SwansonX
Minneapolis and St. Paul

Custom business software in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

In a metro this size there is no shortage of people who will build you software. The shortage is of people who'll do it for a number you can see before the first meeting, and hand it over when it's done.

  • From $950 for one module
  • Fixed price, in writing
  • I reply within 24 hours.
The angle

The gap in the metro market is at the bottom.

There are good development shops in the Twin Cities. Their economics start somewhere around five figures, because they have a team, an office and a sales process to pay for, and below that number they aren't interested — reasonably.

Which leaves a lot of businesses with a real problem, a few thousand dollars, and nowhere to take it. The usual answer is another subscription that almost fits, and then another one next to it.

That's the gap. One person, no office, no account manager, a published price, and a first build small enough that you find out what working together is like before you commit to anything large.

The trade-off is honest and worth stating: you get one person's capacity, not a team's. If you need five people on it by Q2, hire the shop.

What it costs

Published, and the same wherever you are.

Start with one thing and add when it's worth it. Each step is a decision you make once the one before it has proved itself.

One module

$950

The single worst part of your week. A lead inbox, or quoting, or booking — one thing, built properly, working on its own.

Two or three modules

$1,950

The pieces that only make sense together. Enquiries feeding jobs, or quotes feeding follow-up.

Back Office

from $2,995

Everything connected: leads, customers, jobs, booking, review requests and a dashboard over the top.

Larger than that

Quoted in writing

Priced before anything starts, the same as every other number here. No hourly surprises.

Year one is in the price.

The price includes the first year of it running: hosting, database, backups and keeping it working. No monthly fee in year one.

After that it's $79/month to keep it running, cancellable any month. Nothing renews on its own.

Half up front to book, half on launch. The Partner Plan at $300/month is a separate, optional thing: me as your developer for ongoing work, not a fee for using what you already bought. All prices →

Where I work

Across the metro, and the rest of Minnesota.

The work runs over email and video calls, so where you are in the metro changes nothing about the price or the timeline. I'm in Brainerd, a bit over two hours north, and I'm not going to rent a metro address to look otherwise.

  • Minneapolis
  • St. Paul
  • Bloomington
  • Brooklyn Park
  • Plymouth
  • Woodbury
  • Maple Grove
  • Eagan
  • Eden Prairie
  • Coon Rapids
  • Burnsville
  • Edina
  • Minnetonka
  • Apple Valley
  • Roseville

Not on the list? It almost certainly still works. Tell me where you are.

Looking for a website instead? Website design in the Twin Cities →

Questions

What people ask.

Why would I use someone outside the metro?
Price, mostly, and the fact that you talk to whoever is building it. The work is remote either way — a metro shop would run this over email and video too. If your project genuinely needs someone in the room every week, that's a real reason to hire locally and I'll say so.
What happens if you're unavailable?
You own the source code and the data, and they're available on request at any time, which is the honest answer to the one-person risk. It isn't nothing, and it's worth weighing against what you're getting.
Do you do enterprise work?
No. This is built for businesses roughly between one and twenty people, where the owner sees the invoices. Above that you want a team, and there are good ones here.
Can you work alongside our existing systems?
Alongside, yes — that's usually the point. Accounting, payroll and card processing stay with the real thing. What I build sits next to them rather than trying to replace them.

There's more local detail on Brainerd and the lakes area and Minnesota.

Tell me what you're paying for.

Send me your monthly software list and I'll write back with what each tool does, what's worth replacing, and the one thing I'd build first with a fixed price on it. Free, and I reply within 24 hours.

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