Custom Software Development

Custom software that grows with your business.

For growing businesses without an internal software development team. We build production web, mobile, and platform software with AI built in where it makes work faster, engineered so your operations and non technical team can maintain it without developer help.

11+Countries
AWSPartner
4.9Clutch
5.0Google

The problem

Why software projects stall out.

SaaS does not fit your operation

Off the shelf tools have a workflow. Your business has a workflow. When they do not match, your team spends the day working around the software.

No code hits a ceiling as you scale

At 10 users it worked. At 500, queries slow, integrations break, and vendor pricing balloons. The rebuild costs more than starting right would have.

Service agencies ship features, not products

Most dev agencies and freelancers finish the scope and move on. Six months later documentation is missing, the code is fragile, every new feature is a rewrite. KUMO works as product engineers first. What we ship keeps working, keeps growing.

KUMO edge

Software without AI is dated the day it ships

Every user flow can be faster with AI. Every internal workflow can automate the boring parts. Software shipped in 2026 without AI built in is already legacy.

Signs it's time

Signs your business is ready to build custom.

You don't need to check all of these. Any one of these is usually enough to start a conversation about what custom software could do for you.

01

Your team keeps doing manual work your software should be doing.

Copying data between tools. Retyping the same information three times. Exporting to Excel to fix it. Custom software does that work automatically, so your team gets those hours back.

02

You have asked your SaaS vendor for a feature and been told "not on the roadmap".

Every time Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho, or your booking software cannot do something your team needs, that is a real business capability going unused. Custom software builds exactly what you need, when you need it.

03

You are paying for 5 SaaS tools that do not talk to each other.

Your CRM, your inventory tool, your accounting, your booking, your marketing platform. Every day someone on your team is moving data between them. One custom system that connects everything is cheaper monthly and fits how you actually work.

04

You have outgrown your no code MVP.

Performance is dropping, integrations are breaking, monthly costs are climbing as you add users. You are ready for the next stage: production software that scales with you instead of holding you back.

05

You want AI in your operation, but no vendor has added it yet.

You do not need to wait for Zoho or QuickBooks to ship the right AI feature. Custom software lets you add AI where it matters most in your business: the workflows only your team knows about.

06

You do things differently from your competitors, and that is why you win.

Your way of serving customers, running operations, and processing orders is what makes your business stand out. Custom software supports that. Off the shelf software forces you to work like everyone else.

Recognise one? That's the moment. Let's have a 30 min conversation.

Who we build for

Businesses we've built software for.

Growing businesses across industries. If any of these sound like yours, we've likely built something similar.

Ecommerce and D2C

Beyond Shopify or WooCommerce limits.

Retail and multi store

Inventory, POS, and ops across locations.

Healthcare and clinics

Patient flows, appointments, and records.

Real estate and property

Listings, transactions, and owner portals.

Financial services

Lending, wealth, remittance, non tech finance.

Logistics and supply chain

Tracking, dispatch, warehousing.

Travel and hospitality

Booking, ops, guest experience.

Professional services

Agencies, consultancies, and firms.

Not on the list? We build across sectors. Every project starts with your business, not our template.

Investment

What custom software with KUMO costs.

Three ways to work with KUMO. Every engagement starts with a Starter Build: real production code, not a discovery deck.

Scale up

Grow Build

$50K to $100K

For growing businesses ready to scale. Full production build across multiple workflows, with integrations, admin, and the operational scaffolding your business will need at 10 times today's volume.

Typical timeline: 16 to 24 weeks. Fits marketplaces, customer portals, custom platforms, and AI powered workflows across the business.

Keep shipping

Support & Growth Team

$5K to $10K / month

Ongoing engineering team on retainer. Bug fixes, feature velocity, AI updates, monitoring, and quarterly architecture reviews. KUMO effectively becomes your part time engineering department.

For businesses after their Starter or Grow Build who want us to keep shipping. Comes with product help and support. Cancel anytime with 30 days notice.

Every engagement starts with a Starter Build. It's how we prove fit, and how you get real value from day one, not a diagnostic deck.

What's included

What every KUMO engagement includes.

Regardless of tier, every custom build ships with the same standards. These are non negotiable at KUMO.

Discovery first

We understand your business, workflows, and users before writing any code. No black box quotes.

Senior engineers throughout

The engineers who scope the project are the engineers who ship the code. Zero junior handoff.

AI opportunities identified

Every workflow gets reviewed for where AI can save time or add capability. Then we build it in.

Full IP transfer

Source code, deploy configs, documentation. All yours from day one, in your GitHub organisation.

Documentation and handover

So your team, or the next partner, can extend what we built. No lock in to KUMO.

Production ready output

Monitoring, tests, rollback, observability. Ready for real users, not just a demo.

Assembled per build

Technologies we build with.

There is no single KUMO stack. Every build gets its own, assembled for your workload, your data, your team, and whoever maintains the system after handover. These are the technologies we assemble those stacks from, and why each earns its place.

01

Languages and runtimes

  • TypeScript logo, KUMO primary language TypeScript
  • Python logo, KUMO language for AI workloads Python
  • Go logo, KUMO language for high-throughput services Go
  • Rust logo, KUMO language for performance-critical paths Rust
  • Node.js logo, KUMO API runtime Node.js
  • Bun logo, KUMO fast JavaScript runtime Bun
  • Ruby on Rails logo, KUMO supports Rails in production Ruby on Rails

TypeScript end to end for most products: one language across frontend and API cuts handover cost and hiring risk. Python where the workload is AI-heavy. Go where raw throughput decides the architecture, and Rust on hot paths where every millisecond is money. We run Node.js and adopt Bun where its speed pays. Our engineers shipped and scaled Ruby on Rails at Volopay, and we still support Rails codebases in production.

02

Product surfaces

  • React logo, KUMO web framework React
  • Next.js logo, KUMO web framework Next.js
  • Astro logo, KUMO framework for content-heavy sites Astro
  • React Native logo, KUMO framework for iOS and Android apps React Native
  • Expo logo, KUMO React Native tooling Expo
  • Tailwind CSS logo, KUMO design-system styling Tailwind CSS
  • shadcn/ui logo, KUMO component system shadcn/ui
  • Radix UI logo, KUMO accessible component primitives Radix UI

React and Next.js for web products. Astro for content-heavy sites where load speed is the feature. React Native with Expo for iOS and Android from one codebase, native modules where the product demands them. Tailwind CSS with shadcn/ui and Radix for design systems that ship fast. Real-time and streaming interfaces with WebSockets and server-sent events, because AI products that make users wait for a full response feel broken.

03

APIs, data, and architecture

  • Convex logo, KUMO real-time serverless backend Convex
  • Node.js logo, KUMO API runtime Node.js
  • Hono logo, KUMO HTTP framework Hono
  • Postgres logo, KUMO default database Postgres
  • Drizzle ORM logo, KUMO typed database access Drizzle
  • Redis logo, KUMO caching and queues Redis
  • Zod logo, KUMO schema validation Zod
  • Better Auth logo, KUMO authentication Better Auth
  • FastAPI logo, KUMO Python API framework FastAPI
  • Supabase logo, KUMO rapid backend platform Supabase

Two backend tracks, chosen per product. Convex for real-time serverless products: queries, mutations, actions, a scheduler, cron jobs, storage, and live subscriptions. Node.js services with Hono and typed oRPC over Postgres and Drizzle ORM for relational, retrieval-heavy products. Postgres is extended with pgvector for vector search and full-text search, so most AI features ship without a second database. Redis for caching and queues. Zod for end-to-end validation, Better Auth for authentication, and FastAPI or Supabase where they fit the job.

04

AI models

  • OpenAI logo, KUMO builds AI on OpenAI GPT models OpenAI
  • Anthropic logo, KUMO builds AI on Anthropic Claude Anthropic
  • Google Gemini logo, KUMO multimodal AI model Gemini
  • Meta Llama logo, KUMO open-weight AI model Llama
  • Mistral logo, KUMO open-weight AI model Mistral
  • DeepSeek logo, KUMO open-weight AI model DeepSeek
  • ElevenLabs logo, KUMO production voice AI ElevenLabs

Model choice is an engineering decision, not a loyalty program. OpenAI GPT and Anthropic Claude for frontier reasoning, Google Gemini where multimodal or context length wins. Open-weight models, Llama, Mistral, DeepSeek, self-hosted when privacy or unit economics demand it. Specialist models where the product needs a specialist: ElevenLabs and dialogue-native TTS for production voice, Whisper for speech to text, dedicated embedding and reranking models for retrieval quality, image and vision models for documents and floor plans. Every model sits behind a provider-swappable abstraction, so switching is a configuration decision, not a rewrite.

05

AI application layer

  • Vercel AI SDK logo, KUMO AI application framework Vercel AI SDK
  • Qdrant logo, KUMO managed vector store Qdrant
  • LangGraph logo, KUMO AI orchestration LangGraph
  • Hugging Face logo, KUMO open-weight model sourcing Hugging Face

AI features are built on the Vercel AI SDK and Convex Agent and RAG components: structured outputs, agentic tool use, streaming, and embeddings. Retrieval on pgvector by default, with Cohere reranking and Tavily web-search fallback, and managed vector stores like Qdrant at scale. Orchestration with LangGraph or custom code, tool connectivity over MCP, the protocol now standardising how AI systems talk to software. And the part that decides whether AI survives production: evals before ship, tracing in production, structured outputs, semantic caching, and model routing to control cost.

06

AI infrastructure and GPU

  • Ollama logo, KUMO self-hosted model runtime Ollama
  • FFmpeg logo, KUMO media processing FFmpeg

We deploy AI through AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex AI, and Azure OpenAI where enterprise controls matter, direct APIs where speed matters, and vLLM or Ollama where self-hosting wins. Self-hosted GPU inference on RunPod with a scale-to-zero strategy, and image models through fal.ai. Media assembly and normalisation with FFmpeg.

07

Cloud, delivery, and jobs

  • AWS logo, KUMO deploys on AWS as an AWS Partner AWS
  • Google Cloud logo, KUMO production cloud Google Cloud
  • Microsoft Azure logo, KUMO production cloud Azure
  • Docker logo, KUMO containerised deployments Docker
  • Coolify logo, KUMO application deployment Coolify
  • Kubernetes logo, KUMO container orchestration Kubernetes
  • Turborepo logo, KUMO monorepo build system Turborepo
  • Terraform logo, KUMO infrastructure as code Terraform
  • GitHub Actions logo, KUMO CI/CD delivery GitHub Actions

AWS first: KUMO is an AWS Partner and runs its own SaaS, CampaignHQ, on AWS in production, with S3, EC2, CloudFront, and Route 53. Also Google Cloud, Azure, and client infrastructure including on-prem. Docker everywhere, Coolify and Kubernetes for deployment, serverless and edge where they fit. Monorepos on Turborepo, infrastructure as code with Terraform, background jobs on Trigger.dev, and delivery through GitHub Actions CI/CD.

08

Observability and quality

  • Sentry logo, KUMO application error monitoring Sentry
  • OpenTelemetry logo, KUMO distributed tracing OpenTelemetry
  • Playwright logo, KUMO end-to-end and AI browser testing Playwright

Sentry for application errors, Langfuse for LLM traces, model metadata, and token usage, and OpenTelemetry for distributed tracing. End-to-end and AI-driven browser testing with Playwright. Cost, latency, and error tracking by workflow and model, so problems surface before customers see them.

09

Payments and integrations

  • Stripe logo, KUMO payments and billing Stripe
  • Razorpay logo, KUMO payments and billing Razorpay
  • Resend logo, KUMO transactional email Resend
  • Discord logo, KUMO team and notification workflows Discord

Billing and payments with Stripe and Razorpay, subscriptions, webhooks, tax, and invoicing. Transactional email through Resend, team workflows over Discord, and the Google ecosystem, OAuth, Drive, and Sheets, wired in where products need it.

Timeline

How long custom software takes.

A Starter Build ships in 4 to 16 weeks. A Grow Build follows the six phase timeline below.

Weeks 1 to 3

Scope and Discovery

Stakeholder interviews. Workflow mapping. Architecture calls with your team. Together we lock the scope, milestones, and payment plan for the whole engagement.

Weeks 4 to 6

Data and Architecture

Compliance review. Pipeline design. Stack selection. First working software components come together. Weekly progress calls start here and continue through the whole build.

Weeks 7 to 12

Build. Sprint 1 and 2

Core workflows go live. Backend and frontend integrate. AI workflows wired in. Each sprint closes with a working demo, sign off from your side, and a payment milestone released.

Weeks 13 to 20

Build. Sprint 3 and 4

Integrations, admin panels, edge cases. UAT with your team. Same sprint rhythm as before: working demo, your sign off, milestone released, next sprint begins.

Weeks 21 to 24

Deploy

Production launch. Monitoring wired. Team training so your operations and non technical team is comfortable running the system before we step back.

How we work with you the whole way through.

  • Milestone based payments. You pay as we ship, tied to sprint sign off. Never for time not delivered.
  • Weekly progress calls. No black box weeks. You know what is happening every sprint, always.
  • Sprint sign off from your side. Nothing moves to the next sprint without your review and approval of what shipped in the last one.
  • Working software every sprint. You see real progress you can use and give feedback on throughout the engagement, not one big reveal.

Why KUMO

Engineering discipline you can hand off.

Most agencies ship the scope and move on. We build software your operations and non technical team can run for years, with AI built in where it makes the work faster. Product engineering first, service mindset never.

  • Senior engineers who have shipped fintech, SaaS, and marketplace software at production scale.
  • Product engineering first: what we build keeps working and keeps growing after we hand it over.
  • Full IP transfer and documentation, so your operations and non technical team can run it without developer help.
  • AI built in where it makes work faster, on top of engineering that stands for years.

Selected work

Software we've shipped.

Custom builds where the software was the business, not a side project. A small selection, we have shipped many more.

If you specifically need web or mobile product work, see our web & mobile development page. Building an AI product for a regulated field like law, see AI legal automation.

How we deliver

The KUMO Method.

Six phases. Milestone based, senior engineers from start to delivery. The same method behind every KUMO build.

012-3 weeks

Scope & Discovery

Stakeholder interviews, workflow mapping, use-case prioritisation against business KPIs. Data quality validation. Risk register.

022-3 weeks

Data Audit & Architecture

Data inventory across CRMs, ERPs, databases, and documents. Compliance review. Pipeline and ETL design. Model architecture decisions: RAG, fine-tune, or hybrid.

033-4 weeks

Prototype & Evaluation

Rapid prototype with production APIs. Eval frameworks for accuracy, latency, cost-per-task. Stakeholder UAT. Honest go/no-go review.

044-10 weeks

Production Build & Integration

Production engineering. Observability and tracing. Human-in-the-loop checkpoints. Versioning and rollback. Integration with your existing systems.

051-2 weeks

Deployment & Monitoring

Phased rollout with control groups. KPI dashboards. Drift and latency alerts. Team training. Operational runbook handed over.

06Ongoing

Support & Maintenance

Ongoing support and maintenance: bug fixes, security patches, monitoring, and dependency upgrades as new versions ship, so your product stays stable and supported as you grow.

Common questions

Questions buyers ask before choosing custom.

What is custom software development?

Custom software development is building an application shaped around a specific business's workflow, users, and data, instead of adapting an off the shelf SaaS product. It costs more upfront but scales past vendor limits, gives you full IP, and fits how you actually work.

When should we build custom software instead of buying SaaS?

When your workflow has rules SaaS vendors do not support, when your data model is a competitive asset, or when you are spending 15 or more hours a week working around your current tool. If SaaS solves 80% of the problem cleanly, buy SaaS.

How much does custom software development cost in 2026?

Typical range at KUMO is $20K to $50K for a Starter Build (real production code, not a diagnostic), $50K to $100K for a Grow Build across multiple workflows, and $5K to $10K per month for the Support and Growth Team retainer.

What do you mean by "Starter Build"?

Your first engagement with KUMO is always a real build, not a diagnostic deck. We pick one specific workflow in your business, scope it end to end, and ship it as production code you own in 4 to 16 weeks. You see how we work, we understand your business, you get real value from day one.

Who owns the code and IP after the project?

You do. Full transfer from day one: source code, infrastructure as code, docs, deploy configs. No license locked components. No back doors. Repos are in your GitHub organisation from day one.

What if we want to bring the work in house later?

Straight handover. Your team gets the repos, runbooks, docs, and a 2 week overlap where our engineers are on Slack answering questions. Most clients do this at month 6 to 9 post launch.

How does the Support and Growth Team retainer work?

Optional monthly engagement, $5K to $10K depending on team size and volume. Covers bug fixes, feature velocity, AI updates, monitoring, performance work, and quarterly architecture reviews. Comes with product help and support so you can keep shipping without hiring internal engineers. Cancel anytime with 30 days notice.

What tech stack do you use for custom software?

Stack pragmatic. TypeScript, Python, and Go as defaults. React, Next.js, Astro, React Native on the client. Postgres, Redis, and managed cloud on the server. We pick based on your team, your future maintenance plan, and the workload, not our preferences.

Where is KUMO based, and can you work in our time zone?

Global team operating from Bengaluru, India, with active engagements across the US, UK, EU, and the Middle East. We align 4 or more hours of overlap with your team's core working hours.

Ready to build?

30 minutes, no pitch deck. You describe the software, we talk you through fit, rough scope, and roughly what it costs.