Client portals
Somewhere your customers can see their own work, files and approvals without emailing you.
04 · Design Labs
Custom software in Minneapolis
Web apps, dashboards and internal tools. Real products with real data, not clickable prototypes.
Minneapolis, Saint Paul and the north metro
Most businesses reach a point where the spreadsheet, the group chat and the shared inbox stop holding it together. The usual answer is another subscription that does eighty percent of what you need and cannot be changed.
We build the thing that does the other twenty percent, on top of a real database, with real permissions, and hand it over.
What you get
What is included.
Internal tools
The job that eats an afternoon a week, turned into a screen that takes a minute.
Dashboards
Your actual numbers, derived from your data, not typed into a slide once a month.
Integrations
Getting the systems you already pay for to talk to each other.
Built to be handed over
Documented, migrated and deployable. Not a black box only we can open.
Permissions that hold
Who can see what, enforced in the database, not hidden in the interface.
How it goes
Four steps.
- Step 01
Brief
A call, the constraints, the budget. You leave knowing the scope and the number.
- Step 02
Direction
Real routes, not mood boards. You pick one and we commit to it.
- Step 03
Build
Design and production in the same hands, so nothing gets lost in a handoff.
- Step 04
Launch
Files, logins and print specs handed over. It ships, or it is not done.
FAQ
Questions we get asked.
How is this different from a website?
A website tells people about you. Software does a job: accounts, data, permissions, things that change when somebody clicks. Different build, different budget, different timeline.
What does custom software cost?
It starts higher than a website and depends almost entirely on scope. The first call is about finding the smallest version that is genuinely useful, because the fastest way to waste money here is building everything at once.
Will I be locked in?
No. Code, database and deployment in your name, documented well enough for another developer to pick up. We would rather earn the next phase than hold the login hostage.
Can you work with what we already have?
Usually. Replacing a system that works is rarely the right first move; connecting it to the thing it is missing often is.
Also
Usually alongside.
01
Web design
Marketing sites, ecommerce and landing pages, designed from a blank page and built by hand.
03
Local SEO
Technical and local search: structure, schema, speed and the groundwork that makes a site rank in its own market.
05
Signage and menus
The physical build-out: digital menu boards, signage, interiors, merchandise and packaging, and the vendors who make them.
Custom software, then.
Tell us what you are opening, launching or fixing. You will get a scope and a number, not a proposal deck.