Custom software development — Denver, Colorado
Custom software your business needs — built fast, priced honestly.
We forge the tools your business runs on — websites, custom web apps, admin dashboards, practical AI, and ongoing support for small and medium businesses.
Denver-based, and set up to work either way: close enough to sit down with a business anywhere on the Front Range, and equally happy running the whole engagement on video calls and a staging link, wherever you are.
Senior-led engineering · Fixed-scope quotes · You own the code
Built with
- Laravel
- PHP
- MySQL
- PostgreSQL
- Filament
- Vue
- React
- Claude & OpenAI APIs
The gap we fill
Small businesses get offered two bad options.
Either an agency priced for a company ten times your size, or a stack of no-code tools that works right up until your business does something interesting. Neither one is built for you.
$150k and eight months
The enterprise agency
Six-figure minimums, a discovery phase longer than your busy season, and a junior team you never meet. Priced for companies ten times your size.
$400 a month, forever
The no-code stack
Cheap and quick until the day it isn't — then you're paying per seat, per record, per automation, per AI credit, and you still can't make it do the one thing you need.
Fixed quote, you own it
Custom-fit, small-business priced
Real code, written for how your business actually works, by the engineer who scoped it, at a number a small business can sign off on. That's the whole idea.
What we build
Custom web applications, admin tools and AI automation
Every engagement is custom-coded — no templates, no page builders, and that goes for the AI work too. Here's the range, described by the problem it solves rather than the buzzword it's usually sold under.
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Websites that do more than sit there
Laravel-built marketing sites with the copywriting, the design and the search strategy included — fast, and wired to bring in work rather than just exist.
Your website looks fine and brings in nothing.
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Custom web applications
Customer portals, booking systems, quoting tools, member areas — built around your process instead of bending your process around someone else's product.
Your customers call or email to do things they should be able to do themselves.
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Admin dashboards and internal tools
Filament-powered back-office systems where your team can see the whole operation, with real permissions, real search, and an audit trail.
The business runs on a spreadsheet only one person fully understands.
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Specialty
AI built into your workflow
We put language models to work on the reading and writing your team already does: pulling line items off supplier invoices, drafting quotes from past jobs, sorting inbound email, answering staff questions from your own documents.
Everyone tells you to be using AI. Nobody tells you what for.
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Business process automation
Quoting, invoicing, scheduling, approvals and reminders that run themselves — and tell you when something needs a human.
Someone on payroll spends hours a week retyping the same information.
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Database design and data cleanup
Properly modeled MySQL and PostgreSQL schemas, plus migration and de-duplication of whatever you're moving off of.
You have the data. You just can't trust it, or get it back out.
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Integrations
Payment processors, CRMs, accounting, email and shipping platforms wired together over their APIs, with sane error handling when they misbehave.
Your tools don't talk to each other, so a person has become the integration.
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E-commerce and booking platforms
Storefronts and scheduling systems that handle your real rules: tiered pricing, deposits, capacity limits, service windows, deliveries.
Off-the-shelf checkout can't handle how you actually price, book, or fulfill.
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Legacy system modernization
We read the old code, document what it really does, and rebuild it on a supported stack — in stages, without turning the business off.
The system that runs your business was built by someone you can no longer reach.
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Ongoing maintenance and support
The Anvil Care Plan: hosting, monitoring, patching, bug fixes and a monthly block of hours for the small stuff.
Launch day isn't the finish line, and you don't want a dev team on staff.
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Selective
SaaS and subscription products
Multi-tenant products with billing, trials and self-serve onboarding. We take a small number of these each year.
You have an idea the rest of your industry would pay for.
How we work
Five steps, and you always know which one you're in
Real timeframes, written scope, weekly demos. You should never have to ask us where your project stands.
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01
Discover
About a week
A call, then a look at how the work actually moves through your business today — including the spreadsheets and the sticky notes.
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02
Design & scope
1–2 weeks
Screens, a written scope, and a fixed quote. You approve the number and the list before we write a line of production code.
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03
Build
3–10 weeks, typically
You get a working staging URL early and a demo every week. No six-week silences ending in a surprise.
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04
Launch
About a week
We migrate your data, train your team on the real system, and stay on call through the first week of live use.
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05
Support
Ongoing, optional
Move onto the Care Plan, or take the keys and run it yourself. Both are fine — the code and the docs are yours either way.
The first call is free. Discovery and design are billed as one piece of work — $1,500 to $3,000 depending on size — and credited in full against the build if you go ahead. The screens and the written scope are yours either way.
Ongoing website & software maintenance
The Anvil Care Plan
Software you depend on shouldn't be something you think about. The Care Plan keeps what we built running, patched and improving — for a flat monthly fee, with no per-ticket surprises.
Ask about the Care Plan-
Hosting & daily backups
Managed, monitored hosting with off-site backups and a tested restore process.
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Uptime monitoring
We watch it around the clock. Usually we know before you do.
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Security patching
Framework, dependency and server updates applied on a regular cadence.
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Bug fixes included
If something we built breaks, fixing it is not a change order.
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Monthly improvement hours
A standing block of hours for the small features and tweaks that keep piling up.
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Priority response
One business day on normal requests. Same-day on anything that stops work.
Plans are sized to the system we're looking after. Most small business applications land between $250 and $1,000 a month, and we'll quote yours with the build so the running cost is on the table while you're still deciding whether to build at all. If your system uses AI, the plan covers keeping those features accurate as the underlying models change underneath them.
Why Anvil
The things agencies stay vague about, we put in writing
- Senior-led, start to finish
- The person who scopes your project is the person who writes it. No handoff to an offshore team of juniors after you sign.
- Fixed scope, fixed quote
- You get a number and a written list of what it buys before the build starts. If the scope changes, we price the change before doing it.
- You own everything
- Your code, your repository, your database, your hosting account. Standard tools, documented, so any competent developer can pick it up.
- Plain English, always
- We'll explain the trade-off, not bury it. If a cheaper off-the-shelf tool genuinely solves your problem, we'll tell you that too.
- Honest about AI
- AI is a specialty here, which is exactly why we'll tell you when it isn't the answer. We scope it to one task, measure what that task costs you today, and build only if the numbers work.
- Denver-based, not Denver-limited
- Being down the road matters on the days it matters — walking your warehouse, training your team in your own office. The rest of the time the work runs on video calls and a staging link, which is why the state line is not the thing that decides whether we're a fit.
Who you'd be working with
You'll work with Erik
Anvil is deliberately small — one senior engineer, which is why the person who scopes your project is the person who writes it. No account manager, no resourcing plan, and no handoff to a team you've never met after you sign.
- Twenty years building web applications
- Eight of those in PHP and Laravel
- Denver, Colorado
Anvil is new
The first three projects go out at a reduced rate
No case studies yet, and we're not going to invent any. What we can do is make being first worth your while: the first three projects are priced below our standard rate, because right now three written case studies are worth more to us than the margin.
- The same fixed quote, the same scope in writing, the same fixed-price guarantee.
- The same ownership terms — your code, your repository, your accounts.
- The only difference: you let us write about what we built. Anonymized if you'd rather.
Questions & answers
What small business owners actually ask us
Still wondering about something? Put it in the project form — we answer real questions before we ask you for a meeting.
How much does custom software cost?
Every project is quoted, but the ranges are not a secret. A marketing website starts around $4,000. A focused internal tool or admin dashboard usually starts around $5,000. A full custom web application — portal, booking system, or similar — typically runs $15,000 to $40,000. Small automations and integrations often come in under $5,000. The first call is free; discovery and design are then billed at $1,500 to $3,000 and credited in full against the build. What comes out of that is a fixed quote, and that quote is the number you pay unless you ask us to add something.
How long will my project take?
Most small business projects run six to twelve weeks from kickoff to launch. Discovery and scoping take one to three weeks, the build itself is usually three to ten weeks depending on size, and launch week covers data migration and training. Small automations and integrations are often done in two to three weeks.
Can AI actually help a business like ours?
Often, and we will tell you plainly when the answer is no. Where it earns its keep in a small business is narrow, repetitive reading and writing: pulling line items off supplier invoices and purchase orders, drafting a first-pass quote from your past jobs, sorting and summarizing inbound email, or answering staff questions out of your own manuals and documents. We scope AI work to one specific task, measure what that task costs you in hours today, and build only if the numbers justify it. What we do not do is attach a chatbot to your website and call it a strategy.
Who owns the code when the project is finished?
You do, completely. The code lives in a repository you own, on hosting accounts in your name, built with standard open-source tools like Laravel and MySQL. There is no proprietary platform to stay licensed to and no lock-in. If you ever want to move to another developer, you hand them the repository and they can get to work.
What happens if my requirements change mid-project?
They usually do, and that is normal. Anything inside the agreed scope we simply build. Anything new, we price as a small written change before doing the work, so you always decide whether it is worth it. Nothing gets quietly added to your invoice.
What happens after the software launches?
You choose. One route is the Anvil Care Plan — a flat monthly fee, most small business systems landing between $250 and $1,000 a month, covering hosting, monitoring, security patching, bug fixes and a block of hours for small improvements. If you would rather take it in house, we hand over the code, the documentation and the accounts, and we are still available hourly if you need us later.
Do you host the software for us?
Yes. Managed hosting, daily off-site backups, SSL, and uptime monitoring are all part of the Care Plan, and we handle the setup. If your business needs the application to live in your own cloud account or on premises, we will build and deploy it there instead.
What happens to our system if your studio disappears?
Nothing breaks and nothing is stranded. We deliberately build on mainstream, widely used technology and we deliver documentation with every project, so the pool of developers who can maintain your system is large. You already own the code and the accounts, so there is nothing to reclaim from us.
Where are you based, and do you work outside Colorado?
We are in Denver, and we are set up for the Front Range — Denver, Aurora, Boulder, Fort Collins and Colorado Springs — where being an hour away is genuinely useful for walking a warehouse or training a team in person. But nothing about how we work depends on it. Discovery, weekly demos and every approval happen over video and a link we send you, and we take projects from businesses anywhere in the country. If it is a good fit, the state line is not the thing that decides it.
Request a project
Tell us what's slowing your business down
A short form — five minutes, no sales funnel. We'll reply within one business day with either a few specific questions or a link to book a scoping call.
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One business day. That's our reply time, and a real person writes it.
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No obligation. Plenty of our replies are "here's a cheaper way to solve that."
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Nothing shared. What you tell us stays between us — no lists, no resale.