Software

The brief

Send your specs.
Get a costed answer in 48 hours.

No call to book, no discovery deck, no “let’s set up a workshop”. Write what should exist — the workflow, the store, or the half-written idea — and an engineer who has shipped 19 apps to the App Store (3 of them Built for Shopify) tells you whether it can be built, what the platform will allow, and what it costs.

  • Within 48 hoursA feasibility readWhether it can be built the way you described, what the platform will and will not allow, and where the risk actually sits — written by the engineer who would build it.
  • Within 48 hoursThe rules that applyWhich App Store requirements, API limits, billing constraints or compliance endpoints your idea runs into. This is where most first-time app budgets get destroyed.
  • Within 48 hoursA price and a shapeFixed price when the scope is genuinely fixed, time-and-materials when it is discovery — and we say which one we think it is rather than defaulting to whichever suits us.
  • Days, not quartersA date for the first buildNot a Gantt chart — the day you can expect a working version on a preview URL. On most projects that is days after we start, and it is a date we hold ourselves to.
  • IncludedSomewhere for it to liveServer, domain, SSL, deploys, backups and monitoring, on the container platform we built and run ourselves. Or straight into your cloud, if you would rather own that too.
§01What to send

Six things, and only the first two are required.

Every one of these makes the answer sharper, but a brief with the first two is already enough for us to be useful. Send it incomplete rather than not at all.

  1. 01

    What it should dorequired

    One paragraph is enough. The workflow you want automated, the thing merchants keep asking for, or the feature your store cannot do today. Written badly is fine — we are reading for the problem, not the prose.

  2. 02

    Who uses itrequired

    Merchants on the App Store, one specific store, your ops team, or your customers. It changes almost every technical decision that follows, and it is the question most briefs leave out.

  3. 03

    What it has to talk tohelps

    Shopify, obviously — plus the ERP, the 3PL, the marketplace, the accounting system, the warehouse spreadsheet. Names are enough; we will find the API docs.

  4. 04

    What already existshelps

    A repository, a half-built app, a Figma file, a competitor you want beaten, or nothing at all. If there is code, say who can grant access — that is usually the long pole.

  5. 05

    When it has to be livehelps

    A launch, a season, a contract date, or "when it is right". A real deadline changes what we recommend building first, and we would rather design around it than discover it.

  6. 06

    What you would rather not spendhelps

    A range is enough. It is not used to price up to your ceiling — it is used to tell you honestly whether the thing you described fits inside it, and what a smaller first version would look like if it does not.

What you do not need

  • A finished specification. Half a page beats a month of internal drafting.
  • Wireframes or designs. Useful if they exist, never a prerequisite.
  • A decision on public app vs private app — that is part of what we answer.
  • An NDA before the first message, though we will sign yours if you need one.
  • Being technical. Describe it the way you would to a new colleague.
§02The template

Or start from ours.

Nine headings, most of them one line. Copy it, fill in what you know, leave the rest — an honest “not sure yet” is more useful to us than a guess presented as a requirement.

This app does the job and is easy to implement. We’re using it on 3 Shopify Plus stores. Juan is a pleasure to deal with. He goes out and beyond to make sure everything is working 100%.
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BRIEF.TXT
PROJECT
One paragraph: what should exist, and why now.

USERS
Who opens this — App Store merchants / one store / our ops team / customers.

TODAY
How it is handled now, including the spreadsheet nobody admits to.

MUST DO
- …
- …

NICE TO HAVE
- …

TALKS TO
Shopify + (ERP / 3PL / marketplace / accounting / other)

EXISTING
Repo, designs, prior app, or nothing yet.

TIMING
Deadline or season, and what is driving it.

BUDGET
A range is fine.
§03Send it

Straight to an engineer.

This form goes to the people who would build the thing. No qualification call, no CRM sequence, no drip campaign afterwards.

  • 01 · 48 hoursSend your specs
  • 02 · Week 1Architecture & prototype
  • 03 · Weeks 2–8Build in the open

Prefer the company site? devcloudsoftware.com

Attachments? Reply to our answer with them — every reply lands in the same thread.