Qelv

Questions and answers

24 questions, answered the way we would answer them on a call.

Grouped by when they come up: before you write, once an engagement is running, when you check the evidence, after the build, and about the company itself. Every answer restates something the site already commits to, with the page it says it on.

7 questions

Before you write

The questions that come up on the first contact, in the order they usually come up.

What does a build cost?

Most first builds are fixed-price in the low thousands, delivered in one to three weeks. Larger builds (operational platforms, prototypes, client portals) run higher, and ongoing operating support is a separate monthly figure. Every price is built the same way: the hours the work takes, the tools it runs on, and a share of company cost. It is agreed before work starts and does not move. The pricing page shows the full arithmetic.

Why are your rates lower than a local hire?

Structure, not corner-cutting. We are a US company with a distributed team and no office, sales floor, or delivery-manager tier, so the overhead built into an hour is smaller. What does not change is the standard: work is reviewed, tested, and documented, it lands in your repository, and the engineer who scoped it is the one who builds it.

How is this different from hiring someone?

It is usually not either/or. A job posting is a list of tasks, and some of those tasks are rules rather than judgment; those are software. Automating them costs less than the first month of the salary and does not resign. The seat still gets filled; it just starts further along, doing the part that needs a person.

Do we have to commit to a retainer?

No. Send the bottleneck, take the one-page first move, and stop there if you want. A build is a build. Monthly support exists only where a running system needs an owner, and it can be cancelled.

Who owns what you build?

You do. Code lands in your repository, systems run in your accounts, and documentation comes with the handoff. If we stop working together, everything keeps running without us.

Can we see examples of your work?

Yes. The work page carries the case pages and every figure with its source, and a client's own site is linked wherever we have confirmed the site is theirs. Most of the rest was delivered under confidentiality or white-label terms, so tell us what kind of work you want to see and we will send relevant examples, with the client's permission where it is needed.

What if our problem is not worth fixing?

Then we say so. Plenty of enquiries end with a recommendation to leave the process alone: a tolerated annoyance is often cheaper than a system.

6 questions

How an engagement runs

What happens between the first note and the first build, and who you are dealing with.

Who reads my message, and who does the work?

The founder reads every enquiry himself and replies within two business days. The person who scopes the work is the person who leads the build and answers for it; where a project needs more hands, senior engineers work on it under his review, on your tools and standards.

Do I have to get on a call?

No. The first step is written: send the bottleneck, and if it is a fit you get a one-page first move before any sales call. A thirty-minute scoping call exists if you want one, it is free, and it is where the measure the work will be judged on gets agreed.

What is a first move?

A one-page note on what to do first, or a sample built from something you send: the process marked up task by task, the diagnosis of one broken feed, a week of competitor data, a thousand rows cleaned. Each one has a named input and a named output, and none of them is a call in a different hat. The first-move page lists every one with what you send and what comes back.

Do you sign non-disclosure agreements?

Yes, routinely. Discovery work has run under a bilingual non-disclosure agreement, the partner outbound program ran under one, and every paid trial in the talent practice runs under one. Send yours, or ask for ours.

Can you work under our brand, for our clients?

Yes. Agencies and software houses use the overflow bench for exactly that: senior hands on your overflow, in your repository, under your standards, with your brand in front of the client. Work delivered that way is never published here as ours, which is why the delivery catalogue names so few clients.

What does the reply actually say?

We reply within two business days. If it is a fit, you get a one-page note on what to do first, before any sales call. Where the honest answer is that the process is not worth fixing, the reply says so, and that is the end of it unless you want a second opinion.

5 questions

The evidence on this site

Why the figures look the way they do, and why some clients are not named.

Where do the numbers come from?

Every figure on the site is read from one content register with its source and the period it covers, and the build checks every rendered page against a list of claims that may not be published before a deploy can proceed. The sources page explains each kind of source, from a dashboard export to a statement by an operating team, and the evidence register lists every figure in one filterable list.

Why are some clients not named?

Three different reasons, each stated on the record it applies to: an agreement withholds the name, the work shipped under another firm's brand, or the client has not yet confirmed in writing that we may publish it. A named client with no recorded permission would be a claim we cannot back, so the sector and the shape of the work are published and the identity is not.

What is an operator statement?

A figure the team operating a system states that no export yet substantiates. It is published as exactly that, with its own label, so a reader can filter it out of the register. The peak throughput of the hotel data system is one: the number is the operating team's, the logged window that would make it a measurement is not attached yet, and the record says so.

Why are there no client quotes?

Every quote in the ledger is marked as needing the client's permission, and none is recorded. Until one is, the site quotes nobody. What it publishes instead are outcomes that need no permission: a fixed-price build converted to a retainer, clients who signed a second contract, the longest retainer, and the marketplace standing.

Can I see the code or the system itself?

Ask. Our own engineering is screen-shared with anyone seriously evaluating us: the code, the architecture, the tests. Client systems are walked through with the client's permission where it is needed. Nothing restricted is linked from a public page, which is why every restricted record carries a request link rather than a dead end.

3 questions

After the build

Ownership, running costs, and what happens when the work is done.

What happens after launch?

Where continuity matters, a monthly care plan covers monitoring, fixes and a set amount of change. It is capped, cancellable, and only offered where a running system genuinely needs an owner. Where it does not, you own the system outright and we are done.

What if the scope changes mid-build?

A fixed price is agreed before work starts and does not move. If the scope changes, that is a new conversation with its own number, not a surprise on an invoice. Every quote says what is out of scope so the line is drawn before the work, not after.

Where does the system run?

In your accounts, with the code in your repository and the documentation handed over. If we stop working together, it keeps running without us. Every quote states what runs on your accounts and what, if anything, runs on ours.

3 questions

The company

Where Qelv is, and who is behind it.

Where is Qelv based?

Qelv is a US company with a distributed team: Qelv LLC, registered in Wyoming, and Registered in Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT). Work has been delivered into 13 countries, the US, the UK, Canada, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Singapore, Australia, Denmark, Mexico, Lithuania, South Africa and Pakistan.

Who is behind it?

One founder, who owns the company and leads every engagement, with senior engineers placed on projects that need more hands. His background, the two other businesses he runs, and the timeline of the work are on the about page.

Is this a marketing agency?

No. Qelv builds software, data pipelines and automations. It also puts engineers on teams. Growth work exists as one of five practices because a site, a catalog and a follow-up system are software problems with a measurable demand behind them, and the search figures on the site are published as dashboard exports with their windows, not as the point of the business.

Where to next

The rest is specific to your situation.

Send a few sentences on what is still being done by hand. The reply answers it, or says the fix is not software.

We reply within two business days. If it is a fit, you get a one-page note on what to do first, before any sales call.