RapidDev builds custom mobile and web apps in Indianapolis, typically shipping a production MVP in 6–12 weeks for a fixed $13,000–$25,000. That is a fraction of the cost of hiring an in-house team in Indianapolis (roughly $360,000–$420,000 in true first-year cost for two engineers) or commissioning a local agency ($120,000–$400,000 per build). One team ships the iOS app, the Android app, and the web app on shared infrastructure, and the founder owns all of the code.
One team for your iOS, Android, and web build. We help Indianapolis founders go from Figma or a Lovable prototype to a production app your users — and the High Alpha and Elevate Ventures partners across the table — actually trust.
Indianapolis punches far above its size in software, and it does it with a distinctly Midwestern discipline: capital efficiency over hype. The city is the birthplace of the venture-studio model — High Alpha, founded here in 2015 by the team behind ExactTarget's $2.5B Salesforce exit, closed its largest fund yet at $125M in 2024 and has spun out dozens of B2B SaaS companies. Salesforce still runs its second-largest US hub from the tower that bears its name downtown, and Eli Lilly anchors a life-sciences corridor that pulls clinical and health-tech talent into the metro. Elevate Ventures, the state's most active investor, made 103 investments in 2024 alone. For a founder that means two things: your investors have seen real SaaS companies get built here, so a working product clears the bar — and the exact engineers you'd want to hire are being courted by Lilly and Salesforce first. We build for that reality: the pragmatic product that raises a Midwest seed round, on infrastructure your future in-house team can actually take over.
Indianapolis is where the venture-studio model went mainstream. High Alpha, founded by the ExactTarget alumni behind that $2.5B Salesforce exit, raised its fourth and largest fund — $125M — in 2024, and co-builds B2B SaaS companies from scratch. If you're building SaaS in Indy, you're building in the shadow of a machine designed to do exactly that, and investors here evaluate you against it.
Elevate Ventures, Indiana's most active investor, completed 103 capital commitments in 2024 — 72 of them in software — and launched a $100M growth-stage fund alongside the state's Next Level Fund. Indiana has pulled in roughly $2.8B in venture capital over the last five years. Local dollars reward companies that ship, so we prioritize the fundable v1 over the pitch-deck mockup.
Salesforce runs one of its largest outposts here with 2,300-plus employees, and Eli Lilly's life-sciences footprint pulls senior talent into the same pool. That's great for the ecosystem and hard for a seed-stage founder trying to staff a team. Bringing us in lets you ship your v1 now and hire deliberately later, from traction rather than desperation.
Indy sits at the junction of more interstate highways than any other US city, which is why logistics, freight, and advanced manufacturing are real local verticals — not buzzwords. Apps for operators in those industries have to work offline in a warehouse or a cab, and 16 Tech's 50-acre innovation district is knitting that hardware world together with the software one.
Indy by the numbers
Who we build for in Indy
Multi-tenant dashboards, admin panels, and role-based access — the category High Alpha and the Indy venture-studio model were literally built around.
HIPAA-aware patient, provider, and clinical-trial apps for the Eli Lilly / IU Health corridor that makes Indianapolis a national life-sciences hub.
Fleet, freight, and warehouse apps for the Crossroads of America — Indy sits at the intersection of more interstates than any other US city.
Fan, athlete, and event apps for the home of the NCAA, the Indy 500, and the Techstars Sports Accelerator's national sports-tech pipeline.
Payments, lending, and insurance apps that need Stripe, real compliance, and security tight enough for a downtown financial-services partner.
Field, plant-floor, and equipment apps for Indiana's advanced-manufacturing and agtech base — offline-capable and built for real operators.
RapidDev builds native and cross-platform mobile apps, Next.js web apps and dashboards, full MVP-to-scale product builds, and production AI features for Indianapolis founders — mobile and web ship from one team on shared infrastructure.
No stitching together an app shop and a web agency. We scope and ship your iOS, Android, and web product on shared infrastructure — so everything actually works together.
One codebase, both stores. We build React Native and Expo apps that pass App Store and Play Store review the first time, with the native feel your users expect.
Fast, SEO-ready web apps on Next.js. From investor-facing marketing sites to the logged-in product itself — dashboards, admin panels, and customer portals for Indy's B2B SaaS teams.
The whole thing, mobile and web, on shared infrastructure. Ideal when you're moving off a Lovable or Bubble prototype that's hit its ceiling and need production code that raises well.
Ship the AI feature your product actually needs — chat, search, or agents — wired to your data with streaming, evals, and cost controls, not a demo that falls over.
You see a working, deployed build every single week. Here's the exact path from a first call to a launched app — five steps, no surprises.
We map your idea (or your stuck prototype) to a concrete feature list, a fixed price, and a timeline. You leave with a plan whether or not you hire us.
What you get
A fixed price + timeline
Clickable Figma flows and a technical architecture you sign off on before a line of production code is written. No surprises later.
What you get
Clickable Figma + signed-off architecture
You get a working, deployed build every single week — not a black box. Test on real devices, give feedback, watch it take shape.
What you get
A deployed build every week
We handle App Store and Play Store submission, production deploy, and a full handover — code, docs, and access are yours to keep.
What you get
Live app + all code and access
Keep us on a retainer for new features and fixes, or take the wheel with your own team. Your call — we don't lock you in.
What you get
A retainer — or a clean exit
Production-grade, boring-in-the-best-way tools that your future in-house team can hire for and maintain. No lock-in, no proprietary magic.
Building a custom app in Indianapolis costs anywhere from $13,000 with RapidDev to over $400,000 with a large agency, depending on who builds it. Here is the honest math on the four realistic paths — with real 2025–2026 Indianapolis numbers, not a vendor's guesswork.
Hire a team in-house in Indy
true first-year cost of a minimal 2-engineer team
Indianapolis / US agency
typical price for a comparable custom build
Offshore / freelance
typical Eastern Europe / LatAm blended rate
RapidDev
fixed price, quoted before we start
| Path | Typical cost | Time to first shipped product |
|---|---|---|
| Hire a team in-house in Indy | ~$360K – $420K / yr | 2–4 months just to hire, then build |
| Indianapolis / US agency | $120K – $400K+ | 4–9 months |
| Offshore / freelance | $25 – $50 / hr | Highly variable — often 2–3x quoted |
| RapidDev | $13K – $25K | 6–12 weeks to a live, submitted app |
The numbers behind this, sourced
For the price of two to three months of one Indy engineer's loaded salary, RapidDev ships your entire app — mobile, web, and backend — in 6 to 12 weeks.
App development in Indianapolis with RapidDev costs a fixed $13,000–$25,000, quoted before any code is written rather than billed by the hour. A focused single-platform MVP starts at $13,000; a full mobile-plus-web product with payments and AI features runs up to $25,000.
You get a fixed price before we write a line of code — quoted, not billed by the hour. Every Indianapolis build lands in the $13K–$25K range depending on scope.
Solo founders and pre-seed teams validating one core flow with real users.
Seed-stage startups shipping a fundable v1 to the App Store and the web.
Growth-stage teams replacing a no-code MVP or adding serious AI features.
A few of the builds we've shipped for Indianapolis founders. Details generalized to protect client confidentiality.
Challenge: An Indianapolis founder had a Lovable prototype for a vertical SaaS tool but couldn't pass a security review to onboard their first mid-market pilot customer.
What we shipped: We rebuilt the backend on Supabase with real RLS, added role-based admin tooling, and shipped a Next.js product that cleared the pilot's security checklist.
Challenge: A team near the Lilly / IU Health corridor needed a HIPAA-aware patient app but had no way to sync records securely between clinicians and members.
What we shipped: We shipped native iOS + Android on a shared Postgres backend with encrypted records and audit logging, ready for their health-system pilot.
Challenge: A Crossroads-of-America freight company ran dispatch on spreadsheets and needed an app drivers could use offline in the cab, then sync back to the office.
What we shipped: We built an offline-first React Native app with background sync and a web dispatch dashboard, cutting manual data entry and radio calls to near zero.
190+ people across 17 countries, a 4.9 rating on Clutch, and 600+ apps shipped. Here's the leadership standing behind your build.
CEO & Founder
Founder of RapidDev, a global software firm whose team has delivered 1,000+ client projects. He helps founders cut through the hype and ship practical, production-grade software — fast.
Columbia University · Harvard Business School · U.S. Navy veteran · 1,000+ client projects
Matt on LinkedInCOO
Runs operations across RapidDev's 190+ person, 17-country team — the person making sure your build ships on time and on scope.
CTO
Owns the technical bar for every build: the architecture, code quality, and security review that has to survive investor diligence.
Dev Lead
Leads the engineers who ship your weekly builds across iOS, Android, and web on shared infrastructure.
Both — that's the whole point of working with us instead of stitching two vendors together. We build your mobile app (iOS and Android from one React Native codebase) and your web app on shared infrastructure, so your data, auth, and payments live in one place instead of three.
Yes, and it's one of the most common reasons Indianapolis founders come to us. No-code prototypes are great for validation but hit a ceiling on security, scale, and hiring. We migrate your data into a real database and rebuild the product in production-grade code you own — usually without losing any of your existing data.
Most builds land between $13,000 and $25,000, quoted as a fixed price before we start — not billed by the hour. After a free 45-minute scope call we send a concrete feature list, price, and timeline. The band depends on scope: a focused single-platform MVP sits near the bottom, a full mobile + web product with payments and AI features toward the top.
Typically 6–12 weeks from kickoff to a live, submitted app. A focused MVP can ship in 4–6 weeks; a full mobile + web product with AI features runs closer to 9–12. You get a working, deployed build every week, so you're never waiting months to see progress.
No — we work with Indy founders remotely and asynchronously, which is how most Midwest teams operate anyway. You'll have a dedicated point of contact, weekly demos, and a shared board. If you prefer a video kickoff or working sessions, we're happy to schedule around your timezone.
You do — completely. The code lives in your GitHub, the App Store and Play Store listings are under your accounts, and we hand over full documentation at launch. We never hold your product hostage, and you're free to bring the work in-house or hire your own team whenever you want.
That's a big part of what we do for pre-seed and seed teams here. Indianapolis investors like High Alpha and Elevate Ventures reward a real, working product over a clickable mockup — so we prioritize the flows that demo well, ship polished builds, and make sure the architecture holds up to technical diligence. Many of our Indy clients raise on the version we ship.
Absolutely — most of the founders we work with are non-technical or first-time technical founders. We handle every technical decision, explain trade-offs in plain English, and give you a product you can maintain or hand to a future CTO. You focus on customers and fundraising; we handle the build.
It comes down to structure, not corners cut. We scope a fixed set of features up front, so there is no open-ended hourly meter. A small, senior-only team does the work directly — you are not paying for account managers, sales overhead, or junior engineers learning on your budget. And we reuse hardened production patterns for auth, payments, and infrastructure instead of rebuilding them each time. An in-house team in Indy carries full salaries, benefits, and months of ramp-up before anything ships — and you're bidding against Salesforce and Lilly for that talent; an agency layers overhead on top of the build. We simply do not carry those costs.
Every build includes a 30-day bug-fix window after launch — if something we shipped breaks, we fix it at no extra cost. Beyond that, you can keep us on an optional monthly support retainer for ongoing fixes and new features, or take the code in-house and maintain it yourself. You own the code either way, so you are never locked in.
Small adjustments within the agreed scope are just part of the weekly sprint — you review a working build every week and give feedback we fold in. If you want to add or swap something bigger that changes the scope, we handle it with a simple change order: we tell you the price and timeline impact before doing the work, you approve it, and only then do we build it. No surprise invoices, and no silent scope creep.
Grab a 45-minute slot with our team below. We'll map your idea — or your stuck Indianapolis prototype — to a concrete feature list, a fixed $13K–$25K price, and a timeline. You walk away with a real plan either way.
Prefer email? Contact us instead.
Book a free 45-minute scope call. You'll walk away with a concrete feature list, a fixed price, and a timeline — whether or not you decide to work with us.
Serving Indianapolis and Indy · Remote-friendly · You own everything we build
