The situation is more common than people admit
Most businesses that call us about a broken system are not calling about a system we built. They are calling because a freelancer stopped answering, an agency delivered something that only half works, or a tool generated code nobody on the team understands.
The instinct is usually to ask for a rebuild. That is often the most expensive answer, and sometimes the wrong one. Plenty of half finished projects have a sound database and a reasonable structure underneath a rough surface.
Why we start with a fixed price audit
You cannot get an honest quote for a rescue without reading the code first, and no serious developer will read a codebase for free. That is a deadlock, and it is why we price the reading separately.
The Software Audit is €490 and takes five working days. At the end you get a written report, not a sales call.
- What is broken, and why it breaks
- Security risks, ranked by how urgent they actually are
- The cost of a fix, itemised rather than a single number
- A clear verdict: repair it, or rebuild it
What we look at
The report is not a code style review. We look at the things that decide whether a system can be maintained by someone new.
- Data model: is the database sane, and is the data recoverable
- Secrets and access: are credentials committed, are permissions enforced on the server rather than only hidden in the interface
- Dependencies: how far behind the project is, and whether upgrading is realistic
- Deployment: whether anyone can ship a change without breaking production
- Integrations: what happens when a connected system changes
Repair or rebuild
We recommend a repair when the data model holds up and the problems are on the surface. That is the cheaper path and it keeps the history and the data intact.
We recommend a rebuild when the data model cannot represent what the business actually does. Patching around a wrong model gets more expensive every month, and a rewrite of a small, well understood system is often shorter than a year of patches.
Either way you get the number before you commit. If you hire us for the fix, the audit fee comes off the price.