Custom Software Development in Auckland, New Zealand
Web apps, portals, dashboards and full products, designed and engineered end to end for your business by the same senior engineers who run nine SaaS products of our own.
Off-the-shelf software forces your business to work around its limits. Custom software is built around how your business actually works: your data, your workflow, your customers. Corvidae designs and builds custom web applications, internal systems and SaaS platforms for New Zealand organisations, using the exact stack we use to run our own production products.
Every project starts with a short scoping conversation, moves through weekly shippable increments, and finishes with something you can operate for years, not a handover document nobody reads.
Who it is for
- NZ businesses replacing spreadsheets, email chains or an off-the-shelf tool that no longer fits
- Founders who need a custom platform their competitors cannot buy off a shelf
- Teams with a legacy system that has become too risky or slow to change
- Organisations that need software integrated with existing accounting, CRM or industry systems
- Companies that want to own their source code and infrastructure outright
Problems we solve
- Manual processes spread across spreadsheets, email and sticky notes
- Off-the-shelf software that almost fits, at the cost of working around its gaps
- Systems that cannot talk to each other, forcing double data entry
- Legacy applications nobody wants to touch or extend
- A backlog of ideas with no engineering team to build them
What we build
What we build
- SaaS platforms
- internal business systems
- customer portals
- dashboards and reporting tools
- APIs and integration platforms
- workflow and approval systems
- financial and compliance software
- AI-enabled applications
Technology
How we deliver
Discover
A short call and a written scope, estimate and plan within days, not weeks.
Design
Thin-slice UX so the riskiest and most valuable part of the product gets built first.
Build
Weekly, shippable increments you can click and give feedback on.
Run
We deploy it, monitor it and keep improving it once it is live.
Production proof
Moniaro Books and SnapKai both run this exact stack in production, serving real customers every day.
Corvidae builds and operates its own production SaaS products, so architecture decisions are made with real operating cost, uptime, security, support and users in mind.
Security and quality
- Secrets loaded from environment variables or AWS SSM Parameter Store, never committed to source control
- Cloud infrastructure run on IAM instance profiles rather than hardcoded credentials
- HTTPS everywhere, with certificates renewed automatically
- Automated builds and deployments so releases are repeatable and reviewed
- Every architecture decision reviewed by the same senior engineer who operates our own products
Engagement model
Most projects start with a fixed-price scoping phase: a short discovery call followed by a written scope, architecture outline and estimate. From there we agree either a fixed-price build for a well-defined project or a weekly rate for ongoing product work.
You get direct access to the engineer writing the code, a working build every week, and full ownership of the source code and infrastructure at the end.
Frequently asked questions
How much does custom software development cost in NZ?
It depends on scope: a focused internal tool costs far less than a multi-tenant SaaS platform with billing and AI features. We do not quote a number until we understand what you need, and we always provide a written estimate before any build work starts.
How long does a custom software project take?
Timelines vary with scope, and we would rather give you an honest estimate after scoping than a generic promise. What stays constant is the process: you see a working, shippable increment every week from the start, so progress is never a guess.
Do you work with existing software?
Yes. Most projects need to integrate with an existing accounting system, CRM, payment provider or legacy database. We scope those integrations up front rather than discovering them mid-build.
Do you provide source code?
Yes. You own the source code, the repository and the infrastructure we set up for you. There is no vendor lock-in by design.
Can you host and operate the application?
Yes, if you want us to. We run our own SaaS products on AWS every day, so ongoing hosting, monitoring and support is something we already do at scale. It is optional: you can also take the code and run it yourselves.
Do you work with startups?
Yes. Several of our own products started as a single founder's idea, so we understand the pressure to ship something real fast without building the wrong thing first.
Have a product in mind?
Tell us what you want to build. We reply within one business day with an honest read on scope, cost and timeline.
Start the conversation