Support & modernization
Inherit the software you depend on and can no longer maintain.
- Engagement
- Paid audit, then stabilization project, then support retainer
- Typical timeline
- 1–2 week audit, 4–10 weeks stabilization
- Starts at
- $6,000 audit · retainers from $3,500 / month
We take over systems other vendors have walked away from. If we don't think we can help, the audit will say so.
Book a callYou're probably reading this because
If two or more of these describe your situation, a 30-minute call will be worth your time.
- The developer who built your core system is unreachable.
- It runs on a framework version that stopped receiving security patches years ago.
- Deploys are manual, undocumented, and only one person has ever done one.
- There's no staging environment, so every change is tested in production.
- You've been told it must be rewritten from scratch and you can't afford that.
- Something breaks and nobody knows until a customer calls.
Concretely, what we deliver
Written as deliverables rather than activities, so you can tell whether you received them.
- 01
Takeover audit
What the system does, what it runs on, what's dangerous, and what it would take to bring it to a maintainable state, with risks ranked by likelihood and business impact rather than listed alphabetically.
- 02
Stabilization first
Before any modernization: backups verified by actually restoring them, monitoring and alerting in place, a real staging environment, deploys automated, and credentials rotated out of the codebase.
- 03
Security and dependency remediation
Known vulnerabilities patched, framework and runtime versions brought back into support, secrets moved out of source control, access reviewed. Usually the highest-value work and rarely the most visible.
- 04
Incremental modernization
Modules replaced one at a time behind stable interfaces, with the old and new paths running side by side until the new one is proven. The system keeps working throughout.
- 05
Ongoing maintenance with defined response times
A retainer with agreed severity levels and response commitments, monthly patching, and a named engineer who knows your system rather than a rotating queue.
- 06
Documentation that didn't exist before
Architecture, deployment runbooks, environment setup, and the tribal knowledge extracted from whoever still remembers it, written down while they're still reachable.
Our approach, and why
The reasoning matters more than the method. If you disagree with the reasoning, we should talk before you hire anyone.
Stop the bleeding before improving anything
The instinct is to start rewriting. The correct first move is making the current system observable, backed up and deployable. Otherwise every improvement is made blind, on a system that could lose data at any moment.
Strangle, don't replace
New functionality goes into new well-built modules that sit alongside the legacy system rather than inside it. Over time the old code path handles less and less. You get modernization on a schedule you control, without a big-bang cutover.
No judgement about the existing code
It was probably built under real constraints by people doing their best with the time they had. It's running your business, which is more than most software achieves. We're here to make it safe, not to litigate its history.
Honest when a rewrite is right
Occasionally the correct answer is replacement, usually when the runtime is unsupportable or the data model actively prevents the business from changing. When that's the case we show the comparison, including the cost of continuing as-is.
Technologies we use for this
- Legacy PHP → Laravel
- PHP 5/7 upgrades
- .NET Framework → .NET
- jQuery → React
- MySQL / PostgreSQL
- Docker
- CI/CD pipelines
- Sentry / observability
- Automated backups
- Nginx
- Linux
- AWS / Azure migration
Selected per project against your team's existing skills and hiring market, not against what's fashionable. If your system runs on something not listed, ask.
What changes for you
- Verified backups and a tested restore, often for the first time.
- Failures detected by monitoring rather than by customers.
- Key-person risk removed: more than one person can now deploy safely.
- A supported, patchable stack instead of an unpatched one.
- Changes become possible again at a predictable cost.
What people ask about support & modernization
It's the normal case. We read the code, trace the data, and interview whoever remains. The audit is longer and costs more than one on a documented system, and part of its output is the documentation that should have existed.
Yes, and for many systems that's the right call indefinitely. Software that is stable, backed up, monitored and running on a supported stack does not need to be modern. It needs to be safe.
Set by severity in the retainer. Typically same-business-day for anything degrading service and next-business-day for everything else, with an escalation path for genuine outages. We commit to these in writing.
We'll tell you, with reasoning and the cost of both paths. We'd rather lose the maintenance contract than bill you monthly to keep something alive that's going to fail anyway.
Often combined with
Software Architecture
Architecture, technology selection, and technical due diligence for systems that have to survive scale and staff turnover.
Custom Software Development
Applications built for how your business actually works: the workflows no off-the-shelf product will ever match.
Dedicated Teams
Vetted nearshore engineers who join your standups, your repo, and your roadmap, and who stay long enough to build real context.
Let's talk about your support & modernization project
Thirty minutes with an engineer who can scope it. You'll leave with a view on approach, a budget range, and an honest answer about whether we're the right firm, including when we aren't.