8 screens
Customer portal
Fewer status emails, happier customers.
Customers sign in, see their orders and documents, submit requests, and update their own details. Your team stops answering the same questions by phone.
Estimate this buildCustom web application development
The software your business needs, at a monthly price
Customer portals, dashboards, scheduling, quoting, the back-office tool that replaces the spreadsheet everyone edits. Lathe Software designs, builds, hosts, and maintains it for you. Count the screens, and the price is on the page before you talk to anyone.
- Prototype you click through before engineering
- Hosting, backups, and maintenance included
- Code and cloud account in your name
Example estimate
Static pages 3
Dynamic screens 8
$1,059 per month
plus a one-time $2,900 deposit
Adjust the numbersWhat we build
Applications that replace the workarounds
Six common shapes for business applications. Each one is an example scope with a screen count, so you can open it in the calculator and see the monthly price right away.
5 screens
Operations dashboard
The numbers you check every morning, live.
Revenue, backlog, late jobs, and utilization on one screen, with drill-down lists behind every number. Built on your real data, not a weekly export.
Estimate this build 8 screens
Scheduling and booking
Availability, bookings, and confirmations without the back and forth.
A calendar your staff manage and a booking flow your customers use, with confirmation emails and a clear view of what is coming up.
Estimate this build 9 screens
Quote-to-order workflow
From quote to approval to PDF, in one place.
Build quotes from your price list, route them for approval, send a branded PDF, and turn the accepted quote into an order with one click.
Estimate this build 8 screens
Job and field tracking
Every job, who has it, and where it stands.
Dispatch jobs, capture notes and photos from the field on a phone browser, and see progress on a board. Works on any device with a browser.
Estimate this build 6 screens
Back office replacing spreadsheets
The shared spreadsheet, retired.
Records with validation, imports from the old files, roles so the right people edit the right things, and exports to Excel when you still need them.
Estimate this buildCapabilities
Everything a real application needs
Each of these is standard in what we build, and none of them changes the price of a screen.
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Sign-in with your directory
Staff use the accounts they already have. Customers get their own logins.
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Roles and permissions
Who can see, edit, approve, or export, down to the screen.
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Searchable lists
Filter, sort, and save views over large record sets.
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Dashboards and reports
Charts and totals from live data, with drill-down to the rows.
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Forms with validation
Required fields, formats, and rules enforced before bad data lands.
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File uploads and documents
Photos, PDFs, and attachments stored securely and linked to records.
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PDF and spreadsheet output
Branded PDFs, Excel exports, and CSV imports from your old files.
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Email notifications
Confirmations, reminders, and approvals sent from your own domain.
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Scheduling and calendars
Availability, bookings, and recurring work on a calendar view.
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Approvals and workflows
Multi-step processes with status, assignees, and an audit trail.
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Integrations
FileMaker, accounting, CRM, payment processors, and vendor APIs.
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Background jobs
Imports, syncs, and scheduled tasks that run without anyone watching.
Why the price works
AI-assisted. Engineer-led. Priced like a subscription.
Custom software used to mean a long quote and a longer wait. Working with AI assistance under senior engineering review changes what one experienced engineer can deliver, and the subscription passes that on.
Prototype before a line of production code
AI assistance lets us put a working click-through version of your app in front of you during discovery. You react to real screens rather than a document, and changes at that stage take minutes.
A senior engineer owns every change
Generated code never ships on its own. Every change is reviewed, linted, fully type-checked, and verified by QA before it reaches staging, then deployed with one click once staging passes.
Priced like a subscription because it is built like one
The same scaffold, cloud setup, and maintenance discipline serve every project, so a ten-screen application costs a monthly fee instead of a lump sum up front, and the patching and audits are already in that fee.
Process
How it works
Four steps from first conversation to running software, and every project walks the same four.
- 01
Count your screens
Estimate how many static pages and dynamic app screens you need. The calculator turns that into a monthly fee and a deposit. We confirm the count together and send a proposal.
- 02
Click through a prototype
Discovery produces a working click-through prototype, built with AI assistance. You review every screen and change what you want before engineering starts.
- 03
Build in short iterations
Development runs in 1 to 3 week iterations. Each one produces testable software you can use. Every change is linted, fully type-checked, and verified by QA.
- 04
Deploy, then keep it healthy
Once staging passes, one click puts the release into a cloud account you own. From then on the maintenance plan keeps the app patched, backed up, and audited.
Compare
Subscription, fixed bid, or build it yourself
The work is custom in the first two columns. The difference is what you know up front and what happens after launch.
| Topic | Lathe Software subscription | Fixed-bid project | DIY app builder |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | A monthly fee by screen count plus one deposit, both on the calculator before you start | A lump sum estimated before the screens exist, plus change orders | A low monthly fee, plus your own hours building and fixing it |
| What you see first | A click-through prototype you approve before engineering | Requirements documents and a schedule | A blank template |
| Built for your process | Yes, screen by screen | Yes | As far as the builder's blocks allow |
| After launch | Hosting, patching, backups, and a quarterly audit included | A separate support contract, if any | Yours to maintain |
| Adding a screen later | A line on the monthly fee, same rate | A new estimate and negotiation | Your own time |
| Ownership | Code and cloud account in your name from day one | Yours at the end, depending on the contract | Usually tied to the platform |
Maintenance
Launch is where the maintenance plan starts
A web app depends on hundreds of packages, a cloud platform that changes on its own schedule, and certificates that expire. Left alone, it drifts. The maintenance plan is in the monthly fee to keep it current.
Dependencies get vulnerabilities
Packages your app relies on receive security advisories most weeks. We scan continuously and triage findings weekly so patches go out quickly.
Cloud platforms change
AWS retires services, changes defaults, and schedules maintenance. We track advisories and deprecations and plan the response before the deadline.
Quality decays without review
Every quarter we audit ten engineering dimensions, from backups to accessibility, and send a written report with every finding ranked High, Medium, or Low.
Start with a screen count
Tell us what you are building and roughly how many screens it has. We confirm the estimate, answer your questions, and send a written proposal.