Custom Web Application Development

A small senior team that designs, builds, and maintains the production web app your business depends on. We work with founders, CTOs, and product leaders who need real engineering, not a ticket queue.

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Who this is for

You have a product idea that doesn't fit a template. Maybe it's a workflow tool that the team currently runs in spreadsheets. Maybe it's a B2B platform you need to ship before your next funding milestone. Maybe it's a SaaS that already has paying customers but the code under the hood was written by contractors who are long gone.

We are not the right team if you want a no-code site, a five-page brochure, or rented-template SaaS. We are the right team when the product needs real architecture, will live for years, and the cost of getting the foundations wrong is high.

What "custom" actually means in our engagements

A lot of agencies say "custom" and mean "we'll skin a starter template for you." When we say custom, we mean the data model, the auth flow, the background-job architecture, the deployment pipeline, and the UI are all written for your problem. Nothing rented. Nothing locked into a vendor.

That matters most when the product grows. BatasDB, one of our products, started as a simple legal database with full-text search. By the time it had millions of records and lawyers wanted to search across statutes, case law, and regulations with a single query, we needed hybrid retrieval, custom ranking, and a citation extractor. None of that would have been possible on a low-code foundation.

How we deliver

1. Scoping (week 1)

A one-hour call. We listen. You leave with a written summary of the problem, a rough scope, a rough timeline, and a price band. No prettied-up "proposal deck." If we don't think we're the right fit, we'll tell you and recommend someone better.

2. Architecture (week 1-2)

Data model first. We sketch the ERD, the major flows, and the integration points before we write a line of code. You see and approve these before development starts. This is where bad decisions are cheap to fix.

3. Build (weeks 2 onward)

Weekly demo. You see real working software every Friday. No "we're 80% done" for three months in a row. Issues surface early because you're using it early.

4. Launch and maintain

We deploy to production with monitoring, error tracking, and a runbook. Then we stay. The team that shipped your v1 fixes the v1.1 bug at midnight. Continuity is not optional for production software.

The stack we reach for

Ruby on Rails for traditional web apps where speed-to-feature matters and the domain is complex. FastAPI for AI-heavy backends where async and streaming matter. Postgres always. React or Astro on the front depending on interactivity. Sidekiq or Celery for background work. Redis. S3.

We avoid microservices on day one. We avoid Kubernetes unless you actually need it. We avoid framework-of-the-month JavaScript libraries because they break in 18 months and nobody wants to be the team that has to migrate off them.

What we're not

Not a 50-person agency. Not a freelancer marketplace. Not the cheapest option in the spreadsheet your procurement team is comparing. We're a small senior team that takes a small number of projects and ships them properly. If you need 80 developers to throw at a problem, we are wrong for you.

Related reading

Frequently asked questions

What does custom web application development cost?

For a single-team product, our engagements typically land between $15,000 and $80,000 depending on scope, integrations, and how much exists already. That's senior SE Asia agency pricing in USD — roughly a third of what a comparable US or Western European shop quotes for the same scope. We bill fixed-scope when the brief is clear, weekly time-and-materials when discovery is part of the work. We share a written estimate after a one-hour scoping call.

How long does it take to build a custom web app?

A focused MVP usually ships in 8 to 14 weeks. A full v1 with auth, billing, an admin surface, and a few non-trivial integrations runs 4 to 6 months. We don't pretend a four-week build is realistic if the requirements actually take four months. Honest timeline first, then the work.

What stack do you use?

Ruby or Python on the backend, a managed Postgres on DigitalOcean or Supabase, React on the front when interactivity calls for it. We host on DigitalOcean, AWS, or Render. We pick the stack that matches the product's actual demands, not whatever is trending on Hacker News this month.

Do you maintain the app after launch?

Yes. The same engineers who built it stay on for bug fixes, feature work, and on-call. Maintenance retainers start at $1,800/month and include monitoring, dependency updates, and a defined response SLA. Most clients keep us on long-term because nobody else knows the codebase better.

Can you take over a project another agency started?

Often, yes. We audit the codebase first and tell you honestly whether to continue, refactor selectively, or rewrite the parts that are holding you back. We'll never recommend a full rewrite to bill more hours. Rewrites are almost always slower than disciplined refactoring.

Ready to scope a project?

One hour. No deck. You leave with a written estimate.

[email protected]