Question 1

What does Beacon Coders actually do?

Accepted Answer

We build software and then help people find it. That means two connected practices under one roof: engineering (web platforms, mobile apps, custom software, AI features) and growth (SEO, paid search, content, AI-search visibility). Around two-thirds of our clients use both. The reason we keep them together is that most marketing problems on a website turn out to be engineering problems, and most engineering decisions have marketing consequences that show up six months later.

Question 2

Where are you based and who do you work with?

Accepted Answer

Our team is in Vaishali, Ghaziabad, in the Delhi NCR region of India. Since 2016 we have delivered work for clients in twelve countries, with the largest concentrations in India, the United Kingdom, the UAE and Australia. Most of our international clients are companies between 10 and 300 people who need a full delivery team rather than a single contractor.

Question 3

How quickly can you start?

Accepted Answer

For a scoped project, usually two to four weeks from signature. For staff augmentation, one to three weeks depending on the stack. If you need someone this week, say so in your first message — we occasionally have capacity between projects and will tell you plainly if we do not.

Question 4

Do you work with startups or only established companies?

Accepted Answer

Both, but the engagement looks different. Established companies usually want a fixed scope with a fixed number. Startups usually need an MVP built fast and cheaply enough that being wrong is survivable. We will tell you which shape fits your situation, and we sometimes advise startups to spend less than they were planning to.

Question 5

Who owns the code and the IP?

Accepted Answer

You do, completely, on final payment. That includes source code, design files, documentation and all third-party account credentials. We do not retain a licence, we do not host your code on our accounts, and we transfer repository ownership at handover. Any open-source components remain under their own licences, and we give you a full dependency list.

Question 6

What happens after launch?

Accepted Answer

Every project includes 30 days of post-launch support for defects at no cost. After that you can take a support agreement with named response times, move to a monthly retainer for ongoing development, or take the codebase in-house. Roughly half our clients stay on a retainer, which tells you something, but it is not a condition of working with us.

Question 7

Can you work with our existing development team?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and it is a common arrangement. Our engineers join your repository, your sprint board and your standups, and follow your review process. We ask for one thing: a named technical contact on your side who can unblock decisions, because the main failure mode in blended teams is waiting for answers, not writing code.

Question 8

How do you handle confidentiality and NDAs?

Accepted Answer

We sign your NDA before any detailed discussion, and we can send ours if you prefer. Every employee is under a confidentiality agreement covering client work. We do not publish a case study, client name or screenshot without written permission, which is why several of our case studies are anonymised.

Question 9

Are you hiring?

Accepted Answer

Yes — see our careers page for current openings across engineering, design and marketing, based from our Ghaziabad office.

Question 10

How much does a custom web application cost?

Accepted Answer

Most custom web applications we build land between ₹3,50,000 and ₹18,00,000 (roughly $4,200 to $21,500). The range is wide because the variable is not page count, it is the number of distinct user roles, the integrations required, and whether the data model is genuinely new. A single-role internal tool with two integrations sits at the bottom. A multi-tenant platform with payments, permissions and an API sits near the top or above it.

Question 11

How do you price a project you have not scoped yet?

Accepted Answer

We do not. We give you a range on the first call based on comparable projects, and a fixed number only after a discovery phase. Anyone who quotes a precise figure for undefined software is either padding heavily or planning to charge you for the difference later.

Question 12

What is included in the quoted price?

Accepted Answer

Discovery, design, development, testing, deployment, documentation, one round of team training, and 30 days of defect support. Not included: third-party licences and subscriptions, hosting costs, paid stock imagery, and content writing unless specifically listed. We itemise all of these in the proposal so there is no discovery of extra costs halfway through.

Question 13

Do you charge for the discovery phase?

Accepted Answer

Yes, for projects above roughly ₹4,00,000. Discovery typically costs 8–12% of the estimated project value and produces a scope document, wireframes and a fixed price. If you then proceed with us, that fee is credited against the project. If you take the document elsewhere, it is yours to use — it is real work and it is paid for.

Question 14

What currencies do you invoice in?

Accepted Answer

INR, USD, GBP, EUR and AED. Indian clients are invoiced in INR with GST. International invoices are raised without Indian GST under export-of-services rules; you may still have local reverse-charge VAT obligations, which your accountant should confirm.

Question 15

What are your payment terms?

Accepted Answer

Fixed-scope projects run on milestones: typically 30% to start, then 30/30 against agreed deliverables, and 10% on final handover. Retainers and dedicated teams are invoiced monthly in advance. We accept bank transfer, Wise, and card for smaller amounts. We do not ask for full payment up front, and you should be cautious of anyone who does.

Question 16

What does your development process look like?

Accepted Answer

Five stages: discovery, design, build, test, launch. Discovery produces a scope document and a fixed price. Design produces wireframes and a clickable prototype you sign off before code is written. Build runs in two-week sprints, each ending with a working deployed environment you can use. Testing covers function, performance, security and accessibility, and we publish the results. Launch includes deployment, monitoring and handover.

Question 17

How often will we hear from you during the build?

Accepted Answer

A written update every Friday, a demo of working software every two weeks, and a shared channel (Slack or Teams) with your project team in it for anything in between. You also get access to the sprint board, so you can see what is in progress without asking.

Question 18

What do you need from us to start?

Accepted Answer

One named decision-maker who can approve scope and design, access to any existing systems we need to integrate with, your brand assets if you have them, and roughly two hours a week of that person's time. Projects slow down for one reason more than any other: waiting on client-side approvals.

Question 19

How do you handle scope changes mid-project?

Accepted Answer

Small changes that do not affect the timeline we absorb. Anything larger goes through a written change request with a cost and a schedule impact, which you approve before we build it. We do not silently absorb scope and then present a surprise invoice, and we do not refuse reasonable changes on principle — requirements genuinely do change once people see working software.

Question 20

What happens if the project runs late?

Accepted Answer

You are told as soon as we know, not at the deadline. If the delay is ours, we absorb the cost and add engineers where that actually helps. If it is caused by delayed approvals or changed requirements on your side, we revise the schedule together in writing. Roughly one project in six shifts by more than two weeks, which is why we build slack into estimates rather than promising dates we know are tight.

Question 21

How do you test before launch?

Accepted Answer

Automated unit and integration tests written alongside the code, manual functional testing against the scope document, cross-browser and real-device testing, load testing where traffic warrants it, an accessibility audit against WCAG 2.2 AA, and a security review covering the OWASP Top 10. You get the test report, including anything we chose not to fix and why.

Question 22

What technologies do you work with?

Accepted Answer

Backend: Laravel, Node.js, Python (Django, FastAPI), .NET. Frontend: React, Next.js, Vue, TypeScript. Mobile: Kotlin, Swift, Flutter, React Native. Databases: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis. Cloud: AWS, Azure, DigitalOcean, and self-hosted VPS. We pick based on the problem and on who will maintain the result — not on what is currently fashionable.

Question 23

Can you take over an existing codebase?

Accepted Answer

Yes. We start with a paid technical audit, usually one to two weeks, covering code quality, dependency health, security exposure and the realistic cost of continuing versus rebuilding. Sometimes the honest answer is that the existing system is fine and needs targeted work rather than replacement, and we will say so even though the smaller project is worth less to us.

Question 24

How do you approach security?

Accepted Answer

Standard practice on every project: parameterised queries, hashed credentials, rate-limited authentication, CSRF and XSS protection, encrypted data in transit and at rest, least-privilege access, dependency scanning in CI, and no secrets in the repository. For applications handling payments, health data or personal data at scale, we add a third-party penetration test before launch, quoted separately.

Question 25

Do you build accessible websites?

Accepted Answer

Yes. We build to WCAG 2.2 AA as standard, not as an add-on: semantic HTML, keyboard operability, visible focus states, sufficient colour contrast, labelled form fields, and testing with a screen reader. For UK and EU clients this is increasingly a legal requirement rather than a preference, and retrofitting it later costs several times what building it in costs.

Question 26

Where will our application be hosted?

Accepted Answer

Wherever suits your data-residency and budget requirements — AWS, Azure, DigitalOcean, or a managed VPS. Accounts are created in your name so you own the infrastructure from day one. For UK and EU clients we default to a region inside the relevant jurisdiction. We can manage the infrastructure under a support agreement or hand it to your team with documentation.

Question 27

Can the system scale as we grow?

Accepted Answer

We design for roughly ten times your current load, which is the honest sweet spot. Designing for a hundred times costs more than it is worth for most businesses and slows the first release. We document where the bottlenecks will appear and what the upgrade path looks like, so scaling later is a planned piece of work rather than an emergency.

Question 28

What engagement models do you offer?

Accepted Answer

Three. Fixed scope, for well-defined projects with a clear endpoint — you get a fixed price and a fixed date. Dedicated team, where a group of our engineers works only on your product on a monthly contract. Staff augmentation, where individual engineers join your existing team. Most first projects are fixed scope; most long relationships end up as a dedicated team.

Question 29

Can we hire developers monthly instead of per project?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Monthly rates run from ₹75,000 to ₹1,35,000 per engineer depending on the stack and seniority, on a minimum three-month term with 30 days' notice. You get the same person consistently, not a rotating pool, and you manage their work directly through your own process.

Question 30

Do you sign UK, EU or UAE jurisdiction contracts?

Accepted Answer

Yes. We regularly sign contracts governed by English law and by UAE law, and we can work under EU jurisdictions. We will also sign your standard supplier agreement, DPA and NDA rather than insisting on our own paperwork. For GDPR purposes we act as a data processor and provide the standard contractual clauses where required.

Question 31

What are your working hours relative to our timezone?

Accepted Answer

Our core hours are 10:00–19:00 IST. That gives roughly 4.5 to 5.5 hours of overlap with the UK, 5 to 6 hours with central Europe, around 7 hours with the UAE, and 3 to 4.5 hours with eastern Australia. Most clients settle into one scheduled call a week plus asynchronous updates. For projects that need it, we run a shifted team with later hours.

Question 32

Do you offer white-label services for other agencies?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and it is a meaningful part of what we do. We work under your brand, join calls as your team if you want, and never contact your client directly. Pricing is on a separate partner rate card. Around a fifth of our delivery capacity currently goes to agency partners in the UK and Australia.

Question 33

What support agreements are available?

Accepted Answer

Three tiers. Essential covers security patches, uptime monitoring and bug fixes with a next-business-day response. Standard adds a monthly development allowance and same-day response during business hours. Priority adds four-hour response, out-of-hours emergency cover and a named engineer. All three include monthly reporting on uptime, performance and what was actually done.

Frequently Asked Questions

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