Custom software
Custom software development, by a product team.
TechFabric builds custom software as product development: web applications, mobile apps, multi-tenant platforms and the data layer underneath them, with engineering, product and design in one team. The people who scope the work build it and stay through go-live. 115+ people, averaging fifteen years each.
Most of what goes wrong in a software project happens before anyone writes code, in the gap between the person who understood the problem and the team handed a specification. We close that gap by not creating it. Athlinks stitched 400M+ athlete records together this way, and SWBC doubled the orders its platform processes.
- 2017
- FoundedBy engineers
- 115+
- PeopleEngineering, product, design
- 80
- Databricks-certifiedAn award-winning engineering team
- 15 yrs
- Average experiencePer engineer
What we build
Web application development
The demo version of an application and the version somebody uses eight hours a day are different products. The second one needs an admin surface, a way to see why a record looks wrong, and a release process that does not require a Thursday night.
Talk about the applicationMobile app development
Shipping version one of a mobile app is a solved problem. Keeping it working through two OS releases, a certificate expiry, a store policy change and a team handover is not, and it is where the cost actually lands.
Talk about the appThe build is fine. The thing it was for got lost.
Software projects rarely fail on the code. They fail in the distance between the person who understood the problem and the person typing, and it shows up in three ways somebody will recognise.
It matches the document and not the job
Everything in the specification is there, and the people who have to use it every day still open a spreadsheet instead. Nobody lied. The document described a process that had already changed by the time it was signed.
Every question costs a week
The team cannot answer whether something is possible without asking somebody who is in another meeting. Decisions queue, the estimate stops meaning anything, and the status report becomes a work of fiction nobody enjoys writing.
It works until somebody else uses it
The demo runs on one account with clean data. Then a second customer arrives, or a real month of records does, and the parts nobody load-tested turn out to be the parts everything else waits on.
One cause underneath all three. Product, design and engineering were three handoffs instead of one team, so the understanding had to survive being written down, and it never entirely does.
The shift
Three ways to buy software, and what each one buys
Same budget, three shapes. What differs is who is holding the problem when something turns out to be wrong.
Bodies against a specification
Cheap per hour, and expensive per outcome
An agency and a handover
Polished, and it stops when they leave
A product team that stays
Slower to start, and it is still standing in year two
What you actually get
Senior people, in your repository, on your board. The list below is what a team looks like rather than what a contract lists.
Product and design inside the team
Not a phase that finishes before engineering starts. The person who understands the problem is in the same standup as the person building it, which is the only reliable way a late discovery becomes a small change.
Engineers who have run what they built
Fifteen years of production experience on average, which mostly shows up as things not happening. Migrations that are reversible, schemas that survive their second year, and an on-call rotation nobody dreads.
A thin slice in production early
One real path, end to end, in front of real users, before the rest is built around it. Everything expensive to be wrong about is cheapest to be wrong about here.
The data layer treated as a first-class problem
Most of what a product does eventually is reporting, and most of what makes reporting painful was decided in the schema. We build the analytical path alongside the application rather than bolting it on when somebody asks for a dashboard.
Tests that mean something and a pipeline that runs them
Enough coverage that a change is safe to make quickly, which is a different target from a coverage percentage. The pipeline is yours and it keeps working after we go.
A handover written while the work happens
Decisions recorded where the code is, so the reason for a choice survives the person who made it. A team that cannot extend what it inherited did not get software, it got a dependency.
Built and running
Systems we can name
BZZR
A sports-only platform where live games, creator content and podcasts sit side by side under team and talent control. A content pipeline indexes thousands of hours of partner video into a sports graph, and Databricks carries the analytics that tell a club who watched. Texas Rangers games stream on it.
Athlinks
Athlinks needed a pipeline to stitch together more than 400 million athlete records across disparate sources. TechFabric built a multi-tiered serverless architecture on Temporal, giving the team granular control, automated retries, and real-time visibility across a complex pipeline.
SWBC
TechFabric rebuilt SWBC's LOSExpress platform for credit unions: the user experience, the design system, and the front-end architecture.
iLending
TechFabric automated lead and loan officer assignment, rate sheet processing, and stipulation document management, and improved CRM integration and API performance. Manual errors dropped and agent onboarding got faster.
Product software for companies that needed more than a dashboard.
FAQ
Custom software development: common questions
What is custom software development?
Building software for one organisation's problem rather than configuring something built for a market. It is worth doing where the process is genuinely yours and a packaged product would mean changing how you work to suit it, and it is usually not worth doing where a well-supported product already fits. We will tell you which one you are looking at.
Is custom software development the same as product development?
For us, yes, and the second name is the more accurate one. A custom build that gets treated as a specification to implement produces software nobody wanted; the same work run as product development has engineering, product and design deciding together and adjusting as they learn.
That is the service line at /services/platform, and this page is the front door to it.
What have you built?
A sports platform for BZZR where live games, creator content and podcasts sit under team and talent control. A pipeline for Athlinks stitching more than 400 million athlete records together across disparate sources. A rebuilt LOSExpress for SWBC that doubled the orders it processes. All three have case studies at /case-studies.
How much does custom software cost?
It depends on scope, and any number offered before a scope exists is a sales tactic. What we can commit to is that scoping is a short paid piece of work with a written output, so the estimate that follows is against something specific rather than a wish. Small first engagements are normal and often how a longer one starts.
Do you work with our existing team?
Usually, yes, and it is the shape we do best. Our engineers work in your repository, in your process, alongside your people. Where you have no engineering team yet we will bring the whole one, product and design included.
Who owns the code?
You do, all of it. Where one of our open-source accelerators is involved we say so explicitly and in writing, including what it means for you to keep running it after we leave. They are Apache-2.0 and deployed into your own accounts, so there is nothing to be locked into.
What technologies do you build on?
TypeScript and .NET for most application work, Python where the data and model work lives, on Azure, AWS, Google Cloud and Cloudflare. Databricks where the product belongs next to the lakehouse, and Temporal under operations that must not half-complete. The stack follows the problem rather than a house preference.
Do you take small projects?
Yes. A design system, a component library, one integration or a single service is a legitimate piece of work and often how a longer engagement starts.
What we do best is a product where design, product and engineering sit in one team, so that is what we will suggest when it fits. It is not a condition of working with us.
Where we are
TechFabric is a custom software development company in the Phoenix metropolitan area, founded in Gilbert, Arizona in 2017. We build for companies nationally, and for teams across Phoenix, Scottsdale, Tempe, Mesa and Chandler we can be in the room.
Office
1530 E Williams Field Rd, Ste 201Gilbert, AZ 85295
Phone
+1 (480) 681-6806Serving
Phoenix, Scottsdale, Tempe, Mesa, Chandler