Pricing
Published, so you can decide before you call.
Most development shops make you sit through a discovery call to find out whether you can afford them. I would rather you knew now. Here is what things cost, what moves the number, and where I would start.
Start here: the Operations Audit
Every engagement starts the same way, whatever you end up building. Two weeks, a fixed fee, and a document you own outright — including the right to take it to a different developer. It is the cheapest way to find out whether any of this is worth doing.
The fee comes off the build if you go ahead within sixty days. If you don't, you still keep the plan.
Step 01
Fit call
No obligation, no proposal, no follow-up sequence.
You describe what is slowing you down. I tell you honestly whether it is something I can help with — including when the answer is no, or that you do not need to spend anything yet.
- How the work actually flows through your business
- What the manual parts are costing you, roughly
- A straight answer on whether I am the right call
Step 02
Operations Audit
Credited against your build if you proceed within 60 days.
I map your operation, find where the hours actually go, and put a number on it. You get a costed plan you own outright.
- Two working sessions with you and the people doing the work
- A map of every system and where data breaks between them
- Your top five manual processes, ranked by annual cost
- What to automate first, and what to leave alone
- A costed build plan — yours, even if you hire someone else
Step 03
Foundation build
Fixed price against a fixed scope. 40 / 30 / 30 payment schedule.
The first system that earns its keep — built from the audit, so the price is based on your operation rather than a guess.
- Clean data model and one source of truth
- The integrations that stop the re-typing
- The dashboard or status board your team opens daily
- A working demo at the halfway point, before you pay again
- Training on your real work, and documentation you keep
Step 04
Ongoing support
Optional. 30 days' notice, any time, no exit fee.
For when you would rather the person who built it was watching it. Entirely optional — the system is yours and runs without me.
- Monitoring and incident response
- Small changes and fixes included
- A monthly report on what the system actually did
- Higher tiers add a funded iteration cycle each month
Add-on — Level 4
Letting it act on its own
Everything above is built so a person releases anything that leaves the building. If you genuinely need the system to send, spend or post on its own, I will build that — Level 4 — but not as a checkbox on a normal build.
What the uplift pays for
- A soak period where it drafts first, so we both see its real error rate
- Spend ceilings enforced at the provider, not just in code
- A complete audit trail — what it did, from what, and why
- A defined undo for every automated action
- A kill switch a non-technical person can find and use
- Graceful failure: when unsure, it queues for a human rather than guessing
What it requires from you
- A signed authorisation naming every automated action and its limits
- Agreement to the soak period before anything runs unsupervised
- A monitoring retainer, from $2,500/month — this one is not optional
- Someone on your side who reviews the automation log
An unmonitored autonomous system is a liability with both our names on it. If the monitoring is not something you want to fund, that is a completely reasonable position — and the answer is that we build the Level 3 version, which in my experience gives most people the hours back anyway.
Founding clients
The first three audits are half price.
RayneBowTech is new. I am not going to pretend otherwise or show you a case study I invented. What I will do is be straight about the trade: the first three clients get the audit at half price, and in exchange I ask to write up the work as a case study, quote you in a sentence or two, and occasionally put a prospective client on the phone with you.
You approve anything published before it goes out, and you can decline the whole arrangement at handover with no change to what you paid. The discount is not conditional on you saying something nice.
What moves the number
Why a build is $8,000 and not $18,000
Four things, and you can usually feel which way each one points before we speak.
How many systems have to talk
One integration is a known quantity. Six systems, two of which have no usable API and one of which is a spreadsheet somebody guards, is a different project. This is the single biggest driver of cost.
How clean your data is
If the same customer exists four times under three spellings, that gets resolved before anything else works. Sometimes that is the whole first phase — and it is usually the phase that pays for itself fastest.
How much has to run unsupervised
A dashboard that reports is cheaper than a system that acts. Most builds land at Level 3 — the work is done for you and a person releases it — which is where the hours come back without the exposure. Going further is priced as an add-on, below.
How fast you need it
I take one build at a time, so the honest answer to "can you go faster" is usually no. What I can do is cut scope so a smaller thing lands sooner. I will always offer that before I offer a longer timeline.
Not in the price
What you will be billed for separately
Stated up front, because finding this out on an invoice is how people end up resenting their developer.
If your budget is under $2,500 and you want a whole platform, I am not the right answer — and I would rather say that here than waste your afternoon. Tell me anyway. There is often a much smaller thing that solves most of it, and if there isn't, I will point you at what does.
Tell me the budget and the goal.
That is genuinely all I need to point you at the right build. Every enquiry gets a straight answer within one business day.