeting with eight people represents eight hours of collective work — an entire day of productivity immobilized. Yet, no one counts. We plan an hour-long meeting like we grab a coffee.
The idea behind MeetingCost.be is simple: make this cost visible, in real-time, during the meeting. If your 60-minute meeting with 8 people (at the average Belgian executive salary) costs about €480, you prepare it differently. You have an agenda. You invite only indispensable people. You finish on time.
Technical choices: Blazor WASM on Azure Static Web Apps
MeetingCost.be is a static Blazor WebAssembly application, hosted on Azure Static Web Apps. No backend, no database, no user account — everything calculates client-side, directly in the browser. This choice wasn't obvious but proves particularly adapted to the use case.
The absence of a backend guarantees zero server load: no variable infrastructure costs, no scaling to manage if the tool becomes popular. Performance is maximized — initial load time is less than one second on mobile. And deployment is fully automated via GitHub Actions, with staging/production separation.
The most technically delicate part is the real-time stopwatch in Blazor WASM. Unlike native JavaScript, Blazor handles rendering declaratively — I had to implement a timer based on System.Timers.Timer combined with InvokeAsync(StateHasChanged) to force the interface update every second without blocking the UI thread. The result is fluid and precise.
The Belgian market as a differentiation angle
Meeting cost calculators exist in English. What distinguishes MeetingCost.be is its calibration for the Belgian market. Salary scales are expressed in EUR, calculations can take into account Belgian social security contributions (about 25 to 30% on top of the gross salary), and the interface is available in French, Dutch, and English.
The local focus is also an SEO advantage: searches like "meeting cost calculator Belgium" or "company meeting cost" are less competitive than in English, and Belgian companies prefer a tool that speaks their language and their salary realities.
Lessons from a solo micro-SaaS
Building a micro-SaaS solo means making constant choices. The basic calculation was operational in a few days. Complexity revealed itself in the details: state management shareable via URL (to share a meeting configuration with a link), the "meeting in progress" mode with dynamic display of the cost incrementing live, and mobile-first compatibility so the tool is usable directly from a phone in a meeting room.
The main lesson: value is in the user experience, not in the technology. A user who opens MeetingCost.be must be able to launch a calculation in less than 10 seconds, without creating an account, without reading documentation. Every additional friction is a reason to abandon the tool. This constraint of simplicity guided all design decisions.
If you manage an SME or a team in Belgium, try MeetingCost.be — it's free, no account required, and available directly from your browser.