Custom Software Outsourcing | Your Repo, Our Engineers

§ 01 · what you hand over

What an outside team can take on, and what stays with you

the short answer

You hand us a product, a module or a stalled build, and we usually run it one of two ways: a fixed bid, priced at the end of a two-week discovery sprint, or a monthly team working on your roadmap. Either way the repositories and cloud accounts are opened in your name and billed to you, so the code sits in your accounts while it is being written, not only at handover.

Digital Heroes was founded in 2017 and has staffed headquarters in New York and Delhi. The engineers who would write your code are on our own team in Delhi and Lucknow, with some mobile engineers in Sydney. By our count we have shipped work for 2,000+ brands in 40+ countries.

Work clients hand to us

A first version of a product: usually 8 to 12 weeks of build once discovery has fixed the scope.
A production platform with several user roles and integrations: usually 16 to 28 weeks of build.
One module or integration added to a system you already run, such as an API that connects your accounting, payment or sign-in tools.
A legacy system replaced in phases while the old one keeps running.
A codebase another team left unfinished, which starts with an audit of what is there before anyone promises a date.
The work after launch: roadmap work, integrations and incident support on a monthly retainer.

Two jobs nobody can take from you

Someone who will use the software has to sit in the requirements workshops, because no vendor can guess how your team really works. And one person on your side has to own the decisions: answering our questions within days rather than weeks, and checking each weekly demo against what was agreed.

§ 02 · engagement models

Project, team or extra hands: picking the model

The model decides who directs the engineers each day and who pays when the work runs over. Settle it before you compare prices, because the same quote means something different under each one.

Four ways to buy outsourced custom software from Digital Heroes, who directs the work under each, and how each is billed
Model	What you hand over	Who directs the work	How it is billed	Usual length
Fixed-bid project	A scope written during discovery	Our tech lead, against that document	One price; anything outside the document needs a written change request that states its cost and its effect on the date	8 to 12 weeks for a first version, 16 to 28 for a production platform
Dedicated team	A slice of your product roadmap	Our lead, working to your priorities	Monthly, for a lead, engineers and QA	Normally a quarter or more
Staff augmentation	Tickets in your own backlog	Your engineering lead, in your rituals	The rate card named in our written scope	As long as you need; engineers pass your interview and security checks first, typically inside two weeks
Retainer after launch	A live system	A named team of ours	Monthly; the smallest is one senior engineer plus one designer	Ongoing

One test settles most choices. Augmentation works only when someone on your side can review code and set the work, because the engineers follow your process rather than ours. If nobody can, buy a fixed bid or a team, where our tech lead answers for the result. Our pages on dedicated development teams and hiring software developers cover those two models in depth.

Onshore, nearshore and offshore are labels for where a vendor sits, and ours is a mix: leadership and US account directors in New York, engineering in India. Who answers and at what hour is set out in section 06.

§ 03 · cost

What custom software outsourcing costs, region by region

For its 2026 cost survey, GoodFirms questioned more than 100 software firms in September and October 2025. Most projects in it cost $30,000 to $100,000 and take three to six months. What moves the hourly rate most is where the team sits, and the survey maps each rate band to the regions that charge it.

Hourly rates for outsourced software development by region, from GoodFirms' 2026 cost survey of more than 100 firms
Rate per hour	Share of firms	Regions GoodFirms names	Who usually buys at this rate
Under $20	12.5 percent	South Asia (India, Bangladesh, Pakistan), Africa (Nigeria, Kenya) and smaller Eastern European hubs	Startups and small businesses testing an idea, where price counts for more than security
$20 to $50	56.3 percent	South Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe (Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Serbia), Latin America (Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia) and Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia)	Small and mid-sized companies, and enterprises, building web apps, online stores and mobile apps
$50 to $100	12.5 percent	Central and Western Europe (Spain, Portugal, Czech Republic), Chile and Costa Rica, and mid-tier US developers in cities such as Chicago and Austin	Funded startups and mid-sized firms after specialist skills
$100 to $250	10.9 percent	The US and Canada; the UK, Germany, France and the Netherlands	Enterprises and scale-ups with mission-critical work and heavy security needs
Above $250	7.8 percent	Silicon Valley, New York City and Boston; Switzerland and the Nordics; boutique specialists anywhere	Fortune 500 programmes, government contracts and strategy-led work

Two more figures from the same survey belong in any outsourcing budget. Most firms in it said scope creep adds 10 to 25 percent to a project's cost when it happens, and upkeep after launch runs 10 to 20 percent of the build cost every year.

Our own price bands

Most of our engineers work in India, a region GoodFirms places in its two lowest bands, yet a build with us is priced as one fixed figure after discovery, not as an hourly estimate. A focused first version of custom software typically costs $40,000 to $150,000, a SaaS MVP $30,000 to $80,000, and a complex enterprise platform $250,000 to $500,000 or more. Scope, integrations, security needs and data migration decide where yours lands.

Your own fixed price arrives at the end of the discovery sprint, which is priced on its own and can end in advice to buy an existing product instead. For a rough figure before that, our free software development cost calculator works from hours and a blended rate, and the quote checker turns a quote you already hold into an implied hourly rate you can set against the table above.

What moves a custom budget, and by how much, is broken down in our guide to custom software cost drivers.

§ 04 · delivery

What you receive, stage by stage

Outsourcing goes wrong quietly when a client pays for weeks it cannot see. So every stage of our delivery ends in something you hold, and the table lists it. It starts with a free call of 30 minutes.

The stages of an outsourced build with Digital Heroes, what we do in each, and what you hold when it ends
Stage	What we do	What you hold at the end
Before kickoff	The call is booked at least five days out, so the discovery lead can read your product, your documents and the repository if you share it	A written scope and quote within 48 hours of the call
Discovery, days 1 to 14	Requirements workshops with the people who will use the system, a map of every system the build touches, a threat model and a data-flow diagram	A risk register, architecture decision records, and either a fixed bid or a recommendation to buy
Build, from about day 15	Sprints of one to two weeks; our CTO signs off the architecture before any engineer starts, and our QA team tests each build before you see a preview	A recorded demo of working code every week, with a note of what shipped and what slipped
Before the first release	Automated tests in a CI/CD pipeline, plus a rollback already tested	Release notes, and a rollback that has already been tested
Launch and after	The live release, with larger systems going live one module at a time	A handover pack of architecture notes, runbooks and a walkthrough session, or a monthly retainer with a named team

A week of build without a recorded demo is a week we do not invoice. The rule exists so that the demo can never quietly turn into a status email. Because discovery is priced separately, you can also stop at day 14 with the scope, the system map and the risk register in hand, without having committed the build budget.

Illustration of one piece of an outsourced build: a TypeScript business rule, the API request that runs it, its response, and a test run that passes before deploy — What a weekly demo shows: code that runs, an API that answers and tests that pass, not slides about progress.

§ 05 · ownership

The code, the accounts and the IP stay in your name

From the first sprint your code lives in repositories opened in your name, and the cloud accounts it runs on are yours and billed to you. Our engineers join as collaborators you can remove at any time, so there is no server of ours you would need us to hand back.

Under our MSA, everything made specifically for your project (the code, designs, copy and custom assets) is assigned to you once the final invoice is paid. We keep the libraries and tooling that existed before your project or were built for reuse across clients.

Finished work may appear in our portfolio unless you opt out in writing, and strict work for hire terms with no portfolio rights can be written into the statement of work at a price stated up front.

Confidentiality starts before the contract. Once a scoping call is booked, both sides sign a one-page mutual NDA before we walk you through past client work. You can read our standard MSA before committing to anything by writing to legal@digitalheroes.co.in, and under our terms nothing said in a sales call binds either side until it is written into a countersigned MSA or statement of work.

The buyer's half of the paperwork, from the statement of work to acceptance tests and escrow, is set out in our step-by-step guide to outsourcing custom software.

§ 06 · locations and hours

Who answers, from where, and at what hour

Our headquarters are at 1140 Broadway, Suite 704, in Manhattan's NoMad, and at Connaught Place in New Delhi. The New York office holds leadership, US account directors, strategy, brand and growth, and no engineers sit there. Your code is written in Delhi, our engineering headquarters, and in Lucknow, and some of our iOS and Android engineers work from Sydney.

On weekdays the New York team replies the same business day between 9 AM and 6 PM Eastern. Engineering in India keeps hours that overlap New York's, and production emergencies are covered at any hour from Delhi and Sydney, with an after-hours message picked up within one to two hours. New York clients can hold the kickoff, design reviews and launch week in person, at NoMad or at their own office.

Our US company is Digital Heroesco LLC. The MSA names the entity you sign with, and for US work it usually names New York law. If your contract or security policy requires every engineer to be in the United States, we are the wrong firm, and you will hear that on the first call. The New York office page has the address, hours and how in-person sessions work.

§ 07 · risks

Six outsourcing risks, and the control we use for each

Outsourced builds tend to break in the same few places. The right-hand column says what we do about each one, and every entry is something you can check in our contract or in the work itself.

Six common risks of outsourcing a custom build, how each usually shows up, and the control Digital Heroes uses against it
Risk	How it usually shows up	Our control
The cost grows past the quote	Small changes pile up, each too minor to price, until the budget is gone	No fixed price before discovery; anything outside the written scope gets a change request, with its cost and date, before work on it starts
Questions wait a day	The team is asleep when you need it, so a two-minute question costs a working day	Same-day replies from New York, 9 AM to 6 PM Eastern; engineering hours that overlap New York's; emergency cover at any hour from Delhi and Sydney
Progress you cannot see	Months of status reports, then a reveal that misses what you meant	A recorded demo of working code every week of build, no invoice for a week without one, and QA testing before you see a preview
Being tied to the builder	Code, servers or logins held in the vendor's own accounts	Repositories and cloud accounts in your name and on your billing, with our engineers as collaborators you can remove
Data exposure	Keys shipped to the browser, and permissions checked only in the screens	Encryption in transit and at rest, row-level security enforced in the database, an audit log of changes, and secrets kept on the server
A key engineer leaves	The context walks out with them	Architecture decision records, runbooks and a handover walkthrough, so the next engineer starts from documents rather than memory

On regulated data: whenever our team handles protected health information we sign a Business Associate Agreement, and healthcare builds run on AWS, Azure or Google Cloud under the provider's own BAA. We have had our HIPAA practices reviewed by an independent firm. We claim no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 report here; if another vendor does, get the auditor's name and the report date before you give it weight.

§ 08 · proof

Three builds we delivered as the outside team

Each is shown with the client's permission. None of the three has a published results figure, so none is given here; each card says what we built and what it runs on, where that can be shared.

clinics and hospitals · 2026

Planivo

A workforce planning platform for clinics and hospitals, and we built all of it: the signed-in product and its public website. It runs monthly shift rosters, sends vacation requests through three levels of approval with a check for clashes within a speciality, and tracks tasks, training attendance and certificates nearing expiry.

Duty screens show who is on shift, six roles each see only their own part of the organization, and every change lands in an audit history.

planivo.me

web to print, South Africa · 2026

SpeedyPrint

An online print store where customers design their own products in a browser editor. Print jobs can be driven by a CSV file, so each item in a run carries its own name or number, and every order produces proofs and production files with a status history.

Checkout runs on PayFast with its payment webhooks, with transactional email and an admin panel that serves three roles. Next.js 15, React, TypeScript and Supabase are the stack.

sports training marketplace

AirTrainr

The athlete and trainer mobile apps are our work. Athletes search for trainers, book sessions and respond to offers; trainers manage their schedule, send offers and follow their earnings and reviews, and both sides share chat and notifications.

The stack is React Native and Expo, with Supabase behind it.

airtrainr.com

Clients rate our work 5.0 on Clutch from 66 verified reviews (checked 13 October 2026). Our main claims, each with the place to check it, are listed on our custom software development company page.

§ 09 · fit

When to outsource the build, and when to keep it in-house

Cost is no longer the only reason to outsource. Deloitte's 2024 Global Outsourcing Survey of more than 500 executives found skilled talent and agility now sit beside cost reduction as the main drivers, and spending on outside providers still growing. It also found insourcing and in-house global centers gaining ground again, a reminder that the right answer is often a mix of both.

Outsource the build when

You need working software sooner than you could hire and onboard a team.
The skills the build needs, such as mobile, integrations or AI features, are missing in-house.
The scope can be written down well enough to price, or you are willing to pay for discovery to get it there.
Your own engineers are already busy, and this work would otherwise wait months in a queue.

Build it yourselves, or look elsewhere, when

The software is your core product and you plan a permanent engineering team. If speed matters, outsource the first version with a handover pack in the contract, then hire against software that already works.
The work is smaller than our floor of one senior engineer plus one designer. A freelancer or a smaller agency suits it better, and we will say so.
No one has yet shown they want the product. Test the demand more cheaply before paying for a custom build.
Something you can buy off the shelf already does the job. Discovery can end in that verdict, and when it does we name the tool.
Every engineer must be in the United States, or the programme needs several dozen engineers from the first week, which is what large consultancies are built for.

To test the in-house question on your own numbers, our free in-house vs agency cost calculator compares hiring, an agency and a freelancer over the same hours. For the build or buy question, read custom software against off-the-shelf SaaS.

§ 10 · questions

Short answers on cost, AI and control

How much does a custom software cost?

Most custom projects cost $30,000 to $100,000 and take three to six months, according to GoodFirms' 2026 survey of more than 100 firms, and enterprise systems start above $200,000. With us, a focused first version typically costs $40,000 to $150,000 and a complex enterprise platform $250,000 to $500,000 or more. The cost section shows the regional rates behind those differences.

What is an example of custom software?

Planivo is one: a workforce planning platform for clinics and hospitals that we built in 2026, with vacation approvals that flag when two staff of the same speciality would be away at once. Other common examples are a client portal, a quoting tool that holds a firm's own pricing rules, an internal dashboard fed by several tools, and a mobile app for staff in the field.

Will software engineers be replaced by AI by 2030?

Nobody can promise what 2030 holds, but today's evidence points to fewer hours rather than no engineers. In GoodFirms' 2026 survey, 90.6 percent of firms use AI to plan, code and test, and Deloitte's 2024 survey found 83 percent of executives using AI inside outsourced services, with the gains held back by governance and contracting. Someone still has to own the architecture and answer when production breaks.

Can we hire one or two developers instead of a whole team?

Yes. Under staff augmentation, our engineers pass your own interview and security checks, then work in your repository and join your standups, typically inside two weeks, while your roadmap and rituals stay yours. After launch, the smallest monthly retainer we staff is one senior engineer plus one designer.

Who owns the code when you build it for us?

You do. Repositories and cloud accounts are opened in your name from the first sprint, and under our MSA everything made specifically for your project is assigned to you once the final invoice is paid. We keep only the libraries and tools that existed before your project or were built for reuse, plus portfolio rights you can switch off in writing.

Where do the engineers work, and will our hours overlap?

In Delhi and Lucknow, with some iOS and Android engineers in Sydney; nobody writes code in the New York office. Engineering keeps hours that overlap New York's, the New York team answers the same business day between 9 AM and 6 PM Eastern, and an emergency message sent after hours is picked up within one to two hours. Our offshore vendor comparison sets out the same for other firms.

How do we know the work is moving between invoices?

Every week of build ends in a recorded demo of working code, with a short note of what shipped and what slipped, and a week without that demo is a week we do not invoice. Architecture decision records explain each significant choice as it is made, and release notes arrive with every release.

Will you sign an NDA or a BAA before we share details?

A one-page mutual NDA is signed once a scoping call is booked, before we walk you through past client work, so an outline is enough for the first conversation. If the build will touch protected health information, we sign a Business Associate Agreement whenever our team handles it, and the system is hosted on AWS, Azure or Google Cloud under the provider's BAA.

Last reviewed 17 October 2026.

§ · keep reading

Before you sign with anyone

§ 11 · next step

Hand us the brief, get a scope and quote in 48 hours

Tell us what the software has to do, who will use it and what it must connect to. If we are a fit, you get a written scope and price within 48 hours of a free 30-minute call; if not, you hear that on the call, with a pointer to someone better placed. Book a call.

Why work with Digital Heroes

115 people across five studios in New York, Delhi, London, Sydney and Lucknow, shipping ecommerce, web, software and mobile work for founder-led brands. Senior engineers only, no account-manager relay, and the same team from kickoff to launch.

Shopify Select Partner, as listed in the Shopify Partner Directory
Tier 1 registered supplier on the United Nations Global Marketplace, which requires audited company documentation
Top Rated Plus on Upwork, the bracket for the top 3% of talent by client outcomes
397 public five-star-weighted reviews across four Fiverr gigs, from clients in 36 countries
DUNS verified business, No. 650878346, so procurement can check us before signing
Listed by Clutch in Top 1000 Global B2B Companies and Top Web Designers 2024
Verified profiles on GoodFirms, DesignRush, Digital.com, AppFutura and TopDevelopers
2,000+ brands built across 40+ countries, with $50M+ in client revenue scaled

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Co-Founder · Lucknow · 27 posts on the site

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Custom Software Outsourcing, Built by Our Own Engineers