SaaS development for software vendors and ISVs
We develop existing SaaS products, owning agreed product areas from implementation through releases and support.
Your product lead sets direction. Our engineers work within your codebase, reviews and release process.
- 120+Projects delivered across 12 countries since 2012
- 100+Senior in-house engineers, six countries
- 2 to 4 weeksTypical time from signature to start
- ISTQBISTQB-certified QA engineers
- ISO 27001Certified security practice, audited by Quay Audit UK
01Overview
Product engineering for software with existing users
unicrew works inside software vendors' product organizations, with responsibility for engineering areas shaped by the product and its industry requirements. We agree ownership, onboarding and release responsibilities around the existing product.
- Ownership of a product areaWe take responsibility for agreed functionality, including its bugs and support questions, with priorities set alongside your product lead.
- Inside your processOur engineers use your repository, board, review standards and release process.
- Our own engineersEveryone on an engagement is a unicrew employee rather than a subcontractor found for the job, and nothing is re-brokered onward.
- A team shaped around releasesPlan the team around product priorities, with changes to scope and engineering roles agreed as the roadmap develops.
02Capacity
Choose the model for continuing product development
Compare an embedded partner team, permanent hires and independent specialists by continuity and how you direct the work. A separately scoped project also fits a defined standalone deliverable.
| An embedded team from unicrewunicrew | Hiring the roles in-houseIn-house | Contractors, hired per roleContract |
|---|---|---|
| Time to a start dateMost engagements start within two to four weeks of signature, with scope and responsibilities agreed first. | Time to a start dateA search, an offer, a notice period and a ramp. Right for the roles you will still need in three years. | Time to a start dateAgree a specialist scope, availability and product onboarding with each contractor. |
| Who carries the contextWe plan product onboarding, documentation and handover within the agreed team responsibilities. | Who carries the contextYou do, permanently, which is exactly right for the part of the product you compete on. | Who carries the contextSpecialist knowledge sits with the individual; agree documentation and handover for the wider team. |
| When the roadmap movesScale up for a push and back down when it ships. Team extension is billed monthly per team member. | When the roadmap movesYour permanent team can change priorities while retaining product knowledge in-house. | When the roadmap movesAdjust the specialist scope and availability under the contract. |
03Scope
Roadmap delivery and platform improvement
Scope new functionality alongside the architecture, operating costs and quality work that support continuing releases.
Our engineers scope, build, ship and measure an agreed product area through your repository, feature flags and review process.
- Looks like
- One engineer or a team, on your board
We build usable interfaces over existing APIs, with frontend work scoped around the workflows and information the product's users need.
- Looks like
- A shipped GUI, not a clickable mock
unicrew builds and runs its own AI products, Snaplore and Talkmetry. We scope AI features, tagging and embeddings around the product's use case and data.
- Looks like
- Behind a flag, then measured
We optimize the infrastructure you already run through right-sizing, reserved capacity and waste reduction. In our delivery experience, immediate savings range from 20% to 40%, with the exact figure depending on your starting point.
- Looks like
- The same platform, on a smaller bill
We assess modules for refactoring or replacement and plan the transition around the release process. The scope covers the legacy core and the changes needed for continuing product development.
- Looks like
- Module changes with a release plan
We have ISTQB-certified QA engineers, with testing responsibilities agreed for the engagement. We scope test coverage and release checks around the workflows your customers use.
- Looks like
- Testing matched to the release scope
We work best on a SaaS product when we own a whole area of it, including its bugs and its support load. Owning the area is how our engineers learn the product, and it makes them faster with every release.
Yaroslav HavrylivSenior Engineering Manager, unicrew04Proof
Client outcomes from software product engineering
Software vendors describe lower infrastructure costs, measured search improvement and a usable interface over an existing API. Artelogic was our former brand.
- Cloud costs and inherited product platformsPatrick W., Founder and President of a New York B2B SaaS company, on Clutch: unicrew helped "reduce our AWS costs by 30% or more" after streamlining how the platform used AWS and Heroku. He is candid about the commercial shape of it in the same review. The pricing "was higher than I had hoped", and because the work went faster, "the team wound up costing us less or at least the same". The AWS cost reduction followed our takeover of the decade-old platform; its founder credits us with helping them "have a smooth transition". At Booked It, the work opened with "review, audit and understand the current system", before the platform was rebuilt on Laravel. CEO Brad Nobbs described the code as "more stable, easier to maintain and easier to add new features".30%+lower AWS costs, in the client's own figure
- A controlled experiment the client ranDaniel Siebenson, Director of Product & Engineering at meinUnterricht GmbH in Berlin: "Our headline result was a controlled experiment showing a roughly 9 percent lift in search success rate." Our engineer worked "as an embedded engineer on our search and discovery team", owning features "end to end: scoping, building, shipping, and measuring impact", and the AI tagging and embeddings work set up the platform's move to vector search. The search and AI engineering case describes that work. An executive at a different, UK SaaS company explained why its measures differed: the service "isn’t consumer-focused enough to provide standard results such as customer base growth".9%lift in search success rate, meinUnterricht's own measurement
- The projects your stakeholders are asking forThe Head of Development at a German hotel-content platform says unicrew (then Artelogic) "help us leveraging projects that exceed inhouse development capacities but are demanded by internal and external stakeholders and customers". He reports a "Shippable and well received web GUI for previously API only application". The CPO of a German security and building-management software vendor found our engineers "fully integrated into our teams and workflows". The hotel-content project delivered a web GUI. Jonathan Muller, CTO of Open Room Inc. in Japan, commissioned testing and reported that "our releases took less time and were less stressful". On team selection, we joined a German ERP SaaS product's candidate interviews and helped refine the profile. A German SaaS CTO said we proposed "two or three high-quality developers" when another engineer was needed. The hotel-content engagement began in 2023 and was ongoing when its March 2024 Clutch review was published.Since 2023ongoing at the time of the March 2024 Clutch review
05Delivery
Onboard, release an increment and take ownership
We establish product context and use a first agreed change to work through your review and release process before expanding responsibility.
- Read the product, then the codeThe engineer reviews the product as a user, then reads the relevant code, dependencies and support history. Your team reviews the written findings.You getA written read of the area, its debts and its risks
- One small change, all the way outWe take an agreed increment through your code review, CI and release path, establishing how delivery works in the existing platform.You getA merged change, released the way you release
- Take the area, support load includedThe engineer scopes, builds, ships and measures the agreed area, including its bugs and support questions. Responsibilities are settled with your product and engineering leads.You getAn owned area, with its bugs and its support questions
- Adjust around the product roadmapWe plan additions and handovers around the next release and product priorities. Team extension is billed monthly per team member.You getA team shaped to the roadmap, month by month
06Client voices
Product and engineering leaders, in their own words
Two developers from Artelogic have joined our team: a frontend developer and a backend developer. The work ethic of Artelogic’s developers is very good, and they’re very professional in their job execution. For example, they frequently offer reports, track their times accurately, and keep track of their activities in version control frequently.
We’ve seen enhanced customer satisfaction thanks to unicrew’s work. Our customers love the UI and speed of the application. We’ve received positive feedback, and there are no errors in the system. unicrew meets their deadlines and stays on budget.
However, from a technical perspective, actor-based frameworks and event sourcing aren’t widely adopted areas of expertise yet. Still, Artelogic has been able to learn them very quickly and effectively. Moreover, they’ve been able to stabilize our whole application and rapidly iterate on the existing code base to get it to a much better state than it was 12 months ago.
They implemented a range of website features, including a specific payment processing functionality. They developed everything in PHP. They greatly improved our customer experience. I enjoy the way our platform works now. Working with Artelogic gave me confidence in our technical solutions and allowed me to focus more on business.
Up until a year and a half ago, I handled all the development and support of our application myself and I needed help. I brought in Artelogic, and it was one of the best business decisions I’ve ever made.
07Case studies
Cloud efficiency and interface delivery
Explore lower AWS costs on an established SaaS platform and a customer-facing interface built over an existing API.
See all case studies- SaaSAWS costs down 30%+ for a US B2B SaaS platformunicrew became the programming team for a B2B SaaS platform that had run for over a decade, streamlined how it used AWS and Heroku, and sped up rollouts.30%+Lower AWS costs
- HospitalityA web interface for an API-only hotel-content applicationunicrew produced a shippable, well-received web GUI for an API-only application.
08Questions
Questions about product ownership and collaboration
We agree a product area and onboarding scope with your leads. The engineer reads the product and code, then ships an agreed increment through your review and release path before taking broader responsibility. Product context, access and review time are planned with your team as part of that onboarding.
Three engagement models: time and materials billed hourly and quoted per project, fixed price quoted per project against an agreed outcome, and team extension billed monthly per team member. We recommend one at the end of discovery. There is no recruitment or placement fee on a dedicated team or team extension, and fixed-scope work carries a post-launch warranty whose length is agreed in the contract. Most engagements start within two to four weeks of signature, and each is quoted on its own scope.
We agree success measures around your product objectives and existing measurement process. That can include a controlled experiment or operational indicators suited to the product. We confirm access to the relevant data early and report against the agreed definition of improvement.
unicrew holds ISO 27001:2022 for information security and ISO 9001:2015 for quality management, both renewed through a multi-stage audit with Quay Audit UK. We have ISTQB-certified QA engineers. On build engagements, access is least-privilege and agreed with your technical contact, read-only wherever the work allows, with no write access to production during discovery. We agree any additional data-handling requirements at scoping.
Yes. We assess the existing code, architecture and release process before recommending continued development, refactoring or rebuilding. The scope identifies what to retain and the transition work needed to take responsibility for the platform.
Yes, you can interview the proposed engineers and refine the profile with us. We agree any replacement and product handover with you, including documentation and responsibilities for continuing delivery.
We fit software vendors developing an existing product with a remote engineering partner. Your team owns product direction; we own the agreed engineering area, including delivery and support responsibilities. Team extension suits engineers working under your leads, while a standing team supports continuing product development. We agree the model from the scope and collaboration you need.
Plan the next stage of your product
Share the product area, current architecture and next release priorities. We discuss the engineering scope and the responsibility you want us to own.
What happens after you contact us
- We reply within one business dayWe review the product context and delivery priorities.
- A call about product responsibilityThe area to develop, its current ownership and the next useful release.
- A team shape and an engagement model, in writingHow many engineers, in what shape, billed as time and materials, fixed price or team extension.
- NDA and contracts, then a start dateMost engagements start within two to four weeks of signature.