Off-the-shelf software makes you learn its process. Custom software follows yours.
Every new app arrives with its own words, its own screens and its own way of doing things, and you and your staff learn all of it. Custom software starts from how the work already moves through your week. Sometimes the off-the-shelf product is still the right answer, and this page says when.
Keep your money if this is you.
Building something that already exists for a few dollars a month would be a bad use of your money. If one of these describes you, buy the product or keep what you have. I would rather tell you than take the work.
- All you need is five pages that never change. A template builder is the right call, and I will say which one.
- A product at twenty or forty dollars a month already does the job. Buy that instead.
- A Word template genuinely covers your quotes. Keep it.
- Your spreadsheet only has one user, never needs searching on a phone, and nothing in it has to happen on a date. Keep the spreadsheet.
When custom software earns its keep
- A manual job eats hours every week, and the product that fixes it is priced for a company ten times your size.
- The work runs through several handoffs: an enquiry, a reply, a booking, an invoice, a review request.
- The off-the-shelf product would mean changing how your staff work, learning new words for things you already do, and paying for features you will never open.
- Invoices get typed up on Sunday night from paper slips, and payment lands weeks after the work.
Most businesses need two or three small tools, ever. Start with the one that costs you the most time.
What I buildWhat you are actually signing up for.
Prices are published rather than quoted after a call. One workflow added to what you already have runs $500 to $900, then $50 to $75 a month. A full site plus the pipeline behind it runs $1,200 to $2,800, then $60 to $125 a month.
Nobody can promise you the top spot on Google, including me. What is achievable is being readable, specific and reachable.
See the full pricingThe terms
- A fixed price in writing before anything is built
- Half the build fee up front, the rest on launch
- The monthly starts when the tool goes live, not when you sign
- You own the code and the content. No contract term and no exit penalty
- Your data stored in Canada
- One person who scopes it, builds it and answers the email
Tell me the worst hour of your week.
Tell me the worst hour of your week. You get back a real working piece of the fix with your name on it — not a proposal, not a discovery call.