About
One builder. You talk to the person who designs and builds it.
SoloStack is a studio of one. The person who takes your call designs the screens, writes the software, sits beside you at launch, and answers the phone eighteen months later.
Every name, figure and date in these pictures is invented. The screens are the real software.
- trades built for
- 4trades built for
- systems in daily use
- 3systems in daily use
- person, start to finish
- 1person, start to finish
- to leave
- $0to leave
Who you are dealing with
Design and build under one roof.
An agency passes your project along a line of people. Here one person carries it the whole way, so nothing you said on the first call gets lost by the time it is built.
First call
Design
Build
Launch
Looking after it
A typical agency
Salesperson
Designer
Developer
Project lead
Support desk
SoloStack
Diana
Diana
Diana
Diana
Diana
Diana
Builder
- Alberta, Canada
- One person. Design and build.
- hello@runsolostack.com
- We reply within two business days.
Years inside businesses held together by spreadsheets, paper and one person's memory. That is why the worst part of your week is the first thing we ask about, and why we usually recognise it before you finish describing it.
We take on a small number of projects at a time, on purpose. It is the only way one person finishes things.
The honest version
When the right answer is a tool you can buy off a shelf, we say so on the first call. You will not have paid us anything.
Why one person
An agency sells you a team. What you get is whoever is free.
An agency
A salesperson, an account manager, then whoever has a gap. Right for a big job with a committee. Expensive for most.
Your own developer
Right once the software is the business. Before that you pay a salary to keep someone busy.
One experienced person
Takes the call, builds it, and is still there later. Best at well-defined and finished.
The range
Four trades. One pair of hands.
Four businesses with almost nothing in common, except a spreadsheet holding the place together. These are the real screens.
How we work
Six things that do not change, whatever we are building.
The price is agreed in writing first
You read what it will do, what it will not, and one fixed figure before anything starts.
You see working software, not drawings
At every stage there is something you can open on your own phone and use.
Nobody disappears after launch
Something breaking six months later is part of the arrangement, not a new job.
You talk to the person who built it
No ticket number and no account manager, just the person whose hands were on it.
We say no when it is a no
Wrong size, wrong timing or wrong kind of problem, you hear it on the first call.
It is yours from the first day
The code sits in a locker you hold the keys to, and there is nothing to pay to leave.
Said out loud
What we will not do, and what we have not built.
What we will not do
We will not take a job we cannot finish.
We will not hand you to somebody else halfway through.
We will not sell you a monthly fee for something that should be a one-off.
We will not build something you could buy off a shelf for forty dollars a month. When that is the answer we say so, and you will not have paid us anything.
We will not put a real client name, figure or record on this website or in a sales call.
What we have not built
Three things people assume are included, and exactly where each one stands.
Text messages
Built into two of our four products and switched on in one. Assume texting is about a day of extra work plus a messaging account in your own name.
Posting to social platforms
Nothing goes out on its own. A person approves every post, and it only leaves if you have connected your own scheduling account.
A separate off-site backup
A copy of your records is taken every night where they are kept. A second copy somewhere else entirely is extra, and we quote it.
The question nobody asks out loud
What if something happens to the one person?
A studio of one has to plan for it rather than promise it will not happen. Your software keeps running whether we are here or not, because the thing keeping it online is a service in your own business name, not a person.
If we disappear, you are in the same position as any business whose developer moved on. Inconvenient, not fatal.
What you hold from day one
- The codeYoursIn a private locker you hold the keys to. Every change saved and dated.
- Plain-language notesYoursWritten so any competent developer can open it and carry on.
- The accountsYoursHosting, email and card payments in your business name, not ours.
Something here we have not answered? Ask us directly. One inbox, and one person reads it.