Frequently Asked Questions

Email ryan@minhthe.net with a few paragraphs about what you need. We reply within one business day, usually with questions. If it looks like a fit, we have a call, then send a written scope and a fixed price. Nothing is charged until you accept a quote.

Usually two to four weeks from signature — we deliberately do not keep a bench of idle people. Small pieces of work and audits can often start sooner. If you have a hard deadline, tell us early; we will say honestly whether it is achievable rather than find out together in week six.

Both. We have built first products for founders and internal systems for companies with decades of history. What matters more than your size is whether someone on your side can make decisions and give feedback weekly.

Small and well-defined, yes — an audit, a fix, a landing page, an integration. Small and open-ended, usually not: the scoping costs more than the work. If it is under a few thousand dollars, we will tell you quickly whether we are the right people or whether a good freelancer would serve you better.

One decision-maker, access to the people who do the work the software will change, your brand assets, and credentials for any system we must integrate with. Content is the most common cause of delay — start on it early.

Starting figures and typical ranges are published on our pricing page. A marketing website starts at $4,500; a first version of a web application at $15,000. Once a scope is written, the price is fixed.

Because how long we take is our problem to solve, not yours to fund. A fixed price means we carry the risk of our own estimates, and you can approve a number rather than watch a meter. The trade is that the scope has to be written down — which is useful work anyway.

Expected, and fine. Anything outside the agreed scope is a change request: we estimate it, you approve it in writing — an email is enough — and then it is scheduled. Nothing is built or billed without that. If a change replaces something not yet built, the cost often nets out close to zero.

If we underestimated, that is our cost, not yours — the price is fixed. If the delay is on your side, because feedback, content or access did not arrive, the timeline moves accordingly and the price stays the same. We flag that in writing the week it starts happening, not at the end.

A typical project is 40% to begin, 30% at the midpoint, 30% on delivery. Retainers and care plans are billed monthly in advance. Everything is set out in the agreement before you sign.

USD, EUR or VND. Account details and transfer guidance are on the payment instructions page.

You do, once the invoices are paid. Ownership of the custom code, designs and deliverables we create for you transfers on final payment — see Intellectual property in our Terms. We keep ownership only of our pre-existing tools and general-purpose components, which you get a licence to use.

In a repository in your organisation, from the first commit. Cloud accounts, domains and third-party services are registered in your name with us added as collaborators. If we part ways, you remove our access and nothing stops working.

That is a design goal. We use mainstream, well-documented technology rather than anything exotic, we write down the decisions, and every project ends with documentation and a recorded handover. The test we hold ourselves to: a competent developer who has never met us should be productive in a day.

Yes, happily, before you share anything sensitive. We are also bound by confidentiality under our standard Terms whether or not a separate NDA is signed.

Yes. We like showing work, but we ask first and we respect a no — permanently, not until it is convenient. If you would rather we did not name you at all, say so at the start and it goes in the agreement.

Yes, as does everyone. We use permissively licensed components (MIT, Apache, BSD) and keep a list of what is included, so there is nothing in your product that creates an obligation you did not know about.

Vietnam, GMT+7. We work with clients here and in Europe — currently Vietnam and Spain. Our registered business is Ho Kinh Doanh Minh The, tax code 075093020187.

With Europe, comfortably: our afternoon is the European morning, which gives roughly four hours of overlap every day — usually 14:00–18:00 in Vietnam, 09:00–13:00 in Spain. With the US east coast the overlap is early morning for us, and we schedule fixed calls rather than pretending to be available all day.

English and Vietnamese, both fluently, in writing and on calls. Project documentation, code and commit messages are in English by default. We have delivered products with Spanish-language interfaces, though we are not Spanish speakers ourselves.

Whatever you already use — email, Slack, WhatsApp or Zalo — plus a shared board for the backlog. The rhythm is fixed regardless of the tool: a demo every Friday, a live staging link, and a written summary of what moved and what is next.

In Vietnam, yes, easily. In Europe, we travel for kick-offs and major milestones on larger projects where it is worth the cost; otherwise video does the job better than most people expect.

The honest risks are time-zone friction and the awkwardness of chasing someone you have never met. We manage the first with fixed overlap hours and the second with a weekly demo of working software — the only progress report that cannot be faked. You also hold the repositories and accounts throughout, so you are never locked in if it is not working.

Automated tests on the paths where failure costs money — checkout, auth, payments, data integrity — plus manual testing on real devices. Every build runs its tests before it can be deployed. We do not claim total coverage; we claim the important parts are covered and you can see which.

Each milestone has a review period of 10 business days to report defects, and we fix defects reported within 30 days of acceptance at no cost. After that, a care plan covers fixes, or we work ad hoc at an hourly rate.

No. It is optional and you can start or stop at any month. Without one we still help past clients, but around our project work rather than ahead of it — which matters on the day something is actually down.

A fair question for a small studio, and the reason everything is set up the way it is: code in your repository, infrastructure in your accounts, documentation written as we go, and mainstream technology any competent team can pick up. We also keep a short handover document per project that another developer could start from tomorrow.

Often, yes. We start with a $1,200 takeover audit: we read the code, check the infrastructure, test a restore and write up what we find. You keep that document regardless, and the fee comes off your first invoice if we go on to work together.

A short agreement specific to your project — scope, milestones, price, schedule — on top of our standard Terms of Service. If your company has its own contract template, send it; we will read it properly and tell you what we can and cannot accept.

Vietnamese law by default, with disputes going first to good-faith negotiation. For larger engagements we are open to agreeing something else in the contract — it is a commercial question, not a principle.

Yes. We are a registered Vietnamese business (tax code 075093020187) and invoice in EUR to companies in the EU, with the details your accountant needs. As a non-EU supplier we do not charge EU VAT; depending on your country, the reverse-charge mechanism usually applies. Check with your accountant — we will put whatever wording they need on the invoice.

What we collect and why is set out in our Privacy Policy, including the basis for international transfers. Where we process personal data on your behalf we sign a data processing agreement, and on projects with real personal data we work with anonymised or sample data in development wherever possible.

Yes, as part of a reviewed process — the same way we use any tool. A human engineer is responsible for every line that ships, it goes through the same review and tests as anything else, and we do not paste your confidential code or data into services that would train on it. If your policy requires something stricter, tell us and we will follow it.