--- title: "Custom Software for Mission-Driven Teams | Heartwood" description: "Senior engineers who build software, strengthen the teams behind it, and help the right people find it. Start with a fixed-price engagement from $2,500." url: "https://heartwood.agency/" --- # You have a mission. Heartwood builds and fixes software, strengthens the teams behind it, and helps the right people find it. Maybe it’s an idea that deserves to exist. Maybe it’s a team that’s busy but stuck. Maybe it’s something good the right people haven’t found yet. Whatever it is, it matters, and you weren’t meant to carry it alone. That’s why Heartwood exists. [Find your starting point →](https://heartwood.agency/#starting-points)[Get in Touch](https://heartwood.agency/#contact) Trusted by partners like ![Rallee](https://heartwood.agency/images/logos/rallee.svg) ![Great Pet Vet](https://heartwood.agency/images/logos/great-pet-vet.png) ![Smart Metrix](https://heartwood.agency/images/logos/smartmetrix.svg) Our team brings 25+ years of experience from companies like YouVersion, Planning Center, _Our Technology_, and Differential. ## Find your starting point. Pick the one closest to where you are. Each page has a short checklist to confirm it. * ### You haven’t built it yet. You have an idea worth building, and you need to know it holds up, or you need others to see what you see. * You have a big idea, or someone’s asking you to bet on theirs. Idea CheckBefore you bet the farm. You walk away with a written go / no-go on whether it can be built, and what it would really cost. $2,500About one week[See if it fits →](https://heartwood.agency/services/idea-check) * You know it’s good, and you can’t make anyone else see it. PrototypeSomething they can hold. You walk away with a working first piece of your app, in code you own outright. $7,500About three weeks[See if it fits →](https://heartwood.agency/services/prototype) * ### You’re building, and it’s harder than it should be. Your team is busy, but not on what matters, or you need more hands and you’ve been burned before. * Everyone’s busy. You’re not convinced it’s on the right things. Team DiagnosisYou’re not imagining it. You walk away with a written assessment of what’s going wrong, and what to fix first. $5,000Two to four weeks[See if it fits →](https://heartwood.agency/services/team-diagnosis) * You need more engineers, but every one you add makes your days heavier. Team TrialTwo lighter weeks. You walk away with two weeks of our engineers inside your team, and a clear answer on whether we’d lighten your load. $5,000Two weeks[See if it fits →](https://heartwood.agency/services/team-trial) * ### It’s built, and it isn’t working the way you hoped. You’re running on code you don’t trust, or you built something good and the right people haven’t found it. * It works, mostly. It’s slow, it breaks, and you don’t trust where it came from. Code AuditWhat you actually have. You walk away with a keep-or-rebuild verdict, with what every fix costs. $2,500Two to three weeks[See if it fits →](https://heartwood.agency/services/code-audit) * You built something worth using. Right now it’s the best-kept secret in your space, and that’s not a good thing. Get NoticedYour best-kept secret shouldn’t be. You walk away with a plan to get the right people engaged (developers on your tools, or your first 100 users), with the biggest gap already fixed. $5,000Three weeks[See if it fits →](https://heartwood.agency/services/get-noticed) ![Heartwood](https://heartwood.agency/images/youtube-cover.jpg) ## Your mission isn’t interchangeable. Neither is the team you trust with it. We believe everyone is created to count in ways no one else can fully replicate. The software that serves your mission shouldn’t be interchangeable either. ### Eternal Good Faith tech, church tech, and tools that serve the kingdom directly. This is where Heartwood started, and it’s close to our heart. We build for organizations whose mission has an eternal horizon, and we steward their resources with the reverence that deserves. [Start with an Idea Check →](https://heartwood.agency/services/idea-check)[Read our church tech guide →](https://heartwood.agency/guides/church-tech) ### Social Good Nonprofits, community platforms, and tools that serve people in crisis or need. We’ve built software for organizations fighting homelessness, strengthening communities, and connecting people to the help they deserve. Your budget is sacred to us. Every dollar stretches further when your team actually cares. [Start with a Code Audit →](https://heartwood.agency/services/code-audit)[Read our nonprofit software guide →](https://heartwood.agency/guides/nonprofit-software-development) ### Human Good Startups, small businesses, and organizations solving real problems for real people. Not every mission has a religious or nonprofit context. Sometimes good software just means making someone’s life meaningfully better. If the work you’re doing lifts people up, we want to be part of it. [Start with an Idea Check →](https://heartwood.agency/services/idea-check)[Read our startup MVP guide →](https://heartwood.agency/guides/startup-mvp-development) ## Where a Starter can grow. Every Heartwood relationship begins with a **Starter**: one fixed price between $2,500 and $7,500, one to four weeks, and yours to keep whether or not we work together again. When you’re ready to go deeper, it grows into a **Partnership**, where we build it with you as a Custom Build or join your team as an Embedded Team. You choose the pace. ### Custom Build From$20,000 When you know what to build. Scoped from a Starter, built in your repo, with working software every two weeks. ### What to expect [Learn more →](https://heartwood.agency/services/custom-build) ### Embedded Team $6,500/moper quarter lane · 3-month minimum A senior engineer, engineering leader, or developer-relations lead on your team, with a quarter, half, or all of their focus yours. Every lane comes with the team behind them. ### What to expect [Learn more →](https://heartwood.agency/services/embedded-team) Need senior engineering leadership without hiring a CTO? Start with a [Team Diagnosis](https://heartwood.agency/services/team-diagnosis). When you’re ready for us to lead the changes, it becomes a leadership lane on an Embedded Team. You don’t need to pick a Starter to reach out. Tell us what you’re working on and we’ll point you to the one that fits. [Get in Touch](https://heartwood.agency/#contact) ## Common questions about pricing ### How much does it cost to work with Heartwood? Most relationships start with a Starter: one fixed price from $2,500 to $7,500, one to four weeks. From there, a Custom Build starts at $20,000, and an Embedded Team is $6,500/month per quarter lane, 3-month minimum. ### Can we skip the Starter? Not usually. A Starter is how we set your project up for success: a paid engagement that lets us go deep on your idea, your code, or your team before anyone commits to more. You get real work you keep either way, and we get to do it properly instead of guessing for free. If you already have a spec from someone else, an Idea Check or Code Audit reads it first. ### Fixed price or monthly? A Custom Build is a fixed statement of work: a defined build, a defined price, agreed before we start. If the scope will keep growing rather than finishing, an Embedded Team fits better, billed monthly by the lane. We’ll work with you to decide which one fits your project best. ### Who owns the code? You do, from the first commit. ## From people we’ve helped > One of the best decisions > > Working with Michael was one of the best decisions I made for my startup. As a non-technical founder, he’s given me the peace of mind that my product will be built well and land well with our target users. > > ![Kevin Holst](https://heartwood.agency/images/team/kevin-holst.jpg) > > Kevin HolstFounder, Rallee > Outstanding communication > > Our only regret was that we could not immediately hire him full time. Very few developers with the depth of knowledge Michael brings to the table have the outstanding communication ability that is just part of his nature. > > ![Lisa Durham](https://heartwood.agency/images/team/lisa-durham.jpg) > > Lisa DurhamVice President, varDesk > Value your perspective > > Having an experienced set of eyes on the codebase was genuinely helpful. It surfaced several things we were able to address quickly. I really value your perspective and would absolutely be open to doing another targeted code review as the product continues to mature. > > ![Amber Smart](https://heartwood.agency/images/team/amber-smart.jpg) > > Amber SmartFounder, SmartMetrix [See our work →](https://heartwood.agency/work) ## The Heartwood Difference We call it irrational care. The kind that doesn’t make sense on a spreadsheet. When you work with Heartwood, you’re not getting a team that clocks in, writes code, and disappears. You’re getting people who lose sleep thinking about your mission, who send handwritten notes after a kickoff call, who fly in for a meeting when a Zoom would’ve been fine. We care more than makes sense on paper. That’s by design. Some agencies operate on a transactional model: you pay, they build, they leave. We’ve been on the other side of that equation for years, hiring agencies and watching them fail to understand our culture or our mission. We didn’t want to repeat that model. We wanted to be just as invested in your idea as you are. So Heartwood was built around relationship, not transactions. Our first engagement is short. The relationship isn’t. Our core team is lean and experienced. You’re going to get quality and depth on every engagement. Doing good isn’t a tagline for us. We look for ways to create impact through our tech, our team structure, and the work we choose to take on. There’s a verse we come back to often: “Better one handful with peace than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind.” We say no to a lot. Not because we don’t want to work hard, but because we want the right work, the kind that brings peace, not pressure. The kind that lifts people up. The kind that still matters years from now. We believe everyone is built to count. We just want to make sure the things we build help them do it. ![Michael Martin](https://heartwood.agency/images/illustrations/signature-michael-martin.svg) ![Michael Martin, Founder of Heartwood](https://heartwood.agency/images/team/michael-martin-heartwood-founder.jpg) [Read the full story](https://heartwood.agency/about)[Meet our small team](https://heartwood.agency/about#team)[Read the founder’s letter →](https://heartwood.agency/letter) ## You don’t have to carry it alone. Maybe your idea has been sitting in a notebook for months. Maybe it keeps getting pushed aside because other priorities keep winning. Maybe you’ve tried to build it and it didn’t go anywhere. Not because the idea was wrong, but because you didn’t have the right people around you. Whatever the reason, the pull you feel toward this work is real. It’s not going away. And you weren’t meant to carry it alone. We’d love to hear about it. Send us a message and we’ll take it from there. Maybe that’s a video call. Maybe it’s coffee. Maybe it’s just a few emails back and forth. A real conversation about what you’re carrying and how we can help you bring it into the world. Start here ## Tell us what’s going on. We’ll point you to the Starter that fits. ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "ProfessionalService", "@id": "https://heartwood.agency/#organization", "name": "Heartwood", "legalName": "Heartwood Agency", "url": "https://heartwood.agency", "logo": "https://heartwood.agency/images/logo.png", "description": "Custom software agency for mission-driven teams. 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