Takeover
Hand your app over, and have it made ready.
For the founder who wants one person to take the app on, get it ready for real customers, and keep it that way. No new offer and no new price: three fixed-price offers in order, with your ownership written down.
from US$8,000from A$12,000from ¥1,200,000 then a monthly retainer
Prices exclude GST / consumption tax where applicable.
How a takeover runs
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Code and product audit
US$3,300A$4,900¥490,000
Aaron reads the code, the data and the infrastructure alongside your business goals, and writes down what "ready" means for this app, ranked by what each gap means for the business. 5 to 10 business days, read access only.
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Production-readiness sprint
US$8,000A$12,000¥1,200,000
Two weeks, with a fixed scope taken from the audit, delivered as pull requests you review and merge. The audit fee is credited if you book within 30 days of the readout.
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Engineering retainer
US$3,700 a monthA$5,500 a month¥550,000 a month
Ongoing ownership, up to 20 hours a month: reviews, fixes, upgrades and new features, one active request at a time. Monthly, 30 days' notice, unused hours do not roll over.
If you book the sprint within 30 days of the readout, the audit fee is credited against it, so the first two steps cost the sprint's price. If the audit finds more than one sprint's work, or a part worth rebuilding, it says so, and anything further is quoted before it starts. Prices exclude GST / consumption tax where applicable.
See a sample audit of a fictional app: what the first step delivers, down to the sprint quote.
What "ready" means
Ready for real customers, payments and the questions a buyer or an investor will ask. The audit says which of these your app needs first, and the sprint does the most important.
- Security
- Secrets out of the browser, sign-in and sessions done properly, and the headers a vendor review asks about.
- Data isolation
- Each customer reaches only their own records, enforced in the database or on the server, and tested.
- CI/CD
- Every change built and tested before it ships, and a deploy that can be rolled back.
- Tests
- On the parts that take money, hold customer data, or would hurt most if they broke.
- Monitoring
- Errors and downtime reported to someone who acts on them, before customers have to.
- Backups
- Backups that run on a schedule, and a restore that has actually been tried.
- Docs
- How the app is built, run and deployed, written down for whoever works on it next.
Ready means these are in place and checked. It is not a guarantee that the app is free of vulnerabilities: no honest review can promise that.
It stays yours
- The code stays in your GitHub organisation. Aaron works through access you grant and can remove. By default every change arrives as a pull request you merge; with delegated access, he merges and deploys within the agreed scope, and every change is in version control and the change log.
- Hosting and accounts are in your name. The hosting, the database, the domain, payments and every other service stay, or are opened, in your company's name with you as the owner. Aaron is added as a user you can remove.
- Handover notes. Written notes on how the app is built, run and deployed, handed over at the end of the sprint and kept current under the retainer, so anyone can pick the app up.
- Access ends with the retainer. If the retainer ends, Aaron's access is revoked and the removal is confirmed in writing, and local copies are deleted.
- You own what you pay for. The rights in the code and documents made for you are assigned to you on payment, under the terms.
Access: proposed, or delegated
By default Aaron works at arm's length and you merge every change. A takeover often goes faster with delegated access, which you can choose in the proposal: within the scope it sets, Aaron merges, deploys and changes the infrastructure himself, and you stay the owner of every account.
The default
Arm's length
For audits, sprints, retainers and projects, unless the proposal says otherwise. Aaron proposes every change, and you decide what reaches production.
Only if you choose it
Delegated
For a takeover or a clean-up, when you want the work done rather than proposed. You choose it in the proposal, and the proposal sets its scope.
Who does the work
Aaron Culbert, Principal Engineer. He scopes, does and signs off the work, and answers for it. Nobody else works on your code without your written agreement. About Aaron.
Start with the free check.
It looks at what your app shows the world, at no cost, before anyone talks about a takeover. Or book a 30-minute call. To see what comes back, read the sample report and the sample audit.