32 Questions
Working with us: FAQ
Contracts, rates, communication, ownership, and what happens when it ends.
The questions you would otherwise have to ask on a call, answered in writing so you can compare us against anyone else on the same terms.
Quick Answer
Updated August 22, 2026
How does working with SoftwareCrafting actually work?
A senior engineer reads your brief and replies within one working day, and qualified briefs get a written proposal within 24 hours. Engagements are monthly rolling with two weeks notice — no annual lock-in — at $32–$45 per hour for a senior engineer or $12,000–$20,000 per month for a three-to-four person pod. IP assignment is signed before work starts and code goes into your repository from the first commit. We commit contractually to at least four hours of daily overlap with your working hours, work inside your tools and your process, and ship something demonstrable every sprint. If the engineer is not a good fit in the first two weeks, we replace them at our cost.
Contract
Monthly rolling, 2 weeks notice
Proposal
Within 24 hours
Overlap
4+ hours, contractual
Best for
- Buyers comparing our terms against another agency
- Teams that want the commercial details before a call
- Anyone who has been burned by vague contract terms before
Not best for
- Getting a price for your specific project — that needs your scope
- Legal or tax advice on cross-border contracting
- Technical questions about your existing codebase
6 questions
Getting started
What happens between your first message and work beginning.
What happens after I send a brief?
A senior engineer — not a salesperson — reads it and replies within one working day, usually with questions rather than a quote. For qualified briefs we send a written proposal within 24 hours of having enough detail to be honest about scope. If the project is not a fit for us, we say so at that point rather than quoting anyway.
Do I need a full specification before contacting you?
No, but a written feature list helps a great deal. It makes our estimate meaningful and it makes every other quote you collect comparable. If you do not have one, a short paid discovery is usually the cheapest way to get one.
Can I speak to the engineer who would do the work?
Yes, and we would rather you did. We put the engineer who would build your project on a call before anything is signed. If an agency will not do this — including us — treat it as a warning sign.
How quickly can you start?
Kick-off readiness within 48 hours once scope, access, and commercials are agreed. Placing a dedicated engineer takes 5 to 15 working days depending on the role; AI and DevOps seats take longest because we hold a narrower bar on production experience.
Do you charge for the proposal or the first call?
No. Calls, scoping conversations, and the written proposal are free. Discovery — actual design and architecture work that produces something you own — is paid, and we say clearly where that line falls before crossing it.
Will you tell me if I should not build this?
Yes. The most common advice we give is to buy an existing product rather than build one, or to cut two thirds of an MVP scope. We would rather lose the project than take money for something we think is a mistake.
8 questions
Rates, contracts, and payment
What it costs and what you are committing to.
What do you charge?
Mid-level engineers are $22–$32 per hour and seniors $32–$45, which is roughly ₹2.2–3.2 lakh and ₹3.5–5 lakh per month on a dedicated seat. A three-to-four person delivery pod including QA and delivery ownership is $12,000–$20,000 per month. AI and DevOps roles price above that band; QA below it.
Do you work fixed price or time and materials?
Both. Fixed price where the scope is genuinely settled — migrations, audits, integrations, defined builds — with a 15–30% risk premium. Time and materials where the product is still being discovered. If we read a brief and think a fixed price would just relocate the argument to change requests, we will say so even though the fixed price is the larger invoice.
What is the minimum engagement?
One month, on a monthly rolling contract with two weeks notice. We do not do annual lock-ins. For fixed-scope projects the commitment is the project rather than a period.
What are your payment terms?
Monthly in advance for dedicated seats and pods. For fixed-scope projects, milestone-based with a deposit up front. We invoice in USD, GBP, EUR, or INR depending on where you are.
What is excluded from your quotes?
Cloud hosting and infrastructure after launch, third-party service subscriptions billed to your accounts, app store developer fees, paid marketing and content production, formal penetration testing and certification audits, and ongoing maintenance beyond the two-week stabilisation window. We list these explicitly on every proposal.
How do you handle scope changes?
On a dedicated engagement, by reprioritising the next sprint — it costs a conversation, not a contract amendment. On fixed-scope work, by a written change request with a re-quote and a schedule impact, because that is how the contract shape works.
What if the engineer is not a good fit?
Tell us within the first two weeks and we replace them at our cost, or you end the engagement and pay only for the days worked. We would rather lose a month of revenue than have you carry someone who is not landing.
Can we start small before committing?
Yes, and we recommend it. Start with one engineer or a small fixed-scope project, see whether the working relationship holds, then expand. Anyone pushing you to commit to a large team before you have worked together is optimising for their revenue.
7 questions
Process and communication
What a normal week looks like once work is underway.
What timezone do you work in, and how much overlap will we get?
We are in India (IST, UTC+5:30) and commit contractually to at least four hours of daily overlap with your working hours. That is full overlap for UAE, Singapore, and Australia, mornings for the UK and EU, and early afternoon onward for US Eastern. More overlap is available and priced accordingly, because it means working outside normal Indian hours.
How do we communicate day to day?
Your tools, not ours. We join your Slack, your ticket tracker, and your standups. If you do not have those, we will set up a shared channel and a weekly written report covering what shipped, what slipped, and why.
How often will we see working software?
Every sprint, which is one or two weeks depending on the project. Not a status update — something running that you can click. If a sprint produces nothing demonstrable, that is a problem we raise rather than one we hide behind a report.
Who do I contact when something slips?
On a pod engagement, the named delivery owner, who can actually change the plan rather than only report on it. On a single-seat engagement, the engineer directly, plus one of the founders as escalation.
Do you work with our existing team and designers?
Yes, and most of our dedicated engagements are exactly that. Our engineers join your process, your repository, and your review culture. We are not trying to take over your product management.
What do you need from us?
Someone empowered to make product decisions, available inside the overlap window. That is the single biggest determinant of whether a remote engagement works. Everything else — access, environments, designs — we can help you organise.
What happens during holidays and leave?
We give notice of planned leave and provide cover from within the team, at no extra cost to you. That cover is one of the concrete things an agency rate buys that a freelance rate does not.
6 questions
Code, quality, and ownership
What you get, who owns it, and how we know it works.
Who owns the code?
You do, completely. IP assignment is signed before any technical work begins, and everything is committed to your repository under your organisation from the first commit — not handed over at the end. We do not hold code in our own accounts.
Is testing included in the rate?
Yes. Automated tests are written alongside the code, not quoted as an optional extra. For backend work we weight integration tests against a real database container over unit tests with mocks, because that is where the bugs that matter live.
Who reviews the code?
A second engineer on our side, before anything merges. On engagements where your team wants to review as well, we work inside your review process. Unreviewed code from a single contractor is the most common root cause of the rescue projects we get called into.
What documentation do we get?
A README that lets a new engineer run the project, architecture notes explaining the decisions that are not obvious from the code, deployment and environment documentation, and API documentation generated from the code where the framework supports it so it cannot silently drift.
What technologies do you work in?
TypeScript across the stack, Next.js and React on the web, React Native and Flutter on mobile, Node.js and Python on the backend, PostgreSQL and MongoDB for data, AWS for infrastructure, and the Claude and Gemini APIs for AI. We do not staff Angular, Vue, .NET, Java, or PHP, and we will tell you that immediately rather than putting someone on a framework they learned last month.
Can you take over an existing codebase?
Yes — roughly half our work is inherited code. We start with a short audit covering dependency health, whether it builds reproducibly, test coverage, and the data model, then give you a written view before committing to a delivery plan.
5 questions
After launch
What happens when the build is finished.
What happens when a project ends?
A defined handover: repository access confirmed, credentials transferred, documentation complete, a walkthrough with whoever takes over, and a written state-of-play including known issues. Handover scope is written into the contract rather than promised verbally.
Do you offer maintenance?
Yes, as a monthly retainer covering dependency and security updates, OS and browser compatibility, bug fixes, store submissions for maintenance releases, and monitoring. Typically 10–15% of build cost per year for web and 15–20% for mobile.
What if we want to move to another team?
We hand over cleanly and help the incoming team get oriented. The repository is already yours, the documentation already exists, and the notice period is two weeks. We would rather end well and be recommended than make leaving expensive.
Do you provide support outside business hours?
On maintenance retainers with an agreed SLA, yes, and it is priced accordingly. Without an SLA we respond during Indian business hours with overlap into yours. We will not promise 24/7 coverage from a seven-person team, because it would not be true.
What happens if our app breaks after you leave?
If it is a defect in work we delivered, we fix it — that does not stop at the end of an engagement. If it is a change in the environment, an OS release, or new work, that is a fresh engagement and we will say which it is honestly.
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Reference
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