Why this costs what it costs.
Custom software was expensive because it was labour, and most of that labour was not writing software. It was the machinery around writing software. That is the part that collapsed.
What the AI does, and what it does not.
Every studio in this category is vague about this, which is exactly why it is worth being specific. Here is the division of labour.
- Writes most of the code, faster than any team could type it
- Handles the tedium: tests, migrations, boilerplate, the fifth variation of a form
- Reads your existing spreadsheets and documents to work out the shape of your data
- Keeps a project moving at 11pm on a Sunday, which is when a lot of it gets moved
- Decide what to build. That comes out of a conversation with you
- Know your business. It gets told, in detail, by someone who asked
- Ship anything unreviewed. Every line is read before it goes near your data
- Take responsibility. That is mine, in writing, in the scope
The cost of typing fell through the floor. The cost of deciding what to type did not move at all. Anyone selling you the second one at the price of the first is selling you something else.
You own it. All of it. From the first day.
- The code In your repository, under your account, from the first commit.
- The accounts Hosting, domain, database, every third-party service. In your name, on your card.
- The data Exportable at any time, in a format something else can read.
- The documentation Written so a developer who has never met me can take it over.
- The right to leave No retainer, no minimum term, no licence that expires.
The business model of most agencies is that leaving is expensive. That is not a service, it is a hostage arrangement. If the work is good you will stay because it is good.
Work we turn down.
A studio that says yes to everything is telling you something about how badly it needs the money.
Something off the shelf already does this
If Shopify fits how you sell, use Shopify. If your whole problem is a booking page, buy a booking page. Custom software is the right answer when the thing you need does not exist, not when it exists and you would prefer a bespoke one.
It needs a compliance department
Systems that hold clinical records, process card numbers directly, or sit inside a regulated financial workflow need an organisation behind them, not one person. I will happily point you at someone who has that.
There is no business under it yet
Building the software first almost never works. If there is no operation running today that the system is meant to serve, the honest advice is to go get customers and come back.
You want a person, not a project
This is scoped project work with a defined end. If what you actually need is a developer on staff, hire one. It is cheaper than any consultancy, mine included.
The ones people actually ask.
If yours is not here, ask it on the call. There is no wrong question at this stage and no charge for the conversation.
You are one person. What happens if you disappear?
You own everything from day one, it runs on ordinary tools rather than anything proprietary to me, and the handover documentation is written for a developer who has never spoken to me. That is not a courtesy, it is the point. The measure of a good handover is whether it survives the person who wrote it.
Is this just AI-generated code you did not read?
No, and the demos on this site are the argument. Poke at them. Trip the guardrail on the booking agent, watch the extractor refuse to post a field it is not confident about, try to over-order stock in the storefront. Those behaviours are not what you get from unreviewed output. They are what you get when someone decided what the system should refuse to do.
Why is it so much less than the quotes I have had?
Because most of an agency quote is not the software. It is discovery meetings, an account manager, a project manager, the handoff between the designer and the developer, and the padding that covers the risk of all those handoffs going wrong. Remove the handoffs and a large part of the number goes with them.
Who maintains it after launch?
Whoever you want. Plenty of what gets built needs nothing after handover. If you want me on call, that is a separate agreement you can start and stop. It is never a condition of the build, and it is never how the pricing is made to work.
What if I want it changed a year from now?
Change it. It is your code and your accounts. Bring it back to me, give it to your nephew, hire an agency. None of those doors gets closed by the way it is built.
How do you price it?
Per project, written down before anything starts, based on what the thing actually is. There is no rate card on this site because a number without a scope attached to it is meaningless, and the first conversation is free anyway.
The first conversation is free and short.
Thirty minutes. You leave knowing whether this is worth building, and a written scope follows whether or not you hire me.
Start a project