Your SaaS just showed you its ceiling
We build custom software for companies whose business logic is the competitive advantage, and not a configuration option on someone else's platform. Senior engineers, PRINCE2 + Agile delivery, full code ownership at handover. We'll build the 10% that actually matters.
We'll also tell you when buying SaaS is still the smarter move.
When custom software development is worth it
Custom software development means building a system around how your business actually works, instead of reshaping the business to fit someone else's configuration screen. It is worth doing when the thing you do differently is the thing you make money from.
We build platforms rather than features: systems with their own data model, their own rules and their own roadmap, which your team owns outright on the day we hand them over. And when the honest answer is that a €200 subscription already does it, we say that instead.
What we're usually asked to build
Custom software development lives and dies by one question: does it actually get built?
We turn scope docs into working systems: fast, intentional, and without the six-month discovery purgatory. Whether you need a standalone AI product, a platform built from scratch, or a legacy codebase that's been crying for help since 2019 - we own the problem end to end.
Product discovery that ends in a scope, not a workshop
Domain modelling, so the data structure survives the second year
Bespoke B2B SaaS products and customer-facing platforms
Custom CRM, ERP-adjacent and internal operations tools
Marketplaces, partner portals and self-serve customer areas
Pricing, billing and subscription logic that matches how you actually sell
Workflow and approval engines with rules your operations team can change
APIs and developer-facing products, documented for outsiders
Data platforms, reporting and the dashboards people actually open
AI features with a defined job, rather than a chatbot nobody asked for
Migrations off the spreadsheet, the SaaS or the system of record
Roles, permissions and the audit trail your auditor will want
Admin tooling, imports and the back office that makes the product usable
Deployment, environments and the pipeline your team runs after we leave
The edge case nobody mentioned in the brief, which is where the project was always going to live
Think that covers it? Keep scrolling
We quote the edge cases
Working software every two weeks
Two seniors, minimum
No lock-in clause
We budget the boring parts
Kill the SaaS ceiling
to end the madness
How it runs
Five stages, and you can stop after any of them.
So build vs buy? Buy it. Unless one of these is true.
Custom software is the more expensive answer to most problems. It is the cheaper answer to a few, and the difference is not subtle.
| If this is true | Buy | Build |
|---|---|---|
| The process is standard across your industry | Yes | No |
| The way you do it is why customers choose you | No | Yes |
| Licence cost is rising faster than your headcount | Reconsider | Worth modelling |
| You maintain workarounds to make the tool fit | No | Yes |
| The feature you need is on a vendor roadmap | Wait, with a deadline | If the deadline passes |
| You need it live in six weeks | Yes | Almost never |
| Your data cannot leave a jurisdiction | Rarely possible | Usually required |
| Nobody internally will own it after launch | Yes | No, and this is the one people ignore |
Three of these say buy. We know. Sending you to a subscription costs us a project and saves you a year.
The questions that decide it
Custom software development is building a system specifically for one organisation, rather than configuring a product sold to many. It covers the data model, the business rules, the interfaces and the infrastructure, and it is usually chosen when the way a company works is itself a competitive advantage, or when no product on the market covers a requirement that cannot be negotiated away.
Our rate is €85/h for senior engineers, with a minimum of two per engagement, billed monthly against an agreed scope. The total depends on three things: how many user roles the system has, how many other systems it connects to, and how many exceptions your business rules contain. A focused internal tool costs an order of magnitude less than a customer-facing platform with billing and permissions. We give you a fixed number after a short paid scoping engagement, never before it. A first working version is usually a few months of a small team.
Because anyone who does is quoting a different project to the one you’ll receive. A one-to-two week paid scoping engagement interrogates the requirements, hunts the edge cases and produces a specification with estimates against each part – and that document is yours whether or not we build it. That’s the only commitment needed to get a real number.
Buy, unless the process is the thing customers choose you for, your data cannot leave a jurisdiction, or you are already maintaining workarounds to make a bought tool fit. One more test matters and is usually skipped: if nobody internally will own the software after launch, buy it regardless of the other answers. Custom software with no internal owner becomes legacy in about eighteen months.
Scoping is one to two weeks. After that you see working software every two weeks, so the real question is not how long until the end but how soon until something is usable – usually sooner than people expect, because we build the path a real user takes before we build everything around it.
You. Code, infrastructure, deployment pipelines, documentation and accounts transfer at handover, in your name, with no clause requiring a support contract to access any of it. You should check this in writing with every supplier you shortlist, because it is not the industry norm.
It is the arrangement where one team takes responsibility for an outcome rather than a ticket queue: scoping, architecture, building, launching and handing over, with the same senior engineers throughout. It differs from staff augmentation, where you rent developers and keep the responsibility, and from a fixed-price project, where the supplier’s incentive is to finish rather than to be right.
Yes, and it is common enough that it is a separate service with its own process. Those engagements start with an audit rather than a sprint, because taking over code without reading it first is how a rescue becomes two rescues. See our the software rescue services.
Stop configuring. Start deciding.
One call and an honest answer about whether this should be built at all.