The package does ninety percent. The last ten costs you the most time.
That is the moment custom software comes up: when the standard package almost fits, and the gap is filled with Excel, with a middleman or with overtime. We build that gap away — and tell you when it is cheaper not to.
- There is one Excel file the whole process depends on.
- New employees need weeks to learn the exceptions.
- Two systems hold the same information, and yet sometimes they don't match.
- The supplier says your request doesn't fit the roadmap.
- The same order is typed in three times: in the email, in the package and in the planning.
- When one colleague is ill, part of the process grinds to a halt.
- The monthly figures come from an export that someone merges by hand.
- You pay for modules you don't use, and miss exactly the one you need.
Recognise two or more? Then the conversation is worth it.
When custom software is the answer — and when it isn't
Custom software costs more to buy and less to use. Whether that works out in your favour depends on how exceptional your process really is. We start with that question, not with the quote.
When the process is your edge
Your way of estimating, planning or handling is why clients buy from you. Squeezing that into a standard package makes you the same as the rest.
The manual work can be counted. If you can say how many hours a week go into something, we can say what removing it is worth.
You are stuck with a supplier who won't move, and the switching costs rise every year.
When the package can do it and you don't use it
We see it often: the feature is there, but nobody was ever trained in it. Then configuring is cheaper than building, and we say so.
The process is being overhauled. Building custom software on something that will be different next quarter is paying twice.
Nobody on your side has time. Without someone who decides and follows along, every custom project gets stuck — ours included.
What you get, and what we need from you
- The working application, running in your own environment or with a host you choose.
- Your data, always exportable in a format another system can work with.
- A test suite that grows along, so you can see whether things still work.
- Documentation of the integrations and of the decisions we made along the way.
- Clarity about who owns what — up front, in the contract.
- Someone who actually does the process, half a day every two weeks. Not just the manager.
- Someone who can make decisions without consulting first.
- Access to the systems we integrate with, or to whoever arranges that access.
- An honest picture of the exceptions. Precisely the cases that “almost never” happen determine the build time.
We are clear about this up front, because afterwards it is always an awkward conversation. Part of what we build is custom work for you. Another part consists of components we developed ourselves and use for more clients — and that is exactly why you don't pay again for every part. What falls under which agreement is in the contract before we start, not in an appendix you get at delivery.
If you want certainty in case we disappear, we arrange source code escrow: an independent third party holds the code and releases it to you when needed. For larger assignments that is a normal procurement requirement, and we cooperate with it.
How a project runs
We work in steps that each deliver something you can look at. After every step you can stop; you are not tied to the whole because you said yes at the start.
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01
Half a day · free of charge
Observing
We sit next to the people doing the work for half a day and write down what happens, including the workarounds. That is where the scope comes from, not from a wish list.
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02
Proposal with a price
What we build, what it costs and what is not included. What we don't know for sure is in the document as an assumption, not in the small print.
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03
First working version
The smallest part that can actually be used, on your own data. Not a clickable design — something that runs.
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04
Every 2 weeks
Building out in blocks
Every two weeks a new version and a demo. You see it grow and can adjust while that is still cheap.
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05
After delivery
Handover or maintenance
You take it over yourself with the documentation, or we maintain it. Both are fine; we have no stake in which.
What it costs, and what drives that
We don't give a ballpark price for something we haven't seen. What we can say: the budget is almost never determined by the features you list, but by three things around them.
That is why step 01 above is free of charge. Half a day of observing makes the difference between a quote with a fifty percent margin and one that is right.
What it is connected to
Talking to your ERP, accounting or portal is usually more work than the screen itself. An undocumented integration is the biggest item.
The almost-never cases
The main path is built quickly. The five percent of exceptions often costs half the budget — and those five percent are why you want custom software.
What has to come along from the old system
Cleaning, converting and checking. The older the system, the bigger this item.
For those who want to check
This part is for your IT manager or for whoever will do the maintenance later. If you don't have one, you can skip it — it changes nothing about what you get.
Laravel
A PHP framework with a long support cycle and a large labour market. Queues, scheduling and logging are built in, and that is exactly what AI needs later.
Static analysis and tests
PHPStan at the highest achievable level, Pest for the tests. Every change runs through GitHub Actions before it reaches production.
Forge or your own environment
We run on DigitalOcean via Laravel Forge, but it can also go to your own servers or cloud account. There is no part that only works on our machines.
Frontend: Blade with Tailwind, or Vue with Inertia when the screen calls for it.
What that looked like in practice
14
hours of retyping saved per week
Packing slips that book themselves
Technical wholesaler, 140 employees — PDFs from the mailbox are read, checked and created as orders in the ERP.
Laravel · RAG · ERP integration
6
weeks until the first integration went live
A core system from 2012, opened up again
Manufacturer in the Brainport region, 320 employees — an API layer next to the existing system, without production downtime.
Laravel · API · migration path
38.000
documents searchable with their source
The archive gives answers
Engineering firm, 85 employees — staff ask a question and get the answer with its source.
Laravel · embeddings · SSO
Half an hour costs you nothing
Tell us which process takes the most manual work. We will tell you honestly whether AI is the right answer — and sometimes the answer is: fix your integration first. Then you have that too, without an invoice.