Custom Web Applications, Built to Be Handed Over
A real data model, the integrations you need, shipped to production and handed over with the code.
The same brief sent to three agencies comes back at eight thousand, thirty-five thousand and a hundred and twenty. All three can be honest, because the brief left room for three different projects. We start by removing that room, and we do it in a paid phase you keep whatever you decide next.
What decides the price, before anyone codes
- How many distinct user roles exist. Permissions and edge cases multiply across roles, they do not add.
- How many external systems it must speak to. Three integrations is often more work than the entire interface.
- What has to stay consistent with what. A form that writes a row is trivial; a change that must propagate to five places with history is not.
- The invisible requirements: offline, multi-language, audit trails, compliance, availability. Each can double the effort while leaving the demo unchanged.
How we work
- A short, fixed-price discovery that produces a specification, a data model and a clickable prototype. Any agency can quote accurately against it, including ours.
- Delivery in working software you can click every week, not status decks. If you cannot use something by week three, you have no early warning.
- A written change process with cost and schedule attached, agreed before the first change request rather than during it.
- Handover: repository in your organisation, documented environment setup, credentials in your name, and an architecture note the next team can read.
What it costs
- 8k-25k one role, no integration, standard design
- 25k-80k several roles, integrations, a real data model
- 15-20% of build cost per year to keep it healthy
Figures are European rates for bespoke work rather than a template, and they describe scope, not quality. The number that surprises people is the last one: an application without a maintenance budget does not stay still, it degrades.
The expensive part of software is rarely the code. It is building the wrong thing correctly.
Frequently asked questions
Fixed price or time and materials?
Fixed price works once the scope is genuinely fixed, which in practice means after discovery. Before that it forces us to price the risk into the number and pushes both sides into arguing about scope instead of building. A fixed-price discovery followed by iterative delivery is the honest middle ground.
Can we start small and extend later?
Yes, and usually you should, provided the first version is architected for it. The risk is a prototype built for speed that has to be thrown away at the first growth step. Ask us explicitly which decisions are provisional and what revisiting them would cost; we will tell you before you commit.
What happens if we stop working with you?
You keep everything and you can hire anyone. The repository lives in your organisation with us invited to it, the accounts are in your name, and the handover note covers environment setup and the decisions a new team would otherwise have to rediscover at your expense.