Custom Notary Software Development

Most reputable dev shops do. Support usually includes bug fixes, security patching, infrastructure monitoring, and small enhancements. The cost is significantly lower than the initial build, often ranging from 20 to 40 percent of the original monthly burn, depending on the volume of features and the complexity of the platform.

A standard cadence includes daily asynchronous updates, weekly demos, weekly planning or alignment calls, and monthly roadmap reviews. Consistent visibility into progress, blockers, and decisions is essential for compliance-oriented products.

Healthy teams maintain an annual turnover below 15 to 18 percent. Anything beyond 25 percent usually signals cultural or operational issues. High turnover directly affects continuity, knowledge retention, and long-term platform stability.

Ask to meet the exact developers and the architect who will be assigned before signing. Request their LinkedIn profiles, confirm their availability, and ask each engineer to explain their experience with similar architectures. Reputable companies never swap the team after closing the deal.

Your contract should define acceptance criteria, establish delivery checkpoints, and include the right to pause or terminate if quality standards aren’t met. Having access to the repo and infrastructure ensures you can transition to another team without losing progress. Professional teams also offer remediation at their own cost when they fail KPIs.

For notarization software, starting with a single developer is usually risky because compliance-heavy systems require architecture decisions from day one. A small, senior team—typically one architect and one full-stack engineer—is a safer starting point, with gradual scaling once proof of concept is validated.

Ensure you hold administrative access to repositories, servers, and development environments. Require the team to work inside your GitHub or GitLab organization and enforce daily code pushes. Documentation, credentials, and configurations should live in your tools, not theirs. This prevents lock-in and protects your IP.

Your contract should state that you own all source code, repos, designs, infrastructure, and documentation. It should include a work-for-hire clause and prohibit the dev shop from reusing your architecture or components in competing products. Access to repositories must begin on day one.

Immediate red flags include quoting a full timeline before discovery, promising to build a notarization MVP in less than ten weeks, or excluding architects from early conversations. Teams that cannot clearly articulate risks around ID verification, compliance logic, and audit trails generally don’t understand the scope.

Ask for a reference you can connect with through LinkedIn, not just a phone number. Request one reference from a successful project and another from a project that faced obstacles. Honest firms are transparent about both. If the vendor hesitates, the references are probably curated or unreliable.

Experienced teams can walk you through real architecture diagrams, workflows, and system decision logs from previous projects. They can explain exactly how they implemented audit trails, encryption standards, role-based access, and secure data storage. If they offer only high-level marketing claims, they likely lack true compliance experience.

A well-structured project takes around five to six months. This timeline includes two to four weeks for discovery, four to six weeks for architecture and setup, and roughly twelve to eighteen weeks for building the notarization workflows, audit logs, security layers, and platform UI.

idden costs often include cloud hosting, which ranges from $200 to $1,200 per month early on; identity verification and e-signature APIs, which cost one to two dollars per transaction; and compliance or legal reviews that can add several thousand dollars to the project. Security tools and monitoring platforms also add recurring monthly fees.

Nearshore senior developers usually cost between $45 and $65 per hour, while US developers typically charge between $130 and $180 per hour. For compliance-heavy products like notarization platforms, the cost gap becomes more significant because they require senior talent, not juniors.

A nearshore team typically delivers a notarization MVP for $180K to $350K, depending on e-signature workflows, audit trails, ID verification, and compliance requirements. A US-based team usually charges between $450K and $750K for the same scope because of higher hourly rates and overhead costs.