No account manager relaying messages.
Most agencies put a layer between you and the people building your platform. There are good reasons for it at scale, and one bad consequence: your requirement gets summarised, the technical answer gets summarised on the way back, and both lose something in the process.
Working with us directly, the person who scopes your project is the person who writes the code. Questions get answered by somebody who has read your codebase rather than a status report about it. Most of our work reaches clients through agencies, and this is the other half.
- One team from first call to launch
- Scope and price agreed in writing
- Working software from week one
- Documentation written for your team
- Optional retainer, never required
- One decision maker on your side
- Access to whoever knows the content
- Honest answers about the deadline
- A budget range, even a rough one
Three kinds of organisation, and one it does not suit.
We are a small senior team rather than a full-service agency. That is right for some situations and wrong for others.
You have a platform and a problem
An ageing Drupal site, a WordPress build nobody wants to touch, a store whose numbers do not add up. The requirement is technical and you want to talk to technical people about it.
- Replatforms and version migrations
- Rescue of stalled or inherited builds
- Performance and security remediation
You have an internal team, but not this skill
Developers in-house who are good at what they do, and a project that needs depth in Drupal, Shopify B2B or AI integration that you would not hire for permanently.
- We take tickets from your board
- Pull requests into your review process
- Knowledge transfer as part of the work
You are building something new
A platform, a portal or an application that does not exist yet, and you would rather have a small experienced team than a large inexperienced one.
- Architecture before code
- Working software from week one
- Fixed scope agreed before commitment
This is probably not for you if
You need brand strategy, campaign creative, media buying or a large multidisciplinary team. We would rather say so early than be the wrong supplier for six months.
- We do engineering, not marketing
- No creative or brand strategy service
- No large-team programme delivery
From first email to a platform you own.
A conversation with an engineer
Not a discovery call with a salesperson. You describe the problem and get technical questions back, because the shape of the answer usually becomes clear in that first conversation.
Free technical assessment
We read what exists, then write up the real scope, the risks, what we would build differently and why, and a fixed price. It costs nothing and you keep it whether or not you continue.
Discovery and architecture
Data model, integration points and hosting agreed before code is written, because those three decisions constrain everything after them and are expensive to reverse later.
Build in two-week sprints
A demo of working software at the end of every sprint, on a staging environment you can click through. You see progress early enough that changing direction is still cheap.
Launch and handover
Zero-downtime deployment, the pipeline and credentials handed over, documentation aimed at whoever comes next, and two weeks of close monitoring afterwards.
Four ways to buy the same engineering.
The right one depends on how well defined the work is and how long you need it for. We will say which we think fits before quoting.
Fixed-scope project
A defined build with a written scope, a fixed price and an agreed date. Best when the requirement is clear enough to specify, which after a proper audit it usually is.
Dedicated capacity
A set number of engineer days reserved for you each month, invoiced monthly on a fixed date. You direct the work through your own board and it can move between priorities as they change. Most engagements start at eight days a month and scale from there.
Time and materials
Billed by the day against an agreed rate, for work too loosely defined to fix a price to. We use it for discovery, for small support tickets under a retainer, and for the first phase of a rescue project before anyone knows what is really in the codebase. Once the scope is clear we will usually recommend moving to a fixed price, because a number you can rely on is worth more than an open meter.
Support retainer
Ongoing cover once the platform is live: security patching, updates tested on staging first, monitoring, verified backups and an agreed allowance of development time each month. Work beyond the allowance is billed by the day at an agreed rate, quoted before it starts.
The things you would otherwise have to ask for
None of this is unusual, and you would negotiate all of it anyway. Stating it up front saves a round of email and tells you how we work before you have spent anything.
Start with a paid pilot
One sprint, one module, or the first phase of a migration, scoped and priced on its own. You judge the code and the communication before committing to anything larger. We would rather lose a large project than start one that should have been tested first.
IP assigns to you on payment
Written into the agreement rather than promised on a website. We retain no licence over delivered code and do not reuse client-specific work. Any generic internal tooling we bring is declared before we start.
Your repository from day one
The code lives in your Git organisation, not ours. You can revoke our access at any point and still have everything, which is the only arrangement worth agreeing to.
Milestone-based payment
Payment tied to delivered milestones rather than elapsed time. Cross-border contract enforcement is difficult in both directions, so the practical protection for both of us is that neither is far ahead of the other.
Escalation agreed before it is needed
Who is contacted, through which channel, and what we are authorised to do without waiting for approval. Agreed at onboarding rather than improvised at two in the morning.
References on request
Including from agencies who have used us white-label. Ask them about a project that went badly, not one that went well.
What organisations ask before starting.
Are you not an agency yourselves?
Do you work with clients who have no technical team?
How do you price a project?
What if we do not know exactly what we need yet?
How involved do we need to be?
Where are you based and does the time difference matter?
Do you sign non-disclosure agreements?
Who owns the code and the accounts?
What happens after launch?
Can you work with our existing developer or IT team?
How big is the team?
When was Zelvatech founded?
Who writes the code if the founder is unavailable for two weeks?
Can we start with something small before committing?
Can you provide references?
Tell us what you are trying to build or fix.
A brief, an existing site, or a description of the problem. Within one working day you get a reply from the engineer who would run it, not a salesperson.
Before anything is signed, you get a written technical assessment: the real scope, where the risk sits, what we would build differently and why, and a fixed price against it. It costs nothing and it is yours to keep either way.