Skip to content

Software contractor · 15+ years

Software built for one business, and then it is yours.

I write small, specific software for people and small businesses. You pay for the work once, you get the source, and nothing bills you afterwards.

Book a call What it costs
Not
software as a service
Priced
per project, by quote
Hosting
optional, or none at all

The coracle

A coracle is one person’s boat, a woven frame under a stretched skin, built on the bank of the river it will work and light enough to carry home at the end of the day.

I build software the same size: made for one place, small enough to hand over whole, and yours from the day it works.

01   The work

A product fits everyone a little. This fits you exactly.

Most software you can buy is built to serve thousands of businesses at once, which is why it never quite matches yours.

Built to fit one business
A product has to serve thousands of customers at once, so it fits none of them exactly. Software written for one business matches how that business runs, down to the words on the buttons.
Yours when it is done
You get the source. There is no seat count, no plan tier and no feature held back for an upgrade, and nobody can change the terms on you later.
Small enough to be worth doing
A spreadsheet that has outgrown itself, a report nobody has time to assemble, a tool your team would open every day. Work too specific for a vendor to take on.

02   How it goes

Four steps, and you know the price before the third.

  1. 01

    We talk about the work

    A call, and then I write down what the software has to do. If something you can buy already does it well, I will tell you to buy that.

  2. 02

    You get a quote

    One fee for building it, and a separate price for hosting if you want me to run it. Both are fixed before anything starts.

  3. 03

    I build it

    You see it working early and often, and you say what is wrong while it is still cheap to change.

  4. 04

    It is handed over

    The source, the accounts and the instructions for running it. Software with no back end and nothing to maintain is yours outright from that day.

03   What it costs

A fee for the work, and hosting only if you want it.

Every number here is a quote agreed before the work starts, so nothing on this page is a price list.

How many times you pay for it

A subscription

You own nothing at the end.

36 payments

This

Hosting recurs only if you ask me to run it.

1 payment

Counts payments rather than money. What each one costs is the quote.

Building it By quote
A contracting fee for the work, agreed before I start. A change in scope gets its own quote rather than appearing on an invoice.
Hosting By quote, optional
Only if the software needs a server and you would rather not run it yourself. You can move it elsewhere whenever you want.
Keeping it Nothing
Software with no back end and nothing to maintain has no recurring cost. You pay for the work and it is yours.

04   Work

What this looks like when it is finished.

Client work is mostly private, so the two case studies below are my own tools.

Built for

Myself
Being my own first user is how I find out whether the handover holds.
A friend
One person has one problem that no vendor is ever going to build for.
A local business
A shop, a studio or a practice already does the work by hand every week.

Case study

A calorie counter that stays on the phone

You type what you ate in plain English and it answers with the calories and the macro split. Nothing you log leaves the device, and the only thing that reaches the estimation API is the phrase being estimated. The day reads as a radial ring and the quarter as a trend chart.

calcifer.brickberry.io
Built for
Myself
Runs on
Any phone browser
Data
On the device
Accounts
None
Recurring cost
The estimation API

Case study

A budgeting app for one household

Bank transactions sync in, land in a database on the phone, and the month’s reports are computed there. It installs on the devices that need it rather than shipping to an app store, and there is no subscription because there is nobody to subscribe to.

Built for
Myself
Runs on
iOS and Android
Stack
SvelteKit, Capacitor, Hono, SQLite
Integrations
Plaid for bank sync
Recurring cost
One small server

Also built, in the open

05   Who you are hiring

Jon Staab, and fifteen years of shipping software.

I maintain what I ship
I have shipped and maintained production systems for more than fifteen years, and I still maintain the ones listed above. You are hiring an engineer who will read your problem and argue with it, and who will sometimes tell you not to build the thing.
AI makes me faster, not qualified
I use it the way I use a compiler, to reach the work sooner. Every design decision, every line that touches your data and everything I hand over is mine, and I can explain all of it.

06   Get in touch

Tell me what the software has to do.

Half an hour on a call is enough for me to say whether this is worth building, what it would take, and whether you should buy something instead.

Book a call hodlbod@coracle.social