Servants, on purpose.
The name Servants is deliberate. It flips the rockstar posture that took over our industry around 2014. We're not ninjas. We're not 10x wizards. We're the craftspeople in the back of the house, building what you had in mind.
You're the principal. We do the work. You get the credit. On ship day we hand you the keys — code, servers, accounts, data, IP. No SaaS rent, no per-seat fees, no vendor lock-in.
Two engineers. Twelve years in. Custom software for businesses that own what they pay for, on infrastructure they hold the keys to.
That's the whole pitch.
Chris Nowlan.
I've been shipping software for real businesses for twelve years. Along the way, I picked up a simple rule: the fewer vendors standing between you and your own code, the longer it lasts.
Software Servants is the practice that grew out of that. Two senior engineers, one mailing address, no SaaS overhead. We build what you had in mind, hand over the keys, and stay available when you need us.
What we believe.
- 01
We hand over the keys.
On ship day you get code, server, accounts, data, IP. Everything we built, in your name, on your machines.
- 02
We don't sell SaaS rent.
No retainers, no per-seat fees, no monthly subscriptions. You pay for the build and you own what we built.
- 03
We work in the open.
Weekly check-ins, real software shipping every week. You see the work as it happens, not at the end.
Twelve years, one rule.
- 2012
The first project.
Flipvo, LLC formed in Melbourne, FL. The first build was a small custom web app for a local business — [OWNER TO CONFIRM client]. Lesson one: the people who pay for software almost never want a SaaS account, they want their own thing.
- 2014
Second engineer joins.
The practice grew to two. We doubled what we could ship without changing how we worked — small projects, weekly check-ins, code in the client's name on day one.
- 2016
Settled on the stack.
After cycling through a few frameworks, we landed on Laravel for back-of-house apps and the LAMP/LEMP family for everything else. Boring, durable, owned by the client. Still our default a decade later.
- 2018
No retainers.
Made it official: zero monthly fees. We charge once, we ship, you own it. The retainer-free model has held since — clients still write back when they need us, just not on a clock.
- 2020
Remote-first, by default.
The pandemic moved every check-in to video. Worked out fine — we were already weekly, already shipping working software, already handing over real code. Nothing changed except the commute.
- 2022
Ten years in.
Quiet milestone. By the count we kept, [OWNER TO CONFIRM specific number] custom apps shipped, all still owned by the businesses that paid for them. None of them paying SaaS rent to anyone.
- 2023
A heavy year of builds.
Three projects shipped: Valuesly (lifestyle valuation tool with private dashboard), TryStuffs (try-before-you-buy product platform), and RentCarFlow (rental fleet operations end-to-end).
- 2024
Flipvo Marketplace + Big Mike's.
Built Flipvo Marketplace end-to-end on Laravel + Stripe Connect, multi-vendor and multi-currency. Shipped Big Mike's Car Audio storefront and booking the same year. Two larger builds, same handover model.
- 2025
AI work, on our terms.
Started taking on AI features as part of regular builds — local models, owned data, code on the client's server. No platform lock-in, no per-token vendor bills, no shipping customer data through someone else's endpoint.
- 2026
Today.
Two engineers, twelve years in. Currently shipping [OWNER TO CONFIRM current build]. The website you're reading is itself the practice — Astro, Tailwind, SQLite, hand-rolled, hosted on our own box.
What twelve years looks like.
Heatmap will populate once GITHUB_TOKEN is configured
- Commits, last year
- [OWNER TO CONFIRM]
- Average per week
- [OWNER TO CONFIRM]
- Longest streak
- [OWNER TO CONFIRM]
Heatmap reads left-to-right by week and top-to-bottom by day of week, starting Sun and ending Sat.