ZLOVEFU
Start a project
Pricing

Published prices, because "contact us" is not a price.

Three ways to work with us. Every engagement starts with the sprint, and nothing is quoted by the hour for work that has not been scoped yet. Prices are in USD, exclusive of tax.

Start here

Discovery sprint

$4,800 fixed

One week, one engineer, one document. Ends with a scope you can hand to anyone — us or not.

  • 2 × 90-minute working sessions
  • System sketch and data model
  • Risk list with the unglamorous parts
  • Fixed-price build estimate
  • Written brief you keep either way
Book a sprint
Most engagements

Build blocks

$9,500 / 2 weeks

Two-week blocks of hands-on engineering, demoed every Friday and deployed to your staging environment.

  • One senior engineer, full attention
  • Repository access from day one
  • Weekly demo of running software
  • Tests, migrations and CI included
  • Pause or stop between blocks
Start with a block
After launch

Retainer

$3,200 / month

A fixed number of hours each month for the work that keeps a system alive after the launch post is written.

  • 40 hours per month, roll over one month
  • Incident response during business hours
  • Dependency and security patches
  • Small feature work, no re-scoping
  • Monthly written summary
Ask about a retainer

Payment: 50% to start, 50% on delivery for sprints and blocks; retainers are billed monthly in advance. We do not invoice for hours we cannot explain in the weekly demo.

Questions

The ones that come up before the first invoice.

Why is there a sprint before any build work?
Because fixed-price estimates on unscoped systems are fiction. One week of reading the codebase, talking to the people who run it, and writing down the failure modes turns a guess into a number we will actually commit to. If the sprint concludes you should not build it, you get that in writing and we part on good terms.
Do you work on existing codebases?
Yes — that is most of the work. We will not take on a rewrite of a system we have not read, and we will say so if the honest answer is "this needs replacing" rather than "this needs a patch".
Who owns the code?
You do, from the first commit. Work happens in your repository or one we hand over entire at the end, including history. No licence fees, no proprietary framework, no dependency on us to keep it running.
What time zones do you cover?
We keep at least four hours of overlap with clients in Asia and North America. Async by default: written updates in the repository, calls only when a decision needs one.
Can you sign an NDA?
Yes. Send yours with the first email, or use ours. We do not publish client names, screenshots or architecture diagrams without written permission.
Do you do design, or only backend?
Backend and tooling, plus the interfaces that sit directly on top of them. We do not do brand work, marketing sites or mobile apps, and we will point you at people who do rather than pretend otherwise.
What if we need to stop halfway?
Blocks can be paused between two-week units. You keep everything built so far, with the documentation needed for someone else to pick it up — that is part of the deliverable, not a favour.

Tell us the number you are afraid of.

Usually it is "how long will this take". We answer that in the sprint, in writing.

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