We design and build the software Houston businesses run on: the Web app that finally replaces the spreadsheet, the iOS and Android app your crew uses out in the field, the Windows application on the shipping station, the website that turns a search into a phone call. Designed to look like something you'd show a customer — and you own the result outright.
The work overlaps, but what you need from us doesn't. Pick the one that sounds like you.
The business itself doesn't exist on paper. You need the LLC filed, a domain and business email, hosting, and a Google listing — before there's anything to build a site for.
Register the business first →You served, and Texas backs that: the formation fee waived and no franchise tax for five years on a 100% veteran-owned new business — if the claim is filed with the formation, which is exactly the paperwork we do.
Veteran-owned businesses →You're getting a business off the ground and need it online — a simple site, a storefront, or the application the whole idea depends on.
New business websites →You need one useful tool and a website that works — not an enterprise platform or a full-time developer on payroll.
Small business software →You need the smallest honest version of the product in front of real users, built so your first in-house engineer can take it over.
Startup & MVP builds →You need quiet overflow capacity under your own brand — backend, integrations, or the legacy work your team would rather not take.
White-label development →We pick the platform from how the work actually happens, not from what we feel like building. Sometimes that's one app on all four; more often it's a Web app with a phone app for the people who are never at a desk.
Runs in the browser your team already has open. Nothing to install, nothing to roll out, one place to fix a bug.
An app that looks like it belongs on the phone, not a website in a box with a title bar.
One app that behaves the same on a warehouse handheld, a driver's phone, and a tablet on a wall mount.
For the work that lives on a workstation — the plant-floor PC, the shipping station, the back-office machine.
That's the first ten minutes of the scoping call, and it's free. Native apps earn their cost when the work happens offline, in the background, or through a camera or scanner. When it doesn't, a responsive Web app does the same job for less and skips the app stores entirely — and we'd rather say so than sell you two store listings you have to maintain.
If it runs on a server, a browser, a phone, a workstation, or a schedule, it's probably in here somewhere. Sometimes it's a whole vertical — see the fire alarm contractor software practice that grew out of exactly this kind of work.
Replace the spreadsheet the whole company secretly depends on.
Designed to be worth landing on, fast on a phone, and built so a form submission actually reaches a human.
The screens get designed, not just assembled. Nobody has to apologize for how it looks.
Make the software you already pay for talk to the rest of it.
The recurring manual job nobody should still be doing by hand.
Take money online without handing a slice of every order to a platform you don't control.
One number everybody agrees on, updated without anyone assembling it.
Someone to call when the thing you rely on stops working.
Business software has a reputation for looking like a 2004 intranet. That's a choice somebody made, not a law of nature. Design is part of every build here — the same attention whether it's a public app store listing or a screen only your dispatchers will ever see.
You click through the real screens and move things around while changing them is still free. Nobody signs off on a wireframe and hopes.
Type, color, and layout built from your identity — or a clean one built with you if the logo is the only asset you've got.
Tested from a 360-pixel phone to a wide desktop monitor, with touch targets sized for a thumb in a work glove.
WCAG 2.2 AA contrast, visible focus states, keyboard paths, and real labels — which also happens to be what public-sector and enterprise buyers ask for.
Shared components and spacing rules, so screen twelve looks like screen one and the next feature doesn't drift.
A beautiful screen that takes six seconds to load is a slow screen. Performance budgets are part of the design, not a cleanup task afterwards.
You own the code. On final payment you get the source, the commit history, and the deployment instructions, in your repository and your hosting accounts wherever possible. No hostage hosting, no handover fee, no "we'll need to discuss licensing."
We'd also rather turn down work than take a project we don't think is worth building. Sometimes the answer is an off-the-shelf SaaS subscription instead of a custom app, and telling you that costs us one invoice and earns a referral. Sometimes the system you already have is fine and only needs to move somewhere supported — that's legacy modernization and migration, and it's a fraction of the cost of rebuilding it.
No account manager relaying requirements to a team you never meet. The person writing the code is the person on the call.
You get something clickable at a regular cadence. Progress you can see beats progress you have to take on faith.
Conventional, durable technology underneath — your next developer will recognize all of it — and a designed, current interface on top. The unfashionable choices belong in the parts nobody sees.
Documented, conventional, and handover-ready from day one — whether or not you keep working with us.
Free, 30 minutes, no deck. We find out what hurts and whether custom software is even the right answer.
Scope, price, timeline, target platforms, and what's explicitly out of scope — with a clickable prototype of the main screens before the build starts.
Smallest useful piece first, demoed as it goes. You can change direction while it's still cheap to change.
Deployed — or submitted to the App Store and Google Play — documented, walked through with your team, and handed over, with or without an ongoing retainer.
Pick the one that matches how well-defined the work is. We'll tell you if you've picked the expensive one for your situation.
Quoted up front
Clear scope, clear number, clear finish line. Best when you know what you want. If scope changes mid-flight we re-quote the delta rather than quietly billing more.
Time & materials
For open-ended, exploratory, or drip-feed work. Itemized so you can see exactly what each hour bought, and you can stop at any point.
Fixed block of hours
A standing block of hours for maintenance, small enhancements, and being reachable. Effectively a part-time developer without the hire.
Short paid review
A few hours to review a quote, a codebase, or a stalled project and tell you straight whether it is sound. No obligation to hire us for the fix.
Deliberately conventional. Most builds land in Python, TypeScript, or C#; we also take work in Go, Rust, Java, C++, Swift, and the less common languages in the grid. If your team already has a stack, we work in yours instead.
Yes — iOS, Android, or both, and we handle App Store and Google Play submission rather than handing you a build file and wishing you luck. Most of our mobile work is Flutter: one codebase ships to both stores, which cuts the build roughly in half against writing the same app twice and keeps the two versions from drifting apart afterwards. We go fully native in Swift or Kotlin when an app leans hard on platform-specific behavior.
Often a mobile Web app is the right answer, and it is cheaper, and we will tell you so. You need a real installed app when it has to work with no signal, run in the background, use the camera or scanner heavily, send push notifications, or live on the home screen because people open it twenty times a day. If none of those apply, a responsive Web app saves you the app stores entirely.
Yes, including the parts most Web shops skip: a signed installer, silent deployment to managed machines, local printers, scales and scanners, and running against a local database when the network drops. macOS builds get signed and notarized so staff are not clicking through security warnings. Where a browser would genuinely do the job, we will say that first.
Design is part of the build, not an upsell. You get a clickable prototype before we write the expensive part, layouts drawn from your brand, and a small design system so the twelfth screen looks like the first. Everything is responsive down to a 360-pixel phone and meets WCAG 2.2 AA contrast and keyboard requirements. If you already have a designer or a brand guide, we build to it.
You do, outright, on final payment — source, history, and deployment instructions, in your own repository and accounts wherever possible. We do not hold your project hostage in our hosting account, and we do not charge to hand it over.
A small integration or automation is usually a few days of work. An internal tool with logins and reporting is typically a few weeks. A first mobile app release — designed, built, and through App Store or Play review — is normally measured in weeks rather than months, because we ship the smallest useful version first. We quote after a free scoping conversation, and we will tell you when the honest answer is that the software is not worth building.
No, and it is common. We take the piece your team is short on — an integration, a migration, a legacy component — work in your repo and your conventions, and leave without a trace of vendor lock-in.
The problem picks the language more than we do. Python and TypeScript carry most of the web work; Go or Rust where a service has to be small and fast; Java, C#, and C++ where your existing systems already run on them; Swift when a mobile app goes fully native; JavaScript and SQL under nearly everything. We also take the work most shops turn down — COBOL, Fortran, Ada & SPARK, Erlang and Elixir, Scala, Clojure, F#, Julia, and Zig — usually on one side or the other of a modernization. If your team already has a stack, we work in yours instead.
A short kickoff, then a working demo you can click through at a regular cadence rather than a status report you have to interpret. You talk directly to the person writing the code, because that is who there is.
Yes, routinely, before you share anything sensitive. Send yours over, or we can provide a simple mutual one.
Your choice. Take it in-house with documentation and a handoff walkthrough, or keep us on a small retainer for updates and support. Both are normal; neither is a trap.
Access was a boolean column on the user record, so every new screen was a schema change. We replaced it with roles that map to screens, credential checks that verify a second person without elevating the first, and a suspension path that fails closed.
A damage or count discrepancy is a claim, and a claim is worth whatever evidence is attached to it. We built the casework — photo capture at the point of discovery, a case that assigns and escalates itself, and a PDF report that goes out with the pictures already in it.
Internal software requests arrived by email and were approved in conversation. We built an intake form, a board and a three-role approval gate where the votes move the card — and gave requesters a private link so they can follow and edit their own request without an account.
You don't need a spec or a budget yet. Tell us what's slow and we'll tell you what it would take.
Call 832-598-8234 or email msco@stoneagesoftware.com. Houston, Texas — serving Houston, The Woodlands, Conroe, Sugar Land, Katy, Pearland, and the Greater Houston metro.
We read your message, an engineer replies with questions or a straight answer, and if it's worth a call we book one. No drip campaign, no handoff to sales.
