FAQ
Questions that deserve direct answers.
Thirty questions across pricing, process, team, and what we actually build. No sales speak. No "synergy."
PRICING
$45-75 per hour depending on project complexity and architect involvement. Senior engineers start at $45-55/hr. Mohit's architectural review and project oversight sits at $65-75/hr. No asterisks. No "executive rates" hidden in fine print. No retainer minimums.
Between 150 and 500 hours depending on scope. An MVP for a startup: 200-300 hours. A full redesign for an agency client: 250-400 hours. A scaled product rebuild: 400-600 hours. We estimate during the Discover phase.
No minimum. The 48-hour paid audit (part of our standard entry point) is 10-15 hours at standard rates. After that, you can engage for as few hours as you need. If you want to ship incrementally, that works. We bill weekly.
No. Fixed-price contracts incentivise rushing over thinking. We bill hourly against a detailed scope document so you see exactly what work is being done and why. If scope changes, we flag it immediately rather than swallow it.
PROCESS
We spend 2-3 weeks understanding your product, your users, and your constraints. Output: architecture proposal document, risk register, and a recommendation on what to build first. This phase clarifies "why" before we touch code. Prevents expensive rewrites later.
This is the technical system design phase. We map databases, APIs, service boundaries, and data flows. If your agency has a designer, we align on how the product architecture supports the design. Output: technical specification and implementation timeline. 2-4 weeks depending on scale.
Depends on scope. For a simple product: 4-6 weeks. For complex: 10-16 weeks. During build, you get weekly progress meetings, tested code (all pull requests reviewed), and early access to running features. Every feature is live and tested before handoff.
After launch, we monitor performance, fix bugs reported by users, and help you add features. This is not "maintenance." This is active partnership as your product meets real users. Timeframe: first 8-12 weeks post-launch, then on-demand support.
TECHNICAL
We primarily build with TypeScript (backend + frontend), React, Next.js, Node.js, Python (for ML-adjacent work), and occasionally Go for high-performance services. We choose based on what your product needs, not what we prefer. Database work spans PostgreSQL, Prisma, Redis, and DynamoDB depending on scale.
Yes, as a productivity accelerator for boilerplate and testing. No, not as a substitute for thinking about architecture. Every pull request from AI-assisted code is reviewed by a senior engineer. Every decision about system design, data flow, and scaling is made by a human who understands your product.
Unit tests for critical business logic. Integration tests for API flows. End-to-end tests for user journeys. We do not test everything, we test what breaks your business if it fails. Your test suite is documented so your team can extend it after we ship.
We set up infrastructure on AWS or Vercel depending on your needs. We handle CI/CD pipelines, databases, and monitoring. Your product deploys with zero downtime. We use Infrastructure as Code so your team can modify it after we hand it off. No black boxes.
TEAM
Senior engineers with 5+ years of production experience each. The person who pitches your project is the person who works on it (or explicitly hands off to another senior, with introduction). No juniors. No "delivery associates." We are not a code factory.
Yes. Every ship. Mohit reviews the architecture, the implementation quality, and signs off before your project goes live. This is not a bottleneck. It is a quality gate. It prevents technical debt from day one.
You will. They attend weekly check-ins. They answer technical questions. Mohit is your escalation point for strategic decisions, not a bottleneck for day-to-day communication. Your team gets the senior engineer's direct Slack.
We pair senior engineers on larger projects. If one is out, the other continues. For smaller projects, we may pause until that person is back (we will tell you upfront). We do not rotate people casually. Continuity matters.
IF YOU ARE AN AGENCY
Yes, by default. Your client never knows Empyreal exists unless you tell them. The deliverable is branded as yours. You own the client relationship. We are the invisible technical partner.
You choose. We can deliver to your team for you to present. We can sit in a call while you present and answer technical questions. We can do a formal handoff meeting with your client if you want. The documentation is yours either way.
We flag it to you immediately. We do not swallow changes. If your client asks for something new mid-project, we tell you the impact on timeline and cost before we build it.
Yes. Some agencies reserve 20-40 hours a month for ongoing support, bug fixes, and feature work. You bill your clients. We work the hours you need. You remain the relationship owner.
IF YOU ARE A STARTUP FOUNDER
During Discover, we help you separate "must ship" from "nice to have." We recommend an MVP scope that lets you get product-market fit signals fast. Then we scale based on what users actually do. Most founders want to build 100 features on day one. The smarter move: launch 30, learn from real users, ship 70 next quarter.
We will tell you. If the architecture we are proposing will not work for your vision, we say so during Discover, not after you have paid for Build. If we think your MVP is too big, we recommend cutting it. Good partners tell founders hard truths early.
Yes. If you hire engineers after launch, we document everything so they can extend the product. The code is yours. The architecture is explained. Your team owns the codebase day one.
We plan for 8-12 weeks of active post-launch support. You pay for those hours. We fix bugs, respond to user feedback, ship critical features. After that, you can extend or move to on-demand support. The choice is yours.
Transparency
What we actually guarantee.
We cannot guarantee your product will win the market. We can guarantee the code will not fail you when it does.
We guarantee
- Code reviewed by a senior architect before ship
- Architecture that scales to 10,000 concurrent users without rewrite
- Documentation your team can maintain
- Honest scope conversations (saying no when appropriate)
- Weekly transparency on budget and timeline
- Post-launch support through first production incidents
We cannot guarantee
- Your product will reach product-market fit (that is up to you and your users)
- The market will care about your idea (we can build it, not will it)
- Your business model will work (that is your responsibility)
- Zero bugs (we ship code, not magic)
- We will stay on your retainer forever (we say when we are not the right partner)
Ready for a different kind of conversation?
The 48-hour paid audit is the starting point. You get a senior architect reviewing your product for $3,000–4,500 (10–15 hours). Then we talk about what you actually need built.