When the spreadsheets aren’t cutting it, the SaaS stack costs more than a developer, and your “system” is held together by one person’s memory. Internal tools, customer portals, and full products for Australian businesses — designed around your operations, not someone else’s idea of best practice.
Either you’ve outgrown the tools you’ve got, or you’ve got a new product idea worth building. Both common. The work looks a bit different for each.
Your “system” is three spreadsheets, a Slack channel, and one person who remembers how everything works. You’re paying for four SaaS tools that almost-but-don’t-quite talk to each other. Manual data entry is everyone’s least favourite job. Something here would be 10x better as a small, focused custom application — built around the actual work, not a generic template.
A new SaaS, a marketplace, a customer-facing portal, a service that needs to be a real product. You’ve validated the idea, mapped the rough flows, and you need someone who can take it from “deck” to “deployed”. Scoped properly, built lean, shipped to real users so you can iterate from working software rather than guessing.
I’m not a 20-person engineering team and won’t pretend to be. What I do is figure out what your business actually needs the software to do — operationally — and build it cleanly. Proper auth, real testing, infrastructure you can grow into, and code another developer can pick up later if we part ways.
Most dev shops build what’s specified. I look at what actually happens when the spec breaks — the edge cases, the user mistakes, the operational reality. That’s where bad apps fail.
— how I actually scope, every time
Detailed requirements gathering, technical spec, user flows, then a fixed scope and fixed price. No “we’ll figure it out as we go” energy. The thinking happens before the building.
React, Next.js, Node.js, Postgres. Mature, well-supported, well-documented. No bleeding-edge experiments. No proprietary frameworks. Any developer with React experience can pick it up later.
Code in your repo, hosting in your accounts, database in your name. Nothing licensed back to me. If we part ways one day, your app keeps running — no hostage situation, no platform lock-in.
Most dev shops build what’s specified. I look at what actually happens when the spec breaks — edge cases, user mistakes, the operational reality. The boring stuff that matters when the app meets the work.
The shape of the work varies, but most projects look like one of these. If yours doesn’t fit, send me a note — chances are it’s a variant.
Not on the list? Send me a note → — if you can describe what it does in plain English, I can probably scope it.
Discovery, design, build, infrastructure, launch, docs. All scoped and quoted upfront. Depth scales with the tier you’re on, but the shape of the work is the same.
Map the work properly before writing a line of code.
UI, frontend, backend, database — built cleanly, milestone by milestone.
A proper handover — tested, documented, and someone real to call after.
Most app projects fail because scope drifts. Mine don’t, because scope is locked before any code happens — and changes get re-quoted, not absorbed.
A working session: map the process, find what’s broken, sketch what the app should do. Usually 60–90 minutes.
Detailed technical spec, user flows, fixed scope, fixed price. Delivered within 5–10 days. No vague day-rate estimates.
Staged delivery — milestones every 2 weeks. You see it working, not just slides. Feedback rounds are scoped in.
Deploy, train your team, hand over the keys. 30–90 days of post-launch support depending on the tier.
Three tiers based on complexity. Every project gets a detailed spec and a fixed quote before any work starts — no vague day rates, no scope creep.
Single-purpose internal apps. Small ops dashboard, basic admin tool, or focused workflow replacement.
Full operational apps. Multi-user, customer portals, full workflow systems with proper integrations and reporting.
Complex / SaaS / multi-tenant products. Customer-facing platforms, subscription products, marketplaces. Scoped individually.
Anything else? Email me directly — [email protected]
Most internal tools take 4–8 weeks. Full operational apps take 8–16 weeks. Custom SaaS products usually take 3–6 months minimum. Bigger isn’t always slower — the real variable is scope clarity and how fast feedback rounds turn around.
Honest answer: we discuss it, scope it, and you decide. Minor tweaks during a build are part of normal feedback rounds. Major scope changes get re-quoted before any new work starts — never absorbed silently into the existing budget. No surprise invoices, ever.
Yes. Code is in your repo from day one. Hosting accounts in your name. Database in your control. You can hand it to any developer who knows React + Node — which is most of them. No proprietary framework lock-in, no hostage situation.
React + Next.js for frontend, Node.js or PHP for backend, Postgres or MySQL for the database. Standard, mature, well-supported. Other developers can pick it up without re-learning a custom framework. If you’ve got a preferred stack already in use, I can usually match it.
Often, yes. I can build extensions to WordPress, Shopify, HubSpot, or middleware that sits between your existing tools. Sometimes a small custom layer beats rebuilding everything — cheaper, faster, and you don’t lose the systems your team already knows.
Yes. After the 30–90 day support window, there’s an optional maintenance retainer covering bug fixes, security updates, minor features, and hosting management. It’s optional — you can hand the app off to your in-house team or another developer if you’d rather.
Hosting goes in your name from day one — typically Vercel, Railway, or AWS depending on the scale. Small internal apps usually cost $20–$50/month in hosting. SaaS products with real traffic cost more. You see the bills directly; nothing’s marked up by me.
Yes — usually as part of the Custom Build tier. We scope a focused MVP with the core features only, ship it to real users to validate the idea, then iterate from working software rather than guessing. Costs less and ships faster than a full product, and saves you from building the wrong thing for six months.
Tell me about the work that’s not working. Free discovery call, honest assessment, no obligation. If your problem is better solved with off-the-shelf tools, I’ll tell you that too.