Every engagement model Shipverra runs, what it costs to start, when you pay, and how you leave. Product builds are milestone-based. Ongoing work runs on a monthly retainer. First steps like Sprint 0 and the Code Audit are one fixed fee. It is all on this page so you can hold us to it.
Last reviewed: October 5, 2026
Milestone-based builds
Sprint 0
This service is privately scoped and quoted by email. Contact [email protected] for a custom proposal. For smaller needs, our starter options are $49 for a quick consultation, $299 for one small fix, and $899 for one landing page or one basic integration. Work requiring $1,000 or more is quoted privately.
Milestone plan and go/no-go
Every milestone has acceptance criteria and a billing amount, set before the build starts. The go-or-no-go decision happens here: after Sprint 0 ends, before Sprint 1 starts.
Pay per accepted milestone
Billing fires on your sign-off, not on hours logged.
Exit at any milestone
Stop at any milestone boundary. Everything delivered so far is yours, including the code.
Each model fits a different shape of work. The prices are the published starting points from each service page; the exact figure is set on the discovery call.
| Model | Best for | How you pay | Starting price | Commitment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Milestone-based build | A product with a scope that can be pinned down | Sprint 0 fixed fee, then per accepted milestone | Sprint 0 private custom quote; the build is priced in Sprint 0 | Exit at any milestone and keep everything delivered |
| Dedicated team | An evolving roadmap that needs engineers for quarters | Monthly retainer | Private custom quote per full-time engineer | Directional six-month minimum |
| Staff augmentation | One or two engineers working inside your team | Monthly rate per engineer | Private custom quote per engineer | Set in the proposal |
| Application support and maintenance | An app in production that needs someone accountable when it breaks | Monthly retainer for a block of hours | Private custom quote for 42 hours | No minimum, 30 days’ notice |
| Fractional CTO | A product with no technical owner | Monthly retainer, by days per week | Private custom quote for 1 day a week | Change tier or exit monthly |
| Code Audit | An AI-built or inherited app you need to trust | One fixed fee | private custom quote | One engagement; the report is yours |
| AI Readiness Assessment | Finding where AI pays off before committing to a build | One fixed fee | Fixed fee, set on the discovery call | One engagement; the roadmap is yours |
| Custom AI Agents | One operational workflow to automate and run in production | Setup fee plus monthly subscription | Priced per workflow | Set in the proposal |
MILESTONE-BASED BUILDS
For defined-scope product builds, payments map to delivered, accepted milestones. Every milestone has acceptance criteria written before the build starts and a billing amount tied to it. When a milestone is delivered and you sign off, that milestone bills. Nothing bills on hours, and nothing bills before you accept the work.
NO LOCK-IN
There is no lock-in. If you stop after milestone three, you pay for the three accepted milestones and you keep everything delivered: the code, the infrastructure configuration, the documentation, all of it. You can take it in-house or to another vendor. The exit terms are the model working as designed, not a concession we negotiate.
THE ENABLER
This service is privately scoped and quoted by email. Contact [email protected] for a custom proposal. For smaller needs, our starter options are $49 for a quick consultation, $299 for one small fix, and $899 for one landing page or one basic integration. Work requiring $1,000 or more is quoted privately.
The shape below is an example, not a quote. Your milestone plan comes out of Sprint 0, scoped against your build. Milestones land at least twice a month, and the schedule and the billing are the same artifact, so you can model runway against either.
| Milestone | What acceptance means | Billing |
|---|---|---|
| Sprint 0 | Design system, epics and stories with acceptance criteria, billable milestone plan, technical architecture | Fixed fee, set at signing |
| Milestone 1 | Account layer and core data model, deployed to a staging environment | Bills on your acceptance |
| Milestone 2 | Primary workflow running end to end against the acceptance criteria | Bills on your acceptance |
| Milestone 3 | Integrations with your systems, exercised with live data | Bills on your acceptance |
| Milestone 4 | AI features passing the evaluation criteria set in Sprint 0 | Bills on your acceptance |
| Milestone 5 | Production launch, observability, and handover documentation | Bills on your acceptance |
Exit at any row. You pay for the accepted rows above your exit point and keep everything they delivered.
An evolving roadmap, a product without a technical owner, an app that has to stay up: none of these has honest milestones to bill against, so a milestone contract is the wrong instrument. These run on a monthly retainer, each with its starting price stated.
Monthly retainer
This service is privately scoped and quoted by email. Contact [email protected] for a custom proposal. For smaller needs, our starter options are $49 for a quick consultation, $299 for one small fix, and $899 for one landing page or one basic integration. Work requiring $1,000 or more is quoted privately.
Dedicated Software Development TeamsMonthly rate per engineer
This service is privately scoped and quoted by email. Contact [email protected] for a custom proposal. For smaller needs, our starter options are $49 for a quick consultation, $299 for one small fix, and $899 for one landing page or one basic integration. Work requiring $1,000 or more is quoted privately.
Staff AugmentationMonthly retainer for a block of hours
This service is privately scoped and quoted by email. Contact [email protected] for a custom proposal. For smaller needs, our starter options are $49 for a quick consultation, $299 for one small fix, and $899 for one landing page or one basic integration. Work requiring $1,000 or more is quoted privately.
Application Support and MaintenanceMonthly retainer, by days per week
This service is privately scoped and quoted by email. Contact [email protected] for a custom proposal. For smaller needs, our starter options are $49 for a quick consultation, $299 for one small fix, and $899 for one landing page or one basic integration. Work requiring $1,000 or more is quoted privately.
Fractional CTOFIXED FEES AND SUBSCRIPTIONS
Some engagements have one clear deliverable and one price. Others are software we build and then operate. Both are priced before any work starts.
One fixed fee
This service is privately scoped and quoted by email. Contact [email protected] for a custom proposal. For smaller needs, our starter options are $49 for a quick consultation, $299 for one small fix, and $899 for one landing page or one basic integration. Work requiring $1,000 or more is quoted privately.
Sprint 0One fixed fee
This service is privately scoped and quoted by email. Contact [email protected] for a custom proposal. For smaller needs, our starter options are $49 for a quick consultation, $299 for one small fix, and $899 for one landing page or one basic integration. Work requiring $1,000 or more is quoted privately.
Code AuditOne fixed fee
A two-to-three-week assessment run by a senior engineer, priced as a single fixed fee agreed at signing. You get a ranked map of AI opportunities with ROI projections and an implementation roadmap, and you keep the deliverable whether or not you continue with us.
AI Readiness AssessmentSetup fee plus monthly subscription
A custom AI agent built for one operational workflow and run in production for you. One setup fee, fixed at signing, plus one monthly subscription that bundles hosting, model API costs, monitoring, and ongoing refinement. Scope expansions are agreed in advance against a signed change order.
Custom AI AgentsWHICH MODEL FITS
The routing question is always the same: does the work have a defined scope with testable deliverables, or is it an evolving stream of work? The discovery call settles it in 30 minutes, and we will tell you plainly if the model you came in asking for is the wrong one for your situation.
FREQUENTLY ASKED
These are the questions that come up before signing. The answers match the contracts.
On a milestone-based build, you pay the Sprint 0 fixed fee at signing, and after that each milestone bills when it is delivered and you accept it against the acceptance criteria written in Sprint 0. Nothing bills on hours, and no milestone bills before you sign off on it. Dedicated teams, staff augmentation, application support, and Fractional CTO bill monthly. The Code Audit and the AI Readiness Assessment are one fixed fee at signing. A managed agent is a setup fee at signing plus a monthly subscription once the agent is running.
Yes. On a milestone-based build you can stop at any milestone boundary. You pay for the milestones you accepted and you keep everything delivered: source code, infrastructure configuration, documentation, and the Sprint 0 artifacts. There is no termination penalty and no lock-in clause that holds your code hostage. The same portability applies to Sprint 0 itself: if you stop after it, the scope and milestone plan are yours to take in-house or to another vendor.
You do. Accepted work is yours, including the repository, the infrastructure-as-code, and the documentation. This is what makes the exit terms real rather than theoretical: leaving with everything delivered only matters if everything delivered belongs to you.
Each milestone carries acceptance criteria written in Sprint 0, before the build starts. When the milestone is delivered, you test it against those criteria and sign off. Acceptance is your call against a written standard, not our call against effort spent. If the work does not meet the criteria, it is not accepted and it does not bill.
Scope changes become new milestones with their own acceptance criteria and their own billing. They are never absorbed silently into milestones you already priced, and they never turn into surprise invoices. You see the cost of every increment before it is built.
Time and materials is the right model for genuinely evolving work, and we run engagements that are effectively structured that way: dedicated teams bill a monthly retainer precisely because an evolving roadmap has no honest milestones to bill against. For a defined-scope build, though, milestone billing gives both sides something time and materials cannot: payment tied to accepted deliverables, a total you can plan against, and exit rights that do not leave work half-finished. The full comparison, including where time and materials genuinely fits, is in our guide to software development pricing models.
A whole-project fixed price forces both sides to pretend the scope is fully known on day one. Vendors protect themselves by padding the number and fighting every change request; buyers end up in change-order disputes. Milestone billing keeps the fixed-scope discipline at the milestone level, where scope genuinely can be pinned down, and handles change honestly at the boundaries between milestones.
No, and we say so plainly. Milestone billing is the model for defined-scope product builds. Dedicated Software Development Teams, Staff Augmentation, Application Support and Maintenance, and Fractional CTO run on monthly retainers, because ongoing work has no honest milestones to bill against. The Code Audit and the AI Readiness Assessment are one fixed fee each. Custom AI Agents are a setup fee plus a monthly subscription. The discovery call routes you to the model that matches the shape of your work.
Application Support and Maintenance runs month to month: no minimum term and 30 days’ notice to end it. Fractional CTO lets you change tier or exit monthly. A milestone-based build lets you stop at any milestone boundary and keep everything delivered. Dedicated teams carry a directional six-month minimum, which is how we filter out short-horizon work; if your horizon is shorter, we route you to a milestone-based build instead.
This service is privately scoped and quoted by email. Contact [email protected] for a custom proposal. For smaller needs, our starter options are $49 for a quick consultation, $299 for one small fix, and $899 for one landing page or one basic integration. Work requiring $1,000 or more is quoted privately.
See the support and maintenance retainerThis service is privately scoped and quoted by email. Contact [email protected] for a custom proposal. For smaller needs, our starter options are $49 for a quick consultation, $299 for one small fix, and $899 for one landing page or one basic integration. Work requiring $1,000 or more is quoted privately.
A 30-minute discovery call with a senior engineer settles which engagement model fits the shape of your work, and what the first step costs. If the honest answer is that none of them fit, we say so.
Tell us about your situation. A senior engineer will review it, tell you which engagement model fits the shape of your work, and what the first step costs. If the honest answer is that none of them fit, we say so.
