1
Discovery workshop
1–2 weeksWe sit with your sales, ops and engineering leads and turn the SaaS you're paying for into a list of the workflows you actually run. Most teams discover they use 10–20% of what they're billed for.
✓Shadow real users on real tasks (Zoom + screen share)
✓Pull a 90-day usage report from your current SaaS (logins, features touched, integrations called)
✓Map the data model: tables, custom fields, what's actually populated
✓Identify the 'shelfware' — features you pay for and nobody uses
✓Surface the integrations and exports your team depends on
✓Document the security, compliance and audit constraints
You walk away with
A 6–10 page Usage & Scope Audit naming every workflow that stays, every feature that goes, and the cost line each one currently lives on.
2
Scope + fixed-price quote
1 weekWe turn the audit into a fixed-price scope. No T&M, no scope creep, no day-rate surprises. You see the build cost, the annual maintenance, and a 3-year and 5-year savings projection before signing anything.
✓Translate workflows into a feature list with effort estimates
✓Pick the stack (Next.js, Postgres, Inngest, Resend — boring on purpose)
✓Model the savings against your current SaaS contract + projected growth
✓Lock the in-scope and out-of-scope features in writing
✓Decide what gets migrated, what gets archived, what gets dropped
You walk away with
A signed Statement of Work with a fixed price, a delivery timeline, and a 5-year TCO comparison vs your current SaaS contract.
3
Architecture + DPA
1 weekBefore we write feature code we get the foundations right. Hosting region, data ownership, encryption, RBAC and the GDPR posture are documented and agreed — the same artefacts we'd hand your auditor on day one.
✓Decide hosting region (UK or EU — your call)
✓Provision Postgres (Neon or AWS RDS), Vercel project, S3 / R2 bucket
✓Set up SSO (Google / Microsoft) with WebAuthn 2FA
✓Wire observability: Sentry, log aggregation, audit table
✓Sign the DPA and the sub-processor list
✓Run a threat-model session against the in-scope data
You walk away with
An Architecture Decision Record + a signed Data Processing Agreement + a security questionnaire ready to send to your CISO or auditor.
4
Build with weekly demos
4–12 weeks (scope-dependent)We ship working software every week and demo it on a Friday call. Your team uses it, breaks it, gives feedback. By the end you've used the product more than you'd used the SaaS we're replacing.
✓Weekly demo + retro — every Friday, 30 minutes
✓Continuous deploys to a staging environment your team logs into
✓Issue tracker is shared — you see the burn-down in real time
✓Code review pairs with one of your engineers if you want a knowledge-transfer path
✓Pen-test fixtures built in from day one (gitleaks, Dependabot, OWASP ASVS L2 checks)
You walk away with
A production-grade application running on your own infrastructure, with you as the GitHub owner. No 'agency owns the code' nonsense.
5
Data migration + parallel run
2–4 weeksWe extract your historical data from the SaaS, map it into the new schema, and run both systems side-by-side. Your team works in the new product; the old SaaS stays live as a read-only fallback for a defined window.
✓Build extract scripts against the SaaS API (we keep them — they're useful again at renewal)
✓Map foreign keys and IDs so historical search keeps working
✓Backfill audit trails so 'who changed what when' is preserved
✓Daily reconciliation reports compare old and new during the parallel run
✓Train your team in two 60-minute sessions, recorded for the rest
You walk away with
A Migration Runbook (rerunnable), a reconciliation dashboard, and a signed sign-off from each team that the new system is the system of record.
6
Cutover
1 dayOn the day, DNS flips, SSO redirects, the SaaS goes read-only. We sit on a war-room call with your ops lead. Most cutovers are anti-climactic — which is the point.
✓DNS + SSO cutover with a 5-minute window of dual-write
✓Run smoke tests against every critical workflow
✓Notify all users via Slack + email with the new login link
✓Lock the SaaS to read-only — kept for 90 days as a safety net
✓Cancel auto-renewal on the SaaS contract (a quiet pleasure)
You walk away with
A Cutover Runbook + a Day-1 Status Report showing every workflow green. The SaaS stays read-only for 90 days, no longer charging full seat price.
7
Operate, evolve, own
OngoingWe host it, monitor it, fix it. You own the code, the data and the keys. New features ship as PRs your team reviews; SLAs are real numbers in a contract; renewal increases are zero, forever.
✓24/7 uptime monitoring with a public status page
✓Quarterly architecture review + a 6-month roadmap conversation
✓RPO ≤ 5 minutes, RTO ≤ 4 hours; DR tested twice a year
✓Annual third-party pen test, findings shared
✓Dependabot CVE triage in 72 hours; criticals in 24
You walk away with
A flat-fee SLA with a named on-call engineer, a quarterly product roadmap, and zero per-seat tax forever. The contract is exit-friendly: you own the code, your repo, your infra, your keys.
