Custom software and apps
Beyond brochure sites.
Customer portals, internal tools, APIs, and integrations for Tampa Bay small businesses. Built by a production web app developer with five plus years shipping enterprise-grade software.
What this means
What “custom” actually covers.
Custom is what we ship when you need more than a marketing site. The list below is not aspirational; it is what we have actually shipped, what is running in production right now, or what is in our wheelhouse for the next build.
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Customer portals
Login, role-based dashboards, billing, document storage, in-app messaging.
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Internal dashboards and admin tools
Your team's day-to-day software, built for the way you actually work.
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Custom integrations
Stripe, Resend, third-party APIs, webhooks, Zapier-free pipelines.
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Backend systems
Typed APIs, authentication, sessions, jobs, queues, file uploads.
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Database design
PostgreSQL, Drizzle ORM, migrations, seeds, sensible indexes.
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Custom Shopify themes
When off-the-shelf is the wrong tool but a full rebuild is overkill.
Real builds, not mock-ups
Three live products. Technical depth surfaced.
Each one is a different shape; the engineering discipline is the same. Click through to the case study for the full brief, design system, and Lighthouse receipts.
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Live build
CNR Diesel
Typed Astro API routes for quote intake, server-side validation, React Email dispatch tickets, programmatic city pages, JSON-LD across LocalBusiness, AutoRepair, Service, and FAQPage.
See the build -
Live build
Fair To Middlin' Goods
Dual retail and wholesale storefront, SKU build system, typed wholesale order API, Sveltia CMS with GitHub OAuth, direct-to-Spaces media uploads via SigV4.
See the build -
Live build
Cloak Chat
From-scratch privacy-first chat app, co-built end to end. Auth, real-time messaging, infrastructure. Different scale, same hands.
See the build
Proof by product
We use the same tech for our own client portal.
tarponwebco.com is the marketing site you are reading. portal.tarponwebco.com is the actual product we use to run the business. Built on Next.js 16, PostgreSQL, and Drizzle ORM. Auth, billing, project state, change requests, message threading, integrations.
The same engineering hands that ship that ship your custom build. If we would not run our own business on the stack, we would not put yours on it either.
Built by a production web app developer
Who is actually building this.
Jimmy is a working web developer with five plus years shipping production web apps: enterprise platforms, customer portals, and a privacy-first chat product he co-built from scratch.
Before web, three years at Custom Ink as a production artist (where pixel-perfect work on six-figure print runs is the whole job) and a year at Boomer Tattoo in Las Vegas doing storefront art and brand collateral. Tarpon Web Co. is where that engineering and design background lands for Tampa Bay small businesses.
Nikki runs client experience: the first call, the questions nobody thinks to ask, the follow-up a week after launch. Ten plus years in customer service. The split is the whole reason this team works for custom builds: design and engineering at one desk, relationship management at the other.
We are not a 50-person agency. You get the senior engineer who would be the lead at one, and the person whose only job is making sure the work feels good. No junior handoffs. No account managers. More on the team .
Project shapes and starting ranges
Honest numbers up front.
Public ranges, not fake fixed prices. Custom work is genuinely scope dependent. After a few questions we send a detailed proposal and a fixed-price quote in 3 business days.
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Customer portal
$5k to $15k
Login, role-based dashboards, billing, document storage.
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Internal dashboard or admin tool
$4k to $12k
Your team's day-to-day software, built for the way you actually work.
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Multi-location site with location pages
$4k to $10k
Distinct content per location, heavy local SEO, programmatic city pages.
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Custom Shopify theme work
$400 to $3k
When off-the-shelf is the wrong tool but a full rebuild is overkill.
How we work on Custom
From idea to live in 2 to 8 weeks.
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01
Send what you have.
One paragraph or one screenshot is enough. We reply by email with the questions we'd need answered, then send a detailed proposal: scope, stack, timeline, and a fixed-price quote in 3 business days. Free.
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02
Scoped flat-fee quote.
Exact scope, exact price, exact timeline. You sign or you do not. No retainer.
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03
Build.
50% upfront, weekly progress on a private staging URL. You see it grow in real time.
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04
Launch and ownership.
Full handover. Exportable code. You own everything. We can keep hosting it or hand off the keys.
If we discover during scoping that what you actually need is a $1,800 Starter site instead, we will say so. We do not sell upgrades you do not need.
What is under the hood
Tech we are comfortable with.
Most clients do not care; published here for the 10 percent who do. If your team has an opinion about the stack, we are happy to discuss; we have no religious attachment to any one tool.
- Frameworks
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- Astro
- React
- Next.js
- Angular
- Electron
- Node.js
- Languages
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- TypeScript
- Python
- Styling
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- Tailwind CSS
- Databases
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- PostgreSQL
- Drizzle ORM
- Auth
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- Session-based
- OAuth (GitHub, Google)
- Magic links
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- Resend
- React Email
- Payments
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- Stripe Checkout
- Customer Portal
- Webhooks
- Connect basics
- Hosting
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- Vercel
- Cloudflare (CDN, R2, DNS)
- DigitalOcean Spaces
- CMS
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- Sveltia (GitHub-backed)
- Astro Content Collections
- Sanity
- Shopify
- Design
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- Adobe Photoshop
- Adobe Illustrator
- Figma
Custom software questions
Five honest answers.
Do you do enterprise-level work, or just small-business websites?
Both. Jimmy ships production web apps: enterprise platforms, customer portals, APIs, and database-backed tools. Five plus years of real software, including a privacy-first chat product co-built from scratch. Sized for Tampa Bay small business budgets, not agency overhead.
What's the difference between a Premium build and a Custom one?
Premium is a marketing site at the top of our standard ladder: custom design, custom integrations, advanced SEO, $6,500 flat. Custom is when you need real software: a customer portal, a database-backed dashboard, a typed API, an internal tool. Custom is scoped per project and starts the same way as our marketing-site tiers: send what you have, we reply with a few questions, then send a detailed proposal and a fixed-price quote in 3 business days.
How do you handle scope creep on a custom build?
After a few questions, we send a scoping doc and a fixed-price quote in 3 business days. The quote lists every deliverable. Mid-build changes get a separate written change order with a delta price. No "while you are at it" creep. No retainers. Same flat-fee discipline as our marketing-site tiers.
Can you build a SaaS product or MVP from scratch?
Small ones, yes. Cloak Chat is an example: from-scratch privacy-first chat app, co-built end to end. For a Tampa Bay founder with a clear scope (auth, database, dashboard, billing) we can ship an MVP in 4 to 8 weeks. For 12-month roadmaps with a team, hire a 5-person studio. We will say so.
What does ongoing maintenance look like for a custom app?
Hosting on Vercel or Cloudflare, the same stack we use for our own portal. Monthly hosting is scoped with the project and depends on what the app actually needs: managed PostgreSQL, object storage, transactional email, third-party APIs, and backend load all factor in. Small apps start around $99; heavier ones are quoted individually. Bug fixes and small adjustments are included; new features are quoted as small Custom add-ons. No mandatory retainer, cancel anytime.
Got something off-menu? Tell us what you are trying to build.
Send what you have, even if it is one paragraph in an email. We will reply with a few questions, then send a detailed proposal and a fixed-price quote in 3 business days.