A staging environment from day one
Every change is seen and approved somewhere safe before it reaches your customers. You get a URL you can click in the first week and watch the thing being built.
Keelara StudioWe don't just build apps.
We don't just build apps.
We run them.
12 live products. Ours. Real customers, real subscriptions, real infrastructure we maintain every day. We'll build yours the same way — and you can click every one of ours to see exactly what that means.
- 7 daysto a staging URL you can click, or you don't pay
- Fixed pricepublished below — no quotes, no haggling
- You own ityour AWS account, your code, your domains
Everything below is live. Go click it.
Most people selling app development show you mockups and dead links. These are 12 products we built, launched, and still operate — with working sign-up, working payments, and customers using them right now. This is the same system your app would be built on.
Business
Career
TrackCVLive
CV builder with open tracking
Auth, subscriptions, email delivery, per-recipient tracking
Open TrackCV →CrushMyInterviewLive
AI interview practice
LLM pipeline, spoken practice, usage metering
Open CrushMyInterview →MyPassionJobLive
Career passion assessment
Scoring engine, nine languages, client-side privacy
Open MyPassionJob →EnoughMoneyPlanLive
Financial independence calculator
Modelling engine, no server-side data at all
Open EnoughMoneyPlan →AI & Technology
PromptCueLabLive
AI prompt library and refiner
OpenAI integration, subscriptions, device registry
Open PromptCueLab →CraftMyStackLive
Tech stack recommendations
Recommendation engine, localised content overlays
Open CraftMyStack →MatchMyToolLive
AI tool comparison
Comparison matrix, affiliate rails, nine languages
Open MatchMyTool →CraftMyFlowLive
Workflow automation discovery
Workflow analyser, LLM routing, billing
Open CraftMyFlow →What "built the same way" actually means
None of this is a premium add-on. It's what every product we own already runs on, so it's what yours starts with.
Payments that actually work
Subscriptions, monthly and annual pricing, upgrades, cancellations, refunds, failed-payment handling. The unglamorous part where most projects quietly break.
Accounts, security and privacy
Real authentication, session handling, device management, account deletion, and a privacy posture that survives an app store review or a customer asking hard questions.
Tested before it ships
Automated test suites and deployment checks that run on every release. Not because it is fashionable, but because it is the difference between a fix taking ten minutes and taking a week.
Found by search and by AI
Structured data, sitemaps, server-rendered content, and the markup that lets ChatGPT and Claude describe your product accurately. Increasingly this matters more than search rank.
Nine languages, if you want them
Full translation of interface and content, not a machine-translated veneer over English. Most of our products ship in nine languages on day one.
You own all of it
Your app lives in your AWS account, on your bill, under your domains, in a repository you control. At the end you get the code, the infrastructure templates, a deployment CLI you can run yourself, and a written runbook.
If you ever want to stop working with us, you leave with a running system and the instructions to operate it. That's deliberate. Software you can't take with you isn't really yours.
What it costs
Published, because a price you have to ask for is a price that changes depending on what you look like you can afford. These are fixed. If the work falls outside them, we'll tell you before you pay anything.
Blueprint Sprint
$3,500
One week
Before anyone commits to building anything. You end up with a document you own and a fixed quote you can hold us to — or take to someone else.
- Written specification and screen flow
- Architecture and data model
- Integration and third-party list
- Fixed-price quote for the build
- Credited in full against a build booked within 30 days
Launch
$16,000
Three weeks
A real, working product in front of real users.
- Web application, desktop and mobile
- Accounts and authentication
- Staging and production environments
- Your domain, your AWS account
- Automated test suite
- Three months of the Watch plan
Launch+
$29,000
Four weeks
For a product that has to earn money from day one.
- Everything in Launch
- Subscriptions and billing, monthly and annual
- Nine-language translation
- Search and AI discoverability
- Admin console and analytics
Native Companion
+$22,000
Four weeks, plus Apple’s review
An iPhone app to go with it, submitted to the App Store. We have been through that review process — it is its own discipline, and its timing belongs to Apple.
- Native SwiftUI iPhone app
- In-app purchases, if you sell
- Submission, plus two rounds of rejection response
- Shared account and data with the web app
- Built inside your Apple Developer account — you own the listing
After launch
Every build includes three months of the Watch plan. After that it's your call — keep us on, or take the runbook and run it yourself.
Watch
$500 / month
Monitoring and uptime alerts, security and dependency patches, infrastructure cost review, and a quarterly written report.
Grow
$1,600 / month
Everything in Watch, plus eight hours a month of changes and improvements, a priority queue, and a monthly call.
Partner
$3,800 / month
Everything in Grow, plus twenty hours a month, roadmap planning, and a direct line when something matters.
Prices are in US dollars, exclusive of any applicable taxes. Payment is split across milestones that trigger on verifiable events — a staging URL you can open, a payment that clears — never on calendar dates. Open any package above for its full schedule.
How an engagement runs
The same sequence every time, whichever package you pick. Two of these steps are gates — points where either of us can stop without owing the other anything.
- 01
Enquiry
You tell us what you want to build, roughly. No form-filling ritual — an email is fine.
- 02
Fit call, 30 minutes, free
We work out whether this is something we should build. You leave the call knowing either that we are a fit or exactly why we are not.
- Gate
Gate 1 — is this a real engagement?
Four things have to be true: you have named a budget, the person who decides is in the room, there is a real deadline or a real cost of doing nothing, and the work sits inside what we publish. If any one of them is missing we say so on the call and point you somewhere better. A clean no is worth more to both of us than a reluctant yes.
PaperworkIf yes, the Master Services Agreement and the Blueprint Statement of Work go out the same day.
- 04
Blueprint Sprint — one week
We establish what should be built, how, and what it costs. You get a written specification and a fixed quote.
PaperworkMSA and SOW-Blueprint signed before we start. NDA on request.
Money$3,500, paid up front, credited in full against a build booked within 30 days.
- Gate
Gate 2 — you decide, with the numbers in front of you
Three legitimate outcomes: you proceed to a build, you take the blueprint to another developer, or you ask for changes first. You paid for that document and you own it — around half of blueprints will end here, and that is the model working, not failing.
PaperworkTo proceed: the Build SOW, with acceptance criteria annexed.
- 06
Build — two to four weeks
Work starts once the SOW is countersigned and the deposit has cleared. Never before, however reasonable "just get started" sounds. Your staging URL is live by day 7 and you watch the thing being built from there on.
PaperworkWeekly status note every Friday. Change Requests for anything outside the SOW.
MoneyMilestone payments released on events you can verify. Invoices net 7.
- 07
Acceptance and launch
You test against the criteria in the SOW, we fix what misses them, and it goes live on your domain, in your AWS account.
PaperworkAcceptance Certificate at each milestone. Handover Runbook and a signed Credentials Transfer Record at launch.
- 08
The first three months
The Watch plan is included and starts automatically. Monitoring, patches, and a report. At month three you continue, upgrade, or take the runbook and run it yourself — all three are fine, and we will tell you honestly which one we think you need.
MoneyCare Plans from $500/month after the included period. Thirty days notice either way.
The rules we hold ourselves to while it's running
Staging by day 7, in writing
If your staging URL is not live within seven days of the deposit clearing, you can walk away and we refund the deposit in full. It is a clause in the contract, not a line in a brochure.
A status note every Friday
What shipped, what is next, what is waiting on you. Sent without you having to ask for it, so you never have to wonder how it is going.
Feedback within three business days
Our side of the deal is a fixed price. Yours is timely decisions. If a review sits for two weeks the timeline moves by two weeks, and the milestone still falls due when the work is ready to review.
Changes are written down first
Anything outside the blueprint gets priced and agreed before we build it. Most requests stop right there, which is the clause doing its job — and if the same one comes up three times, it becomes part of the next package.
Silence counts as acceptance after five days
A milestone is accepted when you sign, or after five business days with no written rejection. A rejection has to point at a specific acceptance criterion — that protects you as much as us.
You can always leave
The code, the infrastructure templates, the deployment CLI and the runbook are yours at handover whether or not you keep us on. Software you cannot take with you is not really yours.
Already paid someone?
Rescue Audit
$750 · one week
You commissioned an app. Maybe it half works, maybe the developer stopped replying, maybe you're not sure what you actually own. We'll look at it properly and tell you the truth.
- What actually exists, versus what you were told
- Security, privacy and data risks
- What's missing — tests, documentation, backups, staging
- What it would cost to stabilise
- A straight recommendation: salvage or rebuild, with a number
The recommendation is independent. Sometimes the answer is "this is fine, it needs $2,000 of cleanup" — and if that's the answer, that's what the report says. Credited against a rebuild booked within 30 days.
Questions people ask before hiring us
Straight answers, the same ones we give on the fit call. If yours isn't here, ask us directly.
How much does custom app development cost at Keelara Studio?
Prices are fixed and published. A Blueprint Sprint is $3,500 for one week and gives you a written specification, an architecture and a fixed build quote. Launch, a working web application with accounts, staging and production in your own AWS account, is $16,000 over three weeks. Launch+ adds subscriptions and billing, nine-language translation and search/AI discoverability for $29,000 over four weeks. A Native Companion iPhone app is an additional $22,000. A Rescue Audit of an app someone else built is $750. Prices are in US dollars, exclusive of taxes, and paid in milestones that trigger on verifiable events, never calendar dates.
How long does it take to build an app?
A Blueprint Sprint takes one week. A Launch build takes three weeks and a Launch+ build four, with a working staging URL you can open within seven days of kickoff or you do not pay. An iPhone app adds four weeks plus Apple review time. Every build includes three months of monitoring and patching after launch.
Who owns the code, the infrastructure and the domains?
You do, from day one. Your app is built in your AWS account, on your bill, under your domains, in a repository you control. At handover you receive the code, the infrastructure templates, a deployment tool you can run yourself and a written runbook. If you stop working with us, you leave with a running system and the instructions to operate it.
What kinds of apps does Keelara build?
Web applications and SaaS products for founders and small businesses, with optional native iPhone companions. Typical builds include user accounts, subscription billing, multi-language support, AI features, dashboards, document and data tools, and the search and AI-assistant discoverability that lets customers find the product. We build on the same AWS serverless stack that runs our own 12 live products.
How is Keelara Studio different from an agency or a freelancer marketplace?
We are a product company first. The team that builds your app also owns and operates 12 live products with real customers, real subscriptions and real infrastructure, so estimates and trade-offs come from experience, not guesswork. There are no salespeople or account managers, prices are published rather than quoted, and there is a real US company and contract behind the work. If a cheaper route fits your situation better, we will tell you.
What happens after I send an enquiry?
We reply personally within one business day and book a free 30-minute fit call. On the call we work out whether this is something we should build. If it is, the next step is a Blueprint Sprint; if it is not, we say so and point you somewhere better. Nothing is paid until a statement of work is signed.
Can Keelara take over or fix an app another developer built?
Yes. A Rescue Audit ($750, one week) is an independent review of what actually exists versus what you were told, covering security, privacy and data risks, missing tests, documentation and backups, and what it would cost to stabilise. You get a straight recommendation to salvage or rebuild, with a number. The fee is credited against a rebuild booked within 30 days.
Who we are
Keelara is a software company that builds and runs its own products. Keelara Studio is the same team, doing the same work, for other people.
That order matters. Most development shops build software for clients and have never had to live with the result — never handled a failed payment at midnight, never watched a launch land flat, never paid the infrastructure bill themselves. We run 12 products where all of that is our problem, every day.
So when we say something will take three weeks, or that a feature isn't worth building, we're not guessing. We've made the same call on our own products with our own money on the line, and we've been wrong often enough to know the difference.
You work directly with the people building your product. No salespeople, no account managers, no handing the project to someone you never meet. There's a real company here with a real contract behind it, so if something goes wrong you have somewhere to go — which is more than most of the alternatives can offer.
Where the experience comes from
Keelara is new. The people in it are not. Three strands of work sit behind how we build, and each one shows up in what you get.
Enterprise architecture
Years designing and reviewing systems for banks, insurers, government agencies, telecoms and airlines — the places where an outage is a regulatory event and every integration has to be defended in writing. Later, running technical due diligence across a portfolio of software companies for one of the large cloud providers, and advising their CTOs and founders on how their platforms were built.
Sowe design for the failure cases first, and we can explain any decision in your system to someone who has to sign off on it.
Software engineering, hands on
Before any of that: real-time command and control software for satellite systems, leading a development team on a global telemetry platform, commercial desktop applications shipped to retail, and test automation built for a compiler toolchain. Then years spent inside the discipline of how software gets built — change and release management, architecture review, and development process for organisations doing it at scale.
Sothe code, the tests and the deployment pipeline are the same craft to us, and none of it gets handed to someone junior.
Selling our own software
Shareware first, sold directly to the people who used it. Then iPhone applications, through Apple’s review process and out the other side. Now 12 web products of our own, with real customers, real subscriptions and a real infrastructure bill arriving every month.
Sowe have made the commercial mistakes already — on our own products, with our own money — which is why we will tell you when something is not worth building.
- Company
- Keelara LLC, United States
- Products built and operated
- 12, all live
- How we work
- Fixed price, published rates
- Contact
- contact@keelara.com
Start a project
Tell us what you're trying to build and roughly what it's worth to you. We'll reply personally — usually within a day — and if we're not the right fit for it, we'll say so.
- 1. A short call, no charge, to work out whether this is a fit
- 2. A Blueprint Sprint, so you know exactly what you're buying
- 3. The build, fixed price, staging URL in the first week