Custom web application · Switzerland
Custom web application development in Switzerland.
I design and develop custom web applications for Swiss businesses: internal tools, client portals, workflow systems, dashboards, eligibility and calculation engines, back offices and automation platforms. The goal is to replace the spreadsheet, the emails and the re-typing with software that carries the process — built fixed fee, from architecture to deployment, by one person.
Updated
In brief
- Where
- Zürich, Switzerland — remote across Switzerland and Europe
- For whom
- SMEs, independents, operations teams, founders — in English, French, German
- Format
- Fixed fee, price agreed upfront, 4-to-6-week sprint, full hand-off
- Stack
- Next.js · TypeScript · Postgres · integrations with your existing tools
- Data
- Hosted in Switzerland or Europe as required, Swiss FADP / GDPR compliant
- Built and run
- Atamatax · Horvera · Neucelle (in production) · SponsorsMetrics (private beta)
Most companies do not lack software; they lack the software that matches their process. The result is familiar: a shared spreadsheet, an inbox used as a queue, one person who “knows how it works”. A custom application replaces that fragile system with a tool where the process is explicit, the data lives in one place and errors are visible.
I am not an agency. I am a developer who has built several products with dense business logic — tax, air passenger law, pricing — and who applies the same rigour to an internal tool: the data model first, the rules as tested code, the interface in service of the process.
01 — Use cases
What a custom application replaces
The shapes the need takes — almost always a process that has outgrown its tools.
- Internal tool
- The shared spreadsheet that manages orders, cases or schedules, and breaks as soon as two people edit it. Becomes an application with roles, a history and validations.
- Client portal
- Your clients upload documents, follow progress, sign, pay or download — without going through your inbox. Each account sees only its own data.
- Workflow system
- A request moves through steps, owners, deadlines and decisions. The application carries the states, transitions, notifications and the log of what happened — the detail is on the business process automation page.
- Dashboard and data
- Data spread across several tools, consolidated and readable: indicators, filters, exports, alerts. Fed by your existing sources through API or import.
- Eligibility or calculation engine
- Business rules — eligibility, pricing, commissions, regulatory obligations — turned into a versioned engine that gives the answer and explains it. It is the core of Horvera and Atamatax.
- Calculator or simulator
- A public or internal tool that qualifies a request, estimates a cost or an outcome, and hands over a structured brief instead of a vague email. The SaaS cost calculator on this site is one.
- Back office
- The other side of a product: view an account, fix a record, refund, deactivate, understand an incident. Without a back office, support happens in the database.
- Automation
- What gets re-typed between two tools, sent by hand every week, checked one line at a time. Connectors, scheduled jobs, processing queues — with a log and retries. See automating a document-heavy process.
- Regulated workflows
- When a trace, a version of the rules and a justification are required: the rule is versioned code, every decision is logged with the version that produced it.
02 — Approach
How I build custom software
Scoping starts with the process, not the screens: who does what, in which order, with which data, and what happens when it goes wrong. Out of that comes a data model — the entities, their states, their owners — which I lay down in Postgres before any interface. It is the most structuring decision and the most expensive to change.
Business rules live in pure modules, tested against real scenarios you give me — not scattered across forms. A rule that changes is modified in one place, with a version. The interface is server-rendered with Next.js, works without JavaScript for forms, and stays simple: lists, details, actions, states.
Integration with what exists is part of the scope: importing your files, connecting to your accounting, your CRM or your APIs, transactional email, exports. Deployment is on Vercel with a database in Switzerland or Europe as required, and all of it belongs to you — repo, accounts, documentation.
03 — Alternatives
Custom, no-code or off-the-shelf
- Off-the-shelf software
- First choice when your process is standard — invoicing, CRM, HR. Custom software does not beat a good established SaaS on its own ground.
- No-code
- Fine to validate a process or for a temporary tool. Hits its limits on fine-grained permissions, complex rules, volume and hand-over to a technical team. Often the step before custom.
- Custom
- When the process is your advantage or your constraint: your own rules, sensitive data, specific integrations, or a tool your clients will use. The initial cost is higher; the three-year cost is often lower than subscriptions worked around with spreadsheets.
04 — Cost
What a custom web application costs
An internal tool or a client portal with authentication, one core flow and a back office starts at CHF 20’000, fixed fee — the minimum engagement, and this kind of project is built as an automation system (usually CHF 20’000 to 50’000). A multi-role workflow system, a rules engine or a dashboard fed by several sources sits closer to CHF 30’000 to 50’000. What moves the price: the complexity of the rules and the data model, the number of integrations, the expected level of finish. The price is fixed after scoping and does not move.
Five minutes. A complexity band, not a quote.
05 — Hire?
Should you hire a developer for an internal tool?
Rarely for one tool. An internal tool has a scope: once delivered, it needs occasional changes, not a full-time person. Hiring makes sense when tools multiply — several processes to equip every year, integrations to maintain, a team that depends on them.
In between, a tool delivered fixed fee with its code and documentation can be taken over later by the person you hire. The hire-or-outsource guide compares the costs with official sources.
Is this the right service?
This makes sense if
- An important process runs on a spreadsheet, emails or one indispensable person, and it is starting to cost.
- You have your own business rules — eligibility, pricing, obligations — that off-the-shelf tools do not model.
- Your clients or partners need access to their data without going through you.
- You want a tool your team can take over, with the code and the documentation.
It is not the right service if
- Off-the-shelf software already covers 90% of the need — adapting it costs less than building.
- The process is not yet stable — a no-code tool will let it evolve cheaply first.
- You are looking for a brochure site or a standard online shop.
- The project requires a permanent team or contracted 24/7 support.
Proof — products I built and run
My own products, with their actual state. No client project is published yet.
- atamatax.comIn production · payments liveAtamatax — US expat tax infrastructureA tax situation engine that maps facts to forms, with assumptions and confidence displayed — a regulatory eligibility engine in production.Next.jsTypeScriptPostgresStripeVercelRead the case study →
- horvera.comIn production · payments liveHorvera — flight compensation infrastructureA versioned rules engine that delivers a decision with its trace and sources, then carries a claim and escalation workflow.Next.jsTypeScriptPostgresStripePostHogRead the case study →
- sponsorsmetrics.comPrivate beta · design partners onboardingSponsorsMetrics — the pricing cockpit for YouTube talent agentsA dashboard fed by a third-party API (YouTube) in read-only OAuth, with a data pipeline and reports.Next.jsTypeScriptPostgresYouTube APIVercelRead the case study →
- neucelle.chIn production · subscriptions live · FR · DE · ITNeucelle — cash expenses and receipts for Swiss restaurantsA cash ledger for Swiss restaurants: the cash expense, the photographed receipt, VAT applied per line, the balance recomputed, the fiduciary export — a two-sided operational workflow.Next.jsTypeScriptPostgresStripeVercelRead the case study →
How it works
Four steps, fixed scope, price agreed upfront.
- 01
Diagnose
20 minutes, free. Business model, workflows, risks and product scope. If I’m the wrong person, I say so.
- 02
Architect and propose
Within 48h: data model, system boundaries, integrations, UX — and one fixed fee with dated milestones. No “starting at”.
- 03
Build
4 to 6 weeks of controlled iterations. A demo every Friday on a Vercel preview. You watch the system grow live — no black box.
- 04
Launch
Payments, analytics, deployment, operational workflows. You leave with the repo, the accounts, the pipeline — and 30 days of 24h replies.
- 05
Improve
Measured iteration on real usage: a fresh fixed-fee scope per increment, or nothing if your team takes over. No hidden dependency.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a custom web application cost in Switzerland?
From CHF 20’000 — the minimum engagement — for an internal tool or client portal with authentication, one core flow and a back office; between CHF 30’000 and 50’000 for a multi-role workflow system, a rules engine or a multi-source dashboard. Fixed fee, price set after scoping.
How long does development take?
A 4-to-6-week sprint after scoping, with a demo every Friday. Larger projects are split into successive fixed-fee scopes, each delivering a usable tool.
What makes a web application production-ready?
Accounts and permissions enforced on the server, data in one place with backups, errors handled and visible, a log of sensitive actions, emails that go out, a back office to fix things without touching the database, and documentation that lets someone else take over.
Can you integrate our existing tools?
Yes, when they expose an API or exports: accounting (Bexio, Abacus via export), CRM, invoicing tools, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, or CSV and Excel files. Integrations are part of the scoping and the price.
Where is the data hosted?
On a Postgres database in Europe by default, in Switzerland when the need requires it (Swiss providers or the Zürich region of a cloud host). The application runs on Vercel in a European region. The choice is documented in the proposal.
Do I need a maintenance contract?
No. Thirty days of support are included after delivery; afterwards, a one-off fixed fee for each evolution. The application is built not to depend on me.
Further reading
- How much does it cost to build a SaaS v1 in Switzerland?The real price of a first version, without the “it depends” — and why a fixed fee beats hourly billing.SaaS engineering6 minRead →
- Freelancer or web agency in Switzerland: what is the difference, and how to choose?An honest comparison on ten dimensions — cost, communication, capacity, redundancy, delivery risk — then the case where neither is the right answer.Building products9 minRead →
- When should a SaaS use AI? And when it absolutely should notI have built three decision engines in production — tax, air passenger law, scoring — and none of them uses a language model to decide. Here is the rule I apply, the cases where AI belongs, and why RAG is often the wrong answer.AI product engineering8 minRead →
Other services
- Process automationReplacing the reading, checking and re-keying of case files with a workflow system — versioned rules, human review, an audit log.
- Product rebuildRebuilding a product that has aged, or a prototype that became too fragile, around its domain model — data migrated, cut-over without downtime.
- Next.js developerProduction Next.js applications — App Router, Server Components, Postgres, Stripe — fast, indexable, maintainable.
A process that has outgrown its tools?
Describe it in a few lines: who does what, where it breaks, what it costs. A 20-minute scope call, free, proposal within 48h.
danilson.daveigaramos.pro@gmail.com · Reply within 24h, Mon–Fri.