---
title: "Custom Software Development · 316Software"
description: "Software built around the way your business runs, so you’re not bending the business to fit someone else’s product. I’m the only engineer on it, from the first conversation until it’s running in production."
canonical: "https://316software.com/services/software-development"
last_updated: "2026-10-21"
---
# Custom Software Development

Software built around the way your business runs, so you’re not bending the business to fit someone else’s product. I’m the only engineer on it, from the first conversation until it’s running in production.

![A laptop on a drafting table showing a simple business application, beside the paper form and the printed spreadsheet it replaces.](https://316software.com/img/services/software-development-1536.webp)

The app on the left replaces the paper form and the spreadsheet on the right.

## The promise

Every custom project starts with a 1-week discovery for $4,500 CAD, credited in full against the build. If it turns out the system wouldn’t get used, I’ll tell you, and you’ve spent the discovery fee instead of the cost of a build.

I don’t give a fixed price for custom software before I’ve watched the work. Any number before that is padded or a guess. So the first week isn’t spent building: I follow one real piece of work through your business and write down what I find. When internal software fails, it’s usually because people quietly go back to the old spreadsheet. A week is a cheap way to catch that before you pay for a build.

## How a project runs

1. **Discovery**: 1 week · $4,500 CAD, credited in full

   I follow one piece of work from start to finish: where it comes in, who touches it, what gets typed in twice, and which spreadsheet is the real one. If you decide not to build anything, you still keep the systems map.

2. **The scope, in writing**: Before anything is built

   The systems map, a written scope, and a fixed price for whatever you decide to build. This is where a rough range turns into a real number, because by now I’ve seen the work.

3. **Built in phases**: Weeks per phase

   You see a working demo every week, so if a week goes nowhere, you know that week. I write each decision down, with the reasoning, the day I make it. If the scope changes, you get a price for the change before I build it, so nothing extra turns up on an invoice. You pay phase by phase, for work you’ve already seen running.

4. **Handover**: Yours to keep

   The repository, the documentation and the running system. The infrastructure moves to your own accounts, or stays on mine under the run plan, whichever you chose. If another engineer takes over in 2 years, that’s everything they’ll need.

## What you get

- **A finished system**: Deployed, monitored, backed up, and documented well enough that another engineer could take it over.
- **The code and the data**: Your repository and your data, from the first commit. You’re never licensing something I own. On the run plan the system runs on my infrastructure, or in your own cloud account if you’d prefer. Either way, you can take it with you.
- **A data model that matches the business**: Including the exceptions: the client billed differently, the job that skips a step, the field only one department fills in. Off-the-shelf products make you work around those.
- **The integrations it has to work with**: Your accounting, your email, the spreadsheet nobody will give up. Each one connected properly, with a plan for when one of them goes down.

 

Three copies of the jobs spreadsheet and an inbox, brought into one table. The job they disagreed about becomes one record, the monthly billing from the email gets its own field, and everyone who kept a copy reads the same row.

## Pricing

Fixed prices for the common jobs, and a quote after discovery for anything bigger. Prices in CAD, plus GST.

- 01

  **Discovery**

  Where every custom build starts.

  $4,500 1 week · credited in full

  One week: a systems map, a written scope and a fixed statement of work per phase. Credited in full against the build.

  - One piece of real work followed end to end
  - A systems map and a written scope
  - A fixed-fee statement of work, per phase
  - Not worth it? Tell me on the last day and you don’t pay

  [Start with Discovery](https://316software.com/contact?service=software-development)

- 02 Fits most businesses

  **One process**

  One workflow, one team, built and handed over.

  $27,500 fixed · 3 weeks

  One workflow for one team: a data model of up to 8 tables, forms and lists, one export, one integration, deployed in your cloud account and documented for the next engineer.

  - One workflow, one team, one data model of up to 8 tables
  - Forms, lists, one export, one integration
  - Deployed in your own cloud account
  - Documented well enough for the next engineer

  [Start with One process](https://316software.com/contact?service=software-development)

- 03

  **A system**

  Several processes, several roles, the history brought across.

  from $50,000 after discovery · by phase

  Several processes and roles, 2 or 3 integrations, reporting, and years of history brought across. Scoped in discovery, built in phases with a demo every week.

  - Several processes and roles
  - 2 or 3 integrations, and reporting
  - History migrated and verified
  - Paid phase by phase, after you’ve seen each one working

  [Talk about A system](https://316software.com/contact?service=software-development)

- **Run plan · from $3,000 a year**: The infrastructure it runs on, kept up, backed up and watched. The server it runs on. Storage, and backups you can be restored from. Dependency and security updates. Monitoring, and someone who notices. Cancel at any renewal. You own the software either way.

- That’s the starting price. A busier or more complex system costs more to run, and we agree on the number in writing along with the build, so it never comes as a surprise.
- Not included: what you pay other companies. AI model and API keys, third-party licences and app subscriptions stay in your own accounts, at cost. I don’t mark them up.
- The plan doesn’t include hours for changes. Each change gets its own price, agreed before I build it.
- I’ll never take a percentage of what you sell: no royalties, no cut of transactions, no per-user fees for software you own.

Six things change the price of a Custom build, and they’re worth knowing before you ask: how consistently the work is done today, whether the system only reads documents or also has to measure drawings, whether it stands alone or connects to your accounting, how many devices and platforms are used in the field, how many outside people need a login, and whether years of history have to come across. It’s never priced per user and never licensed: you pay to have it built, and then it’s yours.

+11%

**Companies that invested in their own software grew revenue.**

Two economists followed publicly listed companies through the years in which the share of software developers on their payroll jumped by more than 30%, a sign they were building their own systems. Productivity rose about 5%, then revenue about 11% and employment 7% on average. Those were large companies hiring whole teams. The entry tier builds one process around your own work in 3 weeks without you hiring anyone, and anything bigger is built and paid for one phase at a time.

[Bessen & Righi, Shocking Technology: What Happens When Firms Make Large IT Investments?, Boston University, April 2019. Listed firms, 1990–2012.](https://sites.bu.edu/tpri/files/2019/04/SSRN-id3371016.pdf)

## When it’s the right choice

- The process is specific to your business and no product fits it without a pile of workarounds.
- The workarounds have become the system: spreadsheets that are really databases, an inbox that is really a queue.
- You need to own the system outright, because it’s how you compete.

### When it isn’t

If a product on the market already does 80% of it, buy the product. I’ll tell you which one. I’d rather lose the build than sell you a worse version of something that already exists.

## Get in touch

[Talk about software development](https://316software.com/contact?service=software-development)

I’ll read your message myself and reply within 2 business days.

## Related services

[All 8 services](https://316software.com/services)

- ### [Integrations](https://316software.com/services/integrations)

  When the new system has to share data with the tools you already pay for.

- ### [Legacy Modernization](https://316software.com/services/legacy-modernization)

  When what it replaces is an old tool the business still runs on.

- ### [AI Agents & Automation](https://316software.com/services/ai-agents-automation)

  When part of the work is reading documents or copying data by rule.

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Page: https://316software.com/services/software-development
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