A bespoke business application for small firms in Nice and on the Côte d'Azur

The right answer is often "off the shelf", and we say so before writing a quotation. Take an off-the-shelf solution when your need is standard — accounts, payroll, till, electronic signature, a generic CRM — because a vendor spreading its costs across ten thousand clients will always be cheaper than dedicated development, and because it handles the regulatory updates on your behalf.

Go bespoke when the way you work is precisely what sets you apart, when your teams paper over the gaps in the software with spreadsheets and re-keying, when you pay licences for ten features and use two, or when nothing on the market talks to your other tools. The most reliable signal is still the time lost, measured in hours per week.

In five phases, with something usable to show at every stage rather than one grand unveiling at the end. Scoping: one to two weeks to understand the trade, write the user journeys and set the scope of the first version. Mock-ups: one to two weeks, clickable screens signed off by the people who will use them every day — the moment when changes cost nothing. Iterations: two-week cycles, each closed by a demonstration and a release onto a test environment you can reach at any time. Delivery: migration of the existing data, user training, a supported go-live. Maintenance: fixes, enhancements and monitoring.

A mid-sized business tool is usually delivered in two to four months. You keep a single point of contact from the first workshop to the go-live.

Proven, documented and widely used technologies — that is the first guarantee of reversibility: any competent developer must be able to pick the code up after us. On the front end: React, Vue and Angular, written in TypeScript. On the server: PHP with Laravel for classic business applications, Node.js when the front and the back share a language, Python with FastAPI as soon as there is data processing or AI in the project. On the data side: PostgreSQL, with the Prisma ORM for a versioned schema and clean migrations, and Supabase when a database, authentication and storage foundation has to be running within days. On delivery: Docker and GitLab or GitHub.

Our rule for choosing, stated plainly: Laravel for a business application with a back office and plenty of business rules; FastAPI for a pure API or a project that touches data and AI; Node.js when a single team has to hold both the front and the back. We never mix two front-end frameworks in the same product.

You do. Entirely, and it is written into the contract in black and white. Assignment of rights: the economic rights in the specific code developed for you are assigned on delivery, at no extra cost and with no time limit. Permanent access: the code repository is in your name from day one. Hosting in your name: the hosting, domain name and third-party service accounts are created under your credentials, not ours. Handover documentation: on delivery we provide the technical documentation another team would need to take the project over.

If you decide one day to change supplier, you leave with everything. We hold back no technical key that would stop you going, and we will support the transfer to another team if you ask us to.

The price depends on the number of screens, the number of distinct user roles and the connections to other software — not on how handsome the project is. Here is how a costing breaks down: scoping and mock-ups, with the first conversation still free; a small business tool — one area, a few screens, a handful of users, delivered in four to six weeks; a full business application — several modules, permissions, data migration, two to four months; a platform or client portal — external accounts, payments, volume, four to eight months; maintenance and hosting, per month.

Every quotation splits the project into stages invoiced as the work progresses: you can stop at the end of any stage. We never invoice a vague project: if the scope is not clear, we start with a short scoping exercise whose deliverable stays yours, even if you hand the build to somebody else.