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Birchline Digital

Investment

Published starting points for software, AI, automation, product engineering, and web work — priced around scope, complexity, and business value.

We price around scope, complexity, risk, and business value — not simply the number of hours it takes to write the code.

Starting at is the minimum qualifying scope, not the default quote. Every engagement also falls into one of six investment bands by scope and complexity — see how pricing works.

Starting points

  • Systems & AI Discovery$2,500Substantial Discovery typically $5,000–$7,500+
  • Premium Websites$10,000Typically $10,000–$25,000+
  • Business Automation$12,500Typically $15,000–$40,000+
  • E-Commerce / Advanced Web$12,500Typically $15,000–$40,000+
  • AI Discoverability & Answer-Engine Readiness$7,500Typically $10,000–$25,000+
  • Custom Software$15,000Typically $25,000–$100,000+
  • AI Systems$15,000Typically $25,000–$100,000+
  • Digital Product Engineering$25,000Typically $50,000–$200,000+
  • Ongoing Engineering$4,000/monthBilled monthly in advance
  • Large engagementsCustom scopeScoped individually

Ongoing engineering

Essential Care

$4,000/month

Keeping what is live healthy, current, and quietly monitored.

  • Maintenance and application health monitoring
  • Dependency and security updates, and security patching
  • Basic vulnerability monitoring
  • Backup and recovery checks where applicable
  • Bug remediation and compatibility maintenance
  • Small improvements

Continuous Engineering

$5,000/month

A steady stream of engineering capacity after implementation.

  • Everything in Essential Care
  • Feature development and integrations
  • Proactive security hardening
  • Recurring dependency, security and access-control review
  • Integration-security maintenance
  • Performance, architecture and optimization work

Technology Partnership

$10,000/month

Reserved capacity and senior technical direction over the long term.

  • Everything in the lower tiers
  • Reserved engineering capacity
  • Periodic application-security architecture review
  • Threat-model updates and deeper access-control review
  • Resilience and recovery planning
  • Product strategy, AI and automation evolution

Capacity, response expectations, and scope — including security maintenance and any incident support for Birchline-maintained software — are defined in each agreement rather than promised as unlimited work.

Security and what it costs

Security is part of the engineering process, not an add-on after launch. We consider it during architecture, development, testing, deployment, and ongoing maintenance.

Security that is fundamental to a properly engineered system is included in the project scope and price rather than sold as an optional extra. Depending on the system, that typically includes:

  • Secure authentication and role-based access design
  • Least-privilege permissions and secure database access patterns
  • Secrets and API-key handling, with environment separation
  • Input validation, safe API design, and dependency review
  • Security-conscious deployment, logging and monitoring foundations
  • Backup and recovery planning where applicable, and remediation of issues found during development

Application Security Assessment

Custom scope

For systems where the risk warrants a deeper look than standard engineering review — scoped to the application, not the whole organization.

  • Architecture review
  • Authentication and access-control review
  • Dependency review
  • API and integration review
  • Configuration and environment review
  • Vulnerability assessment and a written remediation plan

Scoped through a project inquiry or Systems & AI Discovery, then proposed as a defined engagement. Independent penetration testing, where required, is coordinated with a third-party specialist and identified as such.

Higher-risk or regulated systems may require independent or specialist security work beyond standard software engineering. Where that is the case, we say so early and can coordinate qualified security specialists as part of the engagement. The following sit outside standard software engineering and are scoped separately, usually with a specialist partner:

  • Independent penetration testing and red-team exercises
  • SOC / SIEM management, 24/7 monitoring or MDR
  • Enterprise-wide network and endpoint security
  • Employee phishing simulation programs
  • Formal compliance audits or certifications
  • Full forensic incident response

How engagements are structured

Project work is typically invoiced in stages — an initiating payment to reserve capacity and begin discovery, then milestone payments tied to architecture, engineering, and launch.

Scope changes are handled as written change orders rather than quiet additions, so the budget and the schedule always reflect the same reality.

Ongoing engineering is billed monthly in advance, and can begin after launch or after inheriting an existing system.

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