Custom web app

How the price actually works

$7,500 is where these start, not what they all cost. An app is not a fixed thing the way a six page website is, so quoting one from a description would be a number I made up.

So we scope it first. We talk through what it has to do, I write down what I heard in plain language, and I quote against that written scope before anything gets built. If you want, the $150 working session is a cheap way to do that step and find out whether the idea is worth building at all. It comes off the price if you go ahead.

Bigger builds get split into stages with their own payments, so you are never handing over a large amount for something you have not seen working.

How long it actually takes

The build weeks below are mine, and they already have room in them. I would rather give you a date I can keep while other projects are running than a best case that assumes yours is the only thing on my desk.

The calendar and the build weeks are two different numbers, and it is worth being straight about which one usually moves. On projects like these the schedule turns on decisions and content more often than it turns on code: who signs off, what the rule actually is when two people in your business disagree, and getting your existing information out of wherever it currently lives. That is not a complaint about clients. It is the normal shape of this work, and it is the reason I ask for one person who can make the call rather than a group that has to meet first.

What I do about it: you see something real and working in the first couple of weeks, so we are reacting to a screen instead of a document. I ask for decisions in small batches rather than a hundred at once. And if something is waiting on you, you hear it from me early and in plain words, not in a status meeting three weeks later.

It is a web app, and that word matters

This runs in a browser. It works on a phone, it works on a laptop, and there is nothing for anyone to install or update.

If you specifically need an app that people download from the Apple or Google store, say so at the very start. That is a different build, a different price, and it comes with store review and yearly developer fees you would be signing up for. I will tell you straight whether you actually need one, because most businesses that ask for one do not.

The tools I build on, and why you are not locked into any of them

I do not build logins from scratch. Nobody should in 2026. Passwords, resets, two factor, sessions and the security work behind them are a solved problem, and solving it again with your money buys you a worse version of something that already exists. Your accounts run on Clerk, and on WorkOS instead when you need enterprise sign-on, meaning your customers' IT department logs their staff in through the system they already use.

Your data lives in a Postgres database, on Supabase by default, on your account. If you already run on Amazon, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud, or your industry means you have to, that is genuinely fine and it is not a special favor. I have spent my career doing infrastructure. Tell me where it has to live and it lives there.

Payments run through Stripe, so card details never touch your system, the same way the store tier works.

Every one of those accounts is yours, in your name, on your card. Same promise as the websites: no hostage situations. If you and I stop working together, nothing has to move and nothing gets held.

Public pages and search

The app itself sits behind a login, so search engines never see it and there is nothing to optimize. If your project also needs a public page in front of it, that page gets the same search setup as every site on this list: real titles and descriptions, a social preview image, a sitemap, and your business details in the format search engines read.

The same boundary applies. I do the standard setup and I do it properly. I am not an SEO company and I will not promise you a ranking.

It has to work on a phone

Most of the people who look you up will do it on a phone, standing somewhere, deciding whether to call you. A lot of sites were built before that was true and they show it: text you have to pinch to read, a menu that will not open, a contact form running off the edge of the screen so nobody can fill it in.

The phone layout is built as its own real layout, not the desktop one squeezed down. Before anything goes live I check every page at phone width and at desktop width and confirm nothing runs off the edge, nothing overlaps, and every form can actually be filled in with a thumb.

If your current site is hard to use on a phone, that on its own is usually the whole reason to rebuild it.

After it is live

The site is yours the day it launches. Your domain, your accounts, your files. You are not renting it from me, and there is no contract that keeps you here.

Most people still want somebody to keep it running, so there are three monthly plans. Care is $95 a month and covers hosting, backups, security updates, uptime monitoring, and small text and photo edits. Care Plus at $349 and Partner at $749 add change requests, so you can ask for new pages, new sections and new features and I work them one at a time.

If you would rather handle hosting yourself, that is a real option and I will hand you everything you need to do it. I am not going to tell you a plan is required when it is not.

The three plans, in full

Your site is yours, including the story of it

I never show a client's site as an example of my work without asking them first. Not a screenshot, not a before and after, not a mention. If you would rather your project stay between us, say so and it does, and it will not change the price or how I treat the work.

If you are happy with it and you are fine with me showing it, that helps me a lot, and I will still ask before anything goes up.