A software development partner on a software development retainer: we run your engineering, you run your business.
Boffin Coders is a software development partner that offers a software development retainer for a product past its MVP, with users and a backlog, that needs owning, not staffing. We take the architecture, the roadmap, delivery and the 2am incident. You keep the business, the code and every account. It is the model our longest-standing clients are on: three months to start, then month to month, priced per developer from the rates published on this site.
- Five partnerships today, all multi-year
- Three months, then month to month
- Your repo from the first commit
Have an engineering lead who wants to run the developers? A dedicated team fits better, and the difference is set out below. An agency reselling our work? White label web development agency terms.
Most of our revenue is partnerships that have run for years.
- Five clients are on this model today, every one of them under NDA, which is why none of them is named on this site.
- All five are multi-year. The oldest predates the company: it is the engagement Boffin Coders was formed to serve.
We would rather show you fewer numbers that are true than a percentage we could not stand behind.
A software development retainer for your product, or a dedicated team?
Two ways to have a team. One sentence each, then the detail.
Your management, our developers.
You run the sprints, the priorities and the reviews. We supply engineers who join your team and report to your lead.
Our management, your product.
We own the engineering: architecture, roadmap, delivery, on-call, and the decisions nobody else on your side is placed to make. You own the business and the outcome.
On our rates, a software development retainer costs the same per person as a dedicated team. What changes is who carries the decisions. The two can also run side by side: a retainer for the product, and a developer your own lead runs on a separate piece of work. If you run a clinic, a trade or a shop and need a website that brings enquiries, neither is the right fit, and our local business line is.
Three situations we recognise on the first call
A product past its MVP
You have users and a backlog, and the people who built version one have moved on or were never a team. You need engineering that owns the product, not a developer who takes tickets. No product yet? A first version is built through our MVP development services.
A portfolio of systems nobody owns
Internal tools, an old platform, three integrations: each built by someone different, each needing patches, none with a name against it. You need one team responsible for all of it.
Burned before
A freelancer who vanished, an agency that delivered and left, a vendor who owned the repository. You need a team that stays, in your accounts, with nothing to hand over because nothing was ever theirs.
Six things that are ours to get right
Each one is something you can see, not a promise about attitude.
The architecture, and its consequences
We decide how the system is built and we live with it: we are still here when the choice made in month two costs something in month fourteen. That changes which choices get made.
The roadmap, with you
A quarterly plan agreed together, a monthly review of what shipped against it, and a written note when something we planned should not be built after all.
The team, including who joins it
We hire into the team as it grows, from our bench first. You interview anyone who will touch your product. Nobody is rotated in without your knowledge.
The running system
Deployments, monitoring, the 2am incident, the security patch on a Friday. Ownership includes the parts that are not features.
The paperwork
Everything in your accounts from the first commit: repository, hosting, domains, services. NDA before scoping, your DPA on request. Stopping is a decision, not a negotiation.
The honesty
A monthly report that says what did not work as well as what did. If the partnership is not the right shape for you any more, we say so before you have to.
What a month on retainer looks like
Quarterly plan, agreed together
What we will build and what we will not, in writing, before the quarter starts.
Two-week sprints, your tools
Jira or Linear, your Slack, your repository. Nothing lives on our side.
Review, QA, deploy
Code reviewed by a second engineer, tested, shipped. You see the deploy, not a demo.
Monthly report
What shipped, what slipped, what we now think should not be built, and what it cost.
Most partnerships run two to five people, each billed at the published rate for their stack and seniority. Three months to start, then month to month with a month’s notice either way. Everything in your accounts from the first commit. You get the exact figure, and who will be on the team, before you interview anyone.
Published, not quoted on the call
In USD. Hourly and monthly rates move with the stack and the seniority, from a junior on routine work to a senior on complex builds. Nothing is quoted outside them, and if the number does not work for you, you have saved yourself a meeting.
- A fixed-scope project starts at
- US$4,000
- Scoped once, with the lines shown.
- Short pieces of work
- US$18-38 an hour
- By seniority and the work.
- A developer by the month
- From US$3,000 a month
- Three months to start, then a month's notice either way.
- Agency sprint
- US$2,000 per two-week sprint
- Under your brand, invoiced after you see the work.
What people ask before they commit
Straight answers, including the one about proof.
A dedicated team is your management running our developers: you set the priorities, run the sprints and review the work. A retainer is our management running your engineering: we own the architecture, the roadmap, delivery and the running system, and you own the business. If you have an engineering lead who wants to run the developers, take the dedicated team. If you do not, this is the page.
Not answered here?
Work we’ve delivered, and what we’ve written
Talk to the people who would own it
Twenty minutes with the founder, not a sales call. Bring the thing that is keeping you up.