Custom web apps

Most software gets built for a market of millions. The result is a tool with a thousand features, half of which don't quite fit, and a price tag that scales with the bloat. Custom apps are different — built for the specific shape of your problem, with exactly the features that matter and none of the ones that don't.

What you get

A web application designed and built around the way your work actually happens. Web-based, accessible from anywhere, owned by you.

Who this fits

• Independent professionals running a business out of a spreadsheet and group texts.
• Small teams who've outgrown a generic SaaS but can't justify enterprise pricing.
• People with a specific operational problem nobody else has solved well enough.

What we've built like this

ChairCal is a booking system for hair stylists, designed around the way they actually work with clients. ABBA is a faster, calmer Bible reader for people who wanted scripture without distractions. Both are live; both started as a conversation.

What it's not

We don't build apps that need to scale to a million users on day one. We don't take on projects where the requirements are still a guess.

Discovery comes first, and it's separate

Custom software fails when it's priced before it's understood. So the first phase stands on its own: we work through what the software has to do, who touches it, where the current process actually breaks, and what "working" would mean six months from now.

What comes out of discovery is a written scope, a build plan, and a fixed price for the build — plus enough clarity that you could hand the document to a different developer and get a comparable quote. That's deliberate. You should be able to walk away from discovery with something of value even if you don't hire us to build it.

Then we build in slices

Not one long silence followed by a reveal. We build the spine of the thing first — the part that carries the real work — and put it in front of you early, running, with your data in it. You'll form opinions faster looking at a working screen than reviewing a mockup, and it's much cheaper to change course in week two than week ten.

The unglamorous parts are included

Auth, permissions, backups, an admin view for the person who has to fix a typo on a Tuesday. These are the things that get cut from a cheap quote and then cost you later. We'd rather build them in from the start.

When it's finished, you have options

Some clients want us to keep running it — maintenance, updates, and new features as the business changes. Others want to take it in-house or hand it to their own developer. Both are supported, and neither is a trap: the code is documented, the stack is boring on purpose, and we'll do the handoff properly.

What it costs

Discovery is priced on its own, as a small fixed engagement. The build is quoted as a fixed price once discovery tells us what we're actually building. We don't quote a custom app from a first phone call, because any number given that early is either padded to cover the unknowns or wrong in the direction that hurts you.

Tell us about the problem — including the version where you're not sure it needs custom software at all. Sometimes it doesn't, and we'll say so.