Legacy System Migration

Scope drives the price, and the honest range is wide: a focused internal tool is a different project from a multi-tenant platform with billing and integrations. The variables that matter most are how many user roles exist, how many external systems it has to talk to, and how much of your current process is undocumented. We run a paid discovery only when the problem genuinely needs it — otherwise a short call and a fixed written quote in Canadian dollars comes first, before any build work.

A focused internal application usually takes eight to twelve weeks; a platform with billing, permissions and third-party integrations more often runs four to six months. We work in two-week increments with something reviewable at the end of each one, so you are never waiting months to see progress. Integrations with systems we do not control are the most common cause of delay, which is why we test those connections in the first fortnight rather than the last.

Yes, entirely. You own the source code, the repository, the database and the deployment pipeline, and there are no licence fees payable to us to keep running what we built. We hand over documentation written for a developer who has never met us, precisely so you are not dependent on our availability. If you ever move to another team, everything they need transfers with the project.

Usually, yes. We start by looking at what your current systems actually expose — a documented API, a database we can read, or scheduled file exports — and design the integration around that rather than asking you to replace software that works. Where a system offers no integration path at all we will say so early and propose the alternatives, including the unglamorous ones like a supervised import, so the limitation is priced in from the start.

Changes are expected — custom software tracks the business, and businesses move. After launch you can work from a support agreement with an agreed monthly allowance, or commission changes individually, whichever suits how often you expect to need us. Either way you get an estimate before work starts. Much of what we build in a second year comes from watching how people actually use the first release.

Not always, and we will tell you when it is not. If a well-supported product covers eighty percent of what you need and you can live with its way of working, buying it is almost always cheaper and faster. Custom is the right answer when the process is genuinely your competitive advantage, when licence costs scale painfully with headcount, or when you are already paying people to bridge the gaps between three tools by hand.

Security is designed in rather than reviewed at the end. That means encryption in transit and at rest, role-based access so people see only their own scope, secrets kept out of the codebase, audit logging on anything that changes records, and dependency scanning in the build pipeline. We host on Azure or AWS in the region you need for residency, and we can work to specific requirements such as PIPEDA, HIPAA or SOC 2 where your sector demands it.

That is a common starting point and not a problem. We audit what exists first — code quality, dependencies, data model and documentation — then give you a straight recommendation on whether to continue it, refactor the parts worth keeping, or restart. Sometimes the honest answer is that finishing it costs more than replacing it, and you deserve that assessment before you spend more, not after.