Question 1

Why would I build software instead of subscribing to it?

Accepted Answer

Because renting only ever made sense on price, and the price flipped. Custom software used to cost roughly ten times what it costs now, so paying a monthly fee for a tool that almost fit was the rational move. In 2026 a generalized tool that fits nobody is both worse and more expensive than commissioning one that fits. Run it out: $12,000 a year in subscriptions is $120,000 over ten years flat, or about $151,000 once you allow for a 5% annual escalation. A $30,000 build is $30,000. Break-even lands at year 2.5, and by year ten you are $90,000 to $121,000 ahead with an asset on your side of the ledger instead of a renewal notice.

Question 2

Is there a case where staying on SaaS is the right answer?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and we will tell you when you are in it. Buy the subscription when the job is genuinely commodity, such as email, card processing, payroll, or bookkeeping. Buy it when you have not settled how your process works yet, because paying us to encode a process you are about to change is a waste. Buy it when the spend is small: we are not going to quote a build to replace a tool costing $40 a month. The build case starts to open up when the annual spend is real, the tool only partly fits, and your team has invented workarounds to live with it.

Question 3

Can custom software actually beat the big field-service or industry platforms?

Accepted Answer

For workflows that do not match how those platforms think, yes, and often decisively. A platform sold to a million businesses has to fit the average of a million businesses, which means it fits none of them exactly. The way you dispatch, price, and close out work is the part that makes you money, and it is exactly the part generic software flattens. We also do not rebuild what already works. If your accounting system is fine, we integrate with it rather than replacing it.

Question 4

Would I lose all the features I am paying for now?

Accepted Answer

Count the features you actually touched in the last ninety days. For most teams it is a small fraction of the list on the pricing page. A custom build covers what you use, plus the things you have been working around with spreadsheets and group chats, and leaves out the rest. The teardown call is where we go through this honestly, including the features that turn out to matter more than you expected.

Question 5

How much does a custom build cost?

Accepted Answer

Most builds land between $8,000 and $40,000 CAD as a fixed quote, agreed before kickoff and billed on milestones. Internal tool projects commonly sit in the $10,000 to $35,000 range. Larger enterprise engagements are scoped and quoted individually and we do not publish a number for those, because the honest range is wide enough that a published figure would mislead you. There is no hourly billing on a build. One number, agreed in advance.

Question 6

What does it cost to run after it is built?

Accepted Answer

Hosting is paid directly to the hosting provider rather than to us, and it varies enough with the build that quoting one figure would be misleading. Add whatever third-party services the product genuinely needs, such as payment processing or SMS. There is no licence fee, no per-seat charge, and no mandatory support subscription. Adding your tenth user costs nothing.

Question 7

Can we finance it instead of paying cash up front?

Accepted Answer

Usually. The structure we prefer is straightforward: roughly match what you already spend on the subscriptions being replaced, pay that over two years, and at the end you own the software instead of renewing. Your monthly outflow stays close to what it is today and stops entirely once the term ends.

Question 8

Do you ever take equity instead of cash?

Accepted Answer

On selected engagements, yes. Reduced cash plus a minority equity position, aimed at established brick-and-mortar operators digitizing a real business rather than at startups. We take minority positions only, with no operational control and no board seat by default. The split is negotiated case by case against stage, capital, and deal size, and we walk you through the arithmetic on the first call rather than publishing a band that would not apply to you.

Question 9

Is there GST on the invoice?

Accepted Answer

No. BlueStone AI Inc. is a small supplier under the Canada Revenue Agency threshold and is not currently registered for GST/HST, so invoices carry no GST line.

Question 10

Does custom software not break constantly? I have heard maintenance is a nightmare.

Accepted Answer

That reputation comes from software built badly and documented worse, usually under time pressure by someone who had already moved on. Well built custom software is not breaking every two minutes. It does what it did the day it shipped, because nothing else is being pushed into it. What genuinely changes is the world around it: an operating system update, a payment provider revising an API, a tax rate, a rule change, your own business doing something new. That work is predictable, it is small, and it is priced in from day one rather than sprung on you in year two. Compare that against a subscription, where the vendor changes the product underneath you on their schedule and you absorb it whether it suits you or not.

Question 11

Do you support the software after launch, and how is that priced?

Accepted Answer

It is not a flat monthly retainer. You have two options and you pick. Take the code and owe us nothing, which is a real option and not a bluff. Or keep an hourly relationship, priced by the complexity of what we built and triaged by severity: critical means we start now and it costs more, simple means the next available week. Response targets and severity definitions are written into the statement of work before you sign, sized to how critical the system is to your operation. We publish the model rather than a rate because the rate depends on the system.

Question 12

What happens if Bluestone disappears?

Accepted Answer

This is the right question to ask any small vendor, so here is the plain answer. The code lives in your repository, deployed to your accounts, on your domain, using standard, widely used technologies with no proprietary runtime you can only get from us. Full source and IP transfer to you on final payment. The documentation is written so a competent engineer can pick the system up cold. If we vanished tomorrow, you would hire a developer and carry on with an asset you already own. That is categorically different from a SaaS vendor shutting down or being acquired, where the product itself goes away and you start again. For what it is worth on the other side of the risk: BlueStone AI Inc. is a federally incorporated Canadian company carrying $2,000,000 in professional liability and $2,000,000 in cyber liability coverage, all listed further down this page.

Question 13

Can I take the codebase to a different developer later?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and you do not need to tell us first. Handover is structured for exactly that: your repository, your hosting accounts, your credentials, documentation good enough to onboard someone who has never spoken to us. Creating dependency would be an easy way to make more money and a fast way to become the thing this company was started to replace.

Question 14

What if we want new features in two years?

Accepted Answer

Your choice of two shapes. Small changes go through the hourly relationship if you kept one. Anything substantial gets scoped and fixed-quoted like a new build. Either way it is work you commission when you want it, not a tier upgrade you get pushed into because the feature you need was moved behind a higher plan.

Question 15

Who owns the data?

Accepted Answer

You do, from day one, including while the build is in progress. It sits in your accounts. Canadian data residency is available and is the default when a project calls for it.

Question 16

What is a free teardown?

Accepted Answer

A 30-minute call where we go through how your business actually runs its core workflows, which tools you pay for, and where work gets stuck or retyped. Within 24 hours you get a written summary: what is broken, what we would build, and a cost range. Free, no pitch, no obligation, and the summary is yours to use even if you hire someone else or do nothing.

Question 17

How long does a build take?

Accepted Answer

Most projects ship in four to ten weeks depending on scope, with the first working deliverable typically around day 22. We work in short cycles with weekly check-ins, so you are looking at running software the whole way through rather than waiting for a reveal at the end.

Question 18

How much of our time will this take?

Accepted Answer

Discovery is the part that needs you, and it is worth the hours: we need to understand the process properly or we will build the wrong thing quickly. After that the load drops sharply. Migration is our job, not yours. The target at switchover is about fifteen minutes per person, which is a new login and a new password. We move the data out of the tools you are leaving.

Question 19

Will it integrate with the systems we already have?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and that is usually the plan. Accounting, payments, messaging, scheduling, whatever is genuinely doing its job stays and gets connected. We build the workflow that does not exist and wire it to the tools that already work, rather than trying to rebuild the world.

Question 20

Who actually does the work?

Accepted Answer

Eric Todhunter leads every engagement and is the person you talk to, start to finish. We stay lean by design, so overhead does not end up in your invoice, and we bring in specialist capacity for a specific project when the work calls for it. On public-sector work we bid as prime and staff up on award.

Question 21

Do you use AI to build this?

Accepted Answer

Yes, as tooling, where it makes the work faster or more accurate. Nothing ships that has not been read, tested, and understood by a person who will still be answerable for it in a year. We also build AI features into products where they earn their place, such as classifying a line item against an existing price book, and we leave them out where they would just be decoration.

Question 22

Do we get a mobile app?

Accepted Answer

Most field work is best served by a mobile-friendly web app that installs to the home screen and needs no app store approval to update. We build native iOS and Android when there is a real reason, such as offline-first sync, deep camera or sensor work, or push notifications that have to be reliable. We tell you which path makes sense and why, before you pay for either.

Question 23

Where are you based?

Accepted Answer

Metro Vancouver, British Columbia. The registered municipality is Port Coquitlam. We work with clients across Metro Vancouver, the rest of BC, and Canada, mostly remotely, and we will meet on a job site or a shop floor when it is useful.

Question 24

Are you insured, and are you a real registered company?

Accepted Answer

Yes to both, and every number is independently checkable. $5,000,000 commercial general liability, $2,000,000 professional liability, and $2,000,000 cyber liability, all bound and in force. WorkSafeBC account 201966367, active. BlueStone AI Inc. is a federal CBCA corporation, number 1730441-2, registered extraprovincially in BC as A0142791. Certificates of insurance and a WorkSafeBC clearance letter are issued on request, usually the same day.

Question 25

Do you work with government?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Bluestone is a pre-qualified supplier to the Office of the Auditor General of British Columbia under RFQ OAG-RFQ-26-068 for Digital Services, pre-qualified on the Province of BC Multi-Use List for Service Area 3, Software Development and Testing, reference ON-003317-03, and registered on the BC Digital Marketplace. A pre-qualification is permission to be invited to bid, not a contract award. Separately, we hold an active contract with a Canadian provincial government ministry, client name withheld under contract confidentiality.

Question 26

Can you name your clients or provide references?

Accepted Answer

We do not publish client names, because written permission is not on file and we are not going to assume it. What we can describe is the work: a BC electrical contractor running its whole operation on one application, an aesthetics clinic in the BC interior, an independent coffee shop, a private education provider. References can sometimes be arranged privately where the client agrees to it. Ask on the call.

Question 27

Do you hold SOC 2, ISO 27001, or similar certifications?

Accepted Answer

No. Bluestone does not hold SOC 2, ISO 27001, FedRAMP, HECVAT, or StateRAMP, and will not imply otherwise to win a bid. CyberSecure Canada is in progress. WCAG 2.1 AA is a build standard we apply to every project, not a certification we hold. Bluestone is a Canadian-owned small business and is not Indigenous-owned, women-owned, or veteran-owned. If a requirement is a hard gate we cannot pass, we will tell you in the first conversation rather than in week six.

Question 28

What is the next step?

Accepted Answer

Book a free 30-minute teardown, or run your current subscription spend through the cost calculator first if you want the numbers before the conversation. Worst case you walk away with a written summary of what is broken in your current setup and a plain description of the tool that would fix it.

The objections,
answered straight.

Put your own subscription spend in.

The answers above, in registry numbers.

Insurance and registrations

Where we already sit on the government side

Pre-qualified supplier to the Office of the Auditor General of British Columbia

Pre-qualified, Province of British Columbia Multi-Use List, Service Area 3

Registered supplier

Ask the version of the question that is actually yours.

The objections,answered straight.

Bluestone at a glance

Why not just buy SaaS

What it costs

After launch

How we work

About Bluestone