solo stack

What it costs

Every price we charge, cheapest first.

Six rungs, from a call that costs nothing to a whole system that runs the business. A written plan is $390. A tool that already exists starts at $2,900 to set up. Something built for you and nobody else starts at $6,000. Find yourself on the ladder below without speaking to anyone.

The ladder

Find the rung you are on.

Most owners start near the top of this list and work down it over a year or two. That is the sensible order, and nothing here obliges you to take the next rung. Each one is a finished thing on its own.

What you pay once

[ 01 ]A first call

Thirty minutes on the phone. You describe the worst part of your week and we say what it would take to fix.

Free

[ 02 ]Fit check

A written two-page plan in three working days. The whole fee comes off any build you start with us inside sixty days.

$390, once

[ 03 ]Enquiry tool

One calculator or quiz on your own website that gives a visitor a real answer and collects their name while it does it.

$750, once

[ 04 ]Sessions

One to one, on your own screen, until the thing you needed exists and you are the one who made it.

$1,800 to $3,600

[ 05 ]A ready-made tool

Software that already runs a real business every day, fitted to yours in two to four weeks.

$2,900 to $4,500 to set up

[ 06 ]A custom build

Built for your business and nobody else, starting from a blank page.

$6,000 to $60,000

$0$15,000$60,000

The bars are squashed at the expensive end on purpose. Drawn straight, the two smallest rungs would be a line one pixel wide and you would learn nothing from the picture. The figures beside each bar are exact.


What you pay every month, if you want to

A ready-made tool, once it is live

Starts the day it goes live, not the day you pay.

$250 to $450 a month

Keeping it running

Hosted, backed up, patched, and somebody to tell when it breaks.

$290 to $2,400 a month

Stay current

An hour a month, so what you built keeps up with what has changed.

$500 a month

$0$1,200 a month$2,400 a month

The two charts are drawn to different scales, because one is paid once and the other every month. A monthly fee is always a separate decision from the build, and you can say no to it and still own everything.

How the money works

Nothing is built before you have the price in writing.

This is the part most owners have been burned on, so it is the part we do first and in the most boring way possible.

[ 01 ]

The first call is free

Thirty minutes. You describe the part of your week that is worst. If the honest answer is a tool you can buy for forty dollars a month, we will say so, and you will not have paid us anything.

[ 02 ]

Then you get it in writing

Within a day of the call, a short document: exactly what will be built, what is deliberately not in it, what we need from you, when it goes live, and one fixed price.

[ 03 ]

Half when we start, half when it goes live

Nothing is charged before you have read that document and said yes. On the two largest kinds of custom build you can split it three ways instead: forty percent at the start, thirty at the halfway point, thirty at launch.

[ 04 ]

The monthly starts on the day it works

On a ready-made tool the setup fee is taken when we start and the monthly fee is held back until roughly the day it goes live. Nobody pays a monthly fee for something that is not running yet.

[ 05 ]

The price does not move

If you ask for something later that was not in the written note, we price that on its own and you decide before it is built. What never happens is an invoice for work nobody agreed to.

[ 06 ]

Every figure here is Canadian dollars

Before GST. There is no setup charge hidden underneath a monthly one, no minimum term on any monthly fee, and no fee of any kind for leaving.

What you actually get

One page, before any work starts. It says what is in, what is deliberately out, what we need from you, and when it goes live.

Scope and fixed price

Project
A private area for a trades business
Prepared for
Nose Creek Excavating
Dated
3 Sep 2026

What is included

  • One sign-in for staff, one for each subcontractor
  • A job list with status, dates, and the trade assigned
  • Photo upload from a phone, attached to the job
  • A read-only link for the customer
  • One spreadsheet import of the existing job list

What is not included, and would be quoted separately

  • Text messages to subcontractors
  • Anything connecting to the accounting system
  • A public-facing website

What we need from you

  • The logo in the original file
  • The current job spreadsheet
  • One hour of a person who knows how the jobs actually run

Timing

Build 8 Sep to 16 Oct 2026. Launch 19–20 Oct 2026.

Price

Agreed in writing before any work starts. Half on signing, half on launch.

Ownership

The software is yours from the first day, in your own account.

No hourly billing and no surprises means a document like this before anything starts. The figure is agreed with you, so it is not printed here.

Every name, figure and date on these screens is invented. The layout is exactly what the software does.

Buy tonight

Two things you can buy at eleven at night. From $390.

No call, no meeting, no fifteen-minute form. Both are paid once and neither carries a monthly fee. If you are not sure any of this is for you, the first one is the cheapest way to find out, and the fee comes straight back off a build.

Fit check

$390

$390, once  ·  Three working days

A written two-page plan within three working days: what you should build, roughly what it costs, what you should buy off the shelf instead, and whether you need us at all.

What you get

  • Two written pages, back to you within three working days.
  • What we would build, and roughly what it would cost.
  • What you should buy off the shelf instead, where that is the honest answer.
  • Whether you need us at all, said plainly.
  • The whole $390 comes off any build you start with us within sixty days.

What it does not do

  • There is no call. You answer the questions in writing and the plan comes back in writing.
  • It is a plan, not the software. Nothing is built at this price.

Enquiry tool

$750

$750, once  ·  About two weeks

One calculator, quiz or estimator on your own website that gives a visitor a real answer and collects their email while it does it.

What you get

  • One tool, on your own website, in your own colours.
  • A real answer for the visitor, not a form that promises one later.
  • Their name and email, sent to wherever you already read enquiries.
  • One round of changes after you have seen it working.

What it does not do

  • One tool. A second one is a second purchase.
  • It goes on the website you already have. Building you a website is a different job.
  • It collects the enquiry. It does not email the person back for you.

How you buy one

Both are bought on a card from the packages page, without speaking to anyone first. If you would rather be invoiced, say so and we will send one.

Ready-made tools

Already built. $2,900 to $4,500 to set up, then $250 to $450 a month.

See them in full
Every one of these grew out of software that runs a real business every day. What you pay for is having it fitted to yours, which takes weeks rather than months because the hard part is already done. Each one has a cap written into the price, so a job that turns out to be twice the size gets a number rather than an argument.

Ready now

Bid sheet

Three suppliers quote the same job three different ways. This lines them up on the same rows, shows you what each one left out, and re-prices their bid as if they had included it — so the one that looks $4,000 cheaper stops looking cheaper.

Who buys it. Home builders, renovators, facilities and property managers, farms, and anyone who collects three prices before spending money.

$4,500

to set up

$290 a month

from the day it goes live

About three weeks

Included, and the cap

  • Six trades to compare across, set up with your own names for them.
  • Ten comparison rows in each trade, which is enough for a full package of work.
  • Three people signed in.
  • Reading the numbers off a supplier PDF into a draft you check before it is saved, up to a hundred documents a month.
  • A written note of which bid is really cheapest and why.

Priced on its own

  • An extra trade to compare across$250
  • Reading a supplier PDF beyond the first hundred a month$0.80 a documentCharged only on what you go over by.

What it does not do

  • It lines the bids up and re-prices them. Choosing who wins is still yours.
  • It does not contact your suppliers or chase them for a missing price.
  • It reads what is written in a quote. It cannot tell you a supplier is wrong about the work itself.
  • Reading a PDF gives you a draft beside the document it came from, and nothing is saved until you have checked the numbers. It is built and tested, and on the builder it came from every bid was still typed in by hand, so treat it as time saved rather than a step you can stop watching.

Three quotes, priced like for like

Site forms

Your crew fills the inspection in on their phone at the job. Every answer saves on the phone as they go, so a dead zone or a closed tab loses nothing, and the photos finish sending themselves when the bars come back. It lands in the office signed, dated, with the photos attached, and prints as a clean PDF.

Who buys it. Trades, transport yards, farms, utilities, safety consultancies, and anyone whose staff fill in paper on site.

$3,900

to set up

$290 a month

from the day it goes live

About two weeks

Included, and the cap

  • Eight forms, built from the paper ones you use today.
  • As many crew as you like, at no extra cost per person.
  • Photos taken on one bar of signal, shrunk on the phone and sent when it comes back.
  • Every finished form prints as a clean PDF with the signature and the date on it.

Priced on its own

  • An extra form$250
  • A printed day pack$450Cover sheet, a route card in walking order, one sheet per person to interview, and a photo log. Paid once.

What it does not do

  • You tell us the questions and we build the form. Building a brand new form from scratch is not yet something you can do without us.
  • It does not schedule who fills what in, and it does not chase them.
  • The answers and the photos survive with no signal, but sending the finished form still needs a connection. Your crew press send when they are back in range, and nothing they typed is lost in the meantime.

Forms your crew fills in on a phone

Staff training

Assign a course, your staff work through it on a phone, they pick up where they stopped, and it only counts as done when they pass the quiz. Then you can print proof for an insurer that a named person did it on a named date.

Who buys it. Trades, retail groups, transport firms, care providers, and safety consultancies who resell training.

$4,500

to set up

$450 a month

from the day it goes live

About three weeks

Included, and the cap

  • Five courses built with you from whatever you train on today.
  • As many staff as you like, at no extra cost per person.
  • A certificate with a name and a date on it, for every pass.
  • A reminder when somebody is coming up for doing it again.
  • A download an auditor will accept, showing who did what and when.

Priced on its own

  • An extra course built for you$850
  • A course drafted out of your own handbook$450

What it does not do

  • Renewal reminders are built, but they are not yet sent on their own to a timer. Somebody still sends them.
  • The courses are yours and ours together. We do not resell a course library built by anybody else.

Proof a named person passed on a named date

Every name, figure and date on these screens is invented. The layout is exactly what the software does.


Also built, taken on by request

These three are finished and priced. We take them on by asking rather than from the page, because one person can only start so many of these at once. Ask and we will tell you honestly when we could start.

Quote, sign, paid

You build a priced quote from your own service list and send a link. They read it, tick the extras, type their name to sign, and pay the deposit on the same page. The sale posts into your bookkeeping by itself.

$3,900 to set up, then $250 a month

Chase board

Every item you have ordered in for a named customer, in one of six columns. It works the deadline backwards from the date they actually need it and flags anything you have not placed two weeks after taking the deposit.

$3,900 to set up, then $290 a month

Send me your files

You send one link. Your client sees the list of what you need, uploads from their phone, and can tick "I do not have this" instead of going quiet. No password, no account, no attachments arriving one at a time for a fortnight.

$2,900 to set up, then $250 a month

Custom builds

Built for your business and nobody else. $6,000 to $60,000.

How a build works
Five sizes, named after what the software does rather than what it is made of. Pick the row that sounds like your problem. The figures are a band, not a quote, and every one of them ends with a single fixed number in writing before anything begins.

[ A ]A website that sells for you

A site that looks expensive, that Google can find, that looks right when somebody shares it, and that turns up in the map results.

Who buys it. An owner whose current website is embarrassing them, or who has never had one.

Half when we start, half when it goes live.

$6,000 to $9,000

See one we built →

[ B ]A website you keep up to date yourself

The above, plus you change your own prices, hours and photos — and a box you clear by accident cannot take a section off your live site.

Who buys it. An owner who is tired of paying somebody to change a price.

Half when we start, half when it goes live.

$9,000 to $14,000

See one we built →

[ C ]A shop or clinic site with a real booking button

The above, plus customers take a time slot themselves and pay a booking fee by card that comes off what they buy. This exact combination is live and answering today.

Who buys it. Boutiques, clinics, salons and anybody whose day is a diary.

Half when we start, half when it goes live.

$9,500 to $16,000

See one we built →

[ D ]One tool that fixes one job in your business

A single job done properly — the schedule that moves itself when a trade runs late, the ticket-expiry tracker, the costs ledger that will not let you close a month with unattributed bills in it.

Who buys it. An owner with one expensive job that a spreadsheet has stopped coping with.

Half when we start and half when it goes live, or 40 percent at the start, 30 percent halfway and 30 percent at launch.

$12,000 to $22,000

See one we built →

[ E ]The system you run the business on

Several jobs, several kinds of person, your customers and your staff both in it. The scored checklist, the board-grade report, the site walk in walking order and the printed day pack all belong here.

Who buys it. An owner whose business is the software, or soon will be.

Half when we start and half when it goes live, or 40 percent at the start, 30 percent halfway and 30 percent at launch.

$25,000 to $60,000

See one we built →

Worth saying plainly

The largest builds can include drafting: it writes the first version in your own words and checks every claim against your own material. Nothing goes out on its own. You read and approve every piece before it can leave. An approved email arrives in your own mail tool as a draft for you to send, and an approved post only goes anywhere if you have connected a scheduling account of your own. With nothing connected, you copy it and post it yourself.

Extras that can go on any build

Staff hours on a phone

Your staff clock in and out on their phone. Hours are recorded to the minute and never rounded, and every correction stays on the record instead of quietly replacing what was there.

It records the hours. It also works out overtime and statutory holiday entitlement from the real punches, and that half is written to British Columbia employment standards, tested against a table of worked cases. In another province the hours are still right and we price the rules for your province separately rather than hand you somebody else’s. It is not payroll either way.

$900

From the first phone call to the last payment

A free call

30 minutes

A written price

within a day

you say yes

Half up front

you decide first

We build it

weeks, not months

It goes live

your own address

The other half

on that day

On the two largest bands you can split it three ways instead: forty percent at the start, thirty at the halfway point, thirty when it goes live.

The whole point

The price is agreed in writing before anything starts, and it does not move. You own what we build from the first day of it, and there is nothing to pay if you ever want to take it somewhere else.

Every month

Software is not a thing you buy once and put on a shelf.

Every owner asks what a monthly fee is actually for, and most websites do not answer it. Here is the answer in plain words, before the three prices.

[ 01 ]

It is running somewhere

Your software sits on machines that are switched on all day and all night, and somebody pays for those machines. That is the first part of the bill and it never stops.

[ 02 ]

A copy is taken every night

So a bad Tuesday costs you an hour of work instead of a year of it. A copy nobody has ever tried to restore is not a copy, so we try them.

[ 03 ]

It gets patched

The parts your software is built from get security fixes every few weeks. If nobody puts them on, a perfectly good piece of software quietly turns into a way into your business.

[ 04 ]

Something will break

Not because it was built badly. Because everything breaks eventually. What the fee buys is a person whose job it is to fix it, and an obvious way to tell them.

What the fee is not

It is not a licence to keep using your own software. You own that outright and it keeps running whether you pay us or not. The fee buys somebody to tell when it goes wrong, and the certainty that it gets sorted.

The one part you will use every week

Every screen has a button on it. Whoever finds the problem presses it, circles what is wrong with a finger, and sends it. We get the exact page they were looking at without having to ask which one they meant. It is the thing clients notice, and it is the reason these three tiers exist.
CustomerOrderBalanceDays
Bev KowalchukOR-2026-03922,410.0074
Naomi OkpikOR-2026-04011,880.0061
Priya AnandOR-2026-04181,967.7556
Farah HaddadOR-2026-0440940.0033

Report a problem

Something is wrong here

Something is confusing

I want something added

It can waitIt is slowing us downWe are stuck

This total is counting the two cancelled orders from June. It should be $214,910 not $219,470.

Screenshot 2026-08-09 at 14.22.png

The page name is attached automatically — Reports · Balances owing, by age

Fixed overnightReported 9 Aug, 14:22 · put right by 08:10 the next morning

Every name, figure and date on these screens is invented. The layout is exactly what the software does.

Keep it running

$290

a month

or $2,900 for the year

It stays up, it stays backed up, and there is a button on every screen for when something is wrong.

  • Hosting and backups, both ours to worry about.
  • A button on every screen that says "this is broken, here" — they circle it and it files itself with the page name attached.
  • One small change a month.

Keep it moving

[ the one we recommend ]

$850

a month

or $8,500 for the year

The above, plus four hours of changes a month, and the small breakages get looked at overnight.

  • Everything in Keep it running.
  • Four hours of changes a month.
  • Anything reported through the button gets read overnight, and the safe ones are fixed before you open up.
  • A written note back to whoever reported it.

We run it with you

$2,400

a month

or $24,000 for the year

The above, plus twelve hours a month, first in the queue, and a named day each week that is yours.

  • Everything in Keep it moving.
  • Twelve hours a month.
  • Your work goes ahead of everything else in the queue.
  • A named day each week that belongs to you.

Pay for a year up front and you pay for ten months, not twelve. Stop any month with thirty days notice. Nothing switches off when you do, you simply stop getting changes and fixes from us. There is no fee to leave.

What the monthly fee covers

Keeping it online and patched, a copy of everything taken each night, being told when something breaks, and the agreed number of hours of changes each month. On the middle tier, anything reported through the button is read overnight and the safe ones are put right before you open up.

What it does not

Building something that was never in the written price. A second copy for another business you own. And the bills for the services that keep it online and take your card payments, which are ordinary monthly costs owed directly by you. Those accounts are in your name from the first day, on purpose, so nothing is in ours to hold.

Sessions

Learn to build it yourself. From $1,800.

How sessions work
The only rung where you do the building. One to one, on your own screen, working on your own business, until the thing you needed exists and you are the one who made it.

Four sessions

$1,800

Four hours, one to one, putting this to work in the job you already do.

You end with leave with one thing in your business running by itself.

Eight sessions

$3,600

Eight hours, one to one, building and shipping a tool of your own.

You end with leave with a working tool your staff use, and you know how to change it.

Stay current

$500 a month

An hour a month, so what you built keeps up with what has changed.

You hear about what has changed from a person, not from a newsletter.

What is included

  • Your own screen, your own business, your own problem
  • A recording of every session to go back to
  • Whatever gets built belongs to you

What is not

  • We do not build it for you. You do the typing
  • No fixed number of extra hours between sessions
  • If it turns out to be a proper build, we say so and price it

Built by an owner in a session

Before you say yes

The money questions people actually ask.

Written down here so you do not have to be the one to raise them on the call.

Why is this not cheaper?

Because there is one person doing the work and the price has to pay for the days it takes. Even a tool that already exists needs a week or two of one person's full attention to fit it to the way you work, and that attention has a cost. A price below that is a price we would have to earn back later by cutting a corner, or by not being here in a year. Both of those cost you more than the difference. If a cheaper rung on this page is genuinely the right one for you, that is what we will tell you on the call.

What happens if I stop paying the monthly fee?

Nothing switches off, and you keep the software. It is yours from the first day of the build, not handed over at the end, and it runs on accounts in your own business name. Stopping the fee stops the changes, the fixes and the nightly copies being ours to worry about. It does not stop the software. Leave any month with thirty days notice. There is no fee to go and nothing is held back.

What is not included in any of these prices?

Four things, every time. Anything that was not in the written note, which we price on its own and you decide before it is built. The ordinary monthly bills for the services that keep it online and take your card payments, which are owed directly by you, from accounts in your name. A second copy for another business you own. And a few hours of somebody who actually does the job today, because there is no version of this that works without them. Each ready-made tool also has its own cap and its own list of what it deliberately does not do, both written above.

How do I know the price will not move?

Because it is set after we have worked out what you need, not before. The written note says exactly what is being built and what it costs, and nothing starts until you have read it and said yes. If you ask for something that was not in it, we price that on its own and you decide first.

Can I pay in more than two lots?

On the two largest kinds of custom build, yes. Forty percent at the start, thirty at the halfway point, thirty when it goes live. It costs us nothing and it is easier for most owners to say yes to. On everything else it is half when we start and half when it goes live.

Why is this dearer than the quote I got from overseas?

Usually because that quote is for building it once, and this price is for having it work. The cheap version tends not to include the awkward half: the tax working out to the exact cent, the date that shows a day early after three in the afternoon, the photo that never left the phone, the deposit that got counted as income. Those are the parts that cost you money quietly, months later.

I do not really know what I need. Is that a problem?

It is the normal starting position and the easiest one to work with. You do not need a written brief. You need to be able to say what you do twice, what you keep in your head, and what you dread. Working out what should be built from that is the job. If you would rather have that in writing than on a call, that is exactly what the fit check is, and the fee comes back off the build.

Is there anything you will not take my money for?

Yes. We will not take a job we cannot finish. We will not sell you a monthly fee for something that should be a one-off. And we will not sell you a ready-made tool whose cap sits below what you actually need, because running out of room in month two is worse for you than the bigger quote you did not want to hear.

Not sure which rung you are on

Tell us the problem. We will tell you the price.

Every project starts with a free thirty-minute call and a written fixed price before any work begins. If a ready-made tool fits, we will say so, because it is faster and cheaper than a custom build. If you would rather have it in writing than on a call, that is the fit check, and the $390 comes back off the build.

We reply within two business days. hello@runsolostack.com