Frequently asked questions

A single deliverable — a landing page, a fix to a broken integration, a Playwright suite for an existing app. Small engagements are usually 5–20 hours and often turn into longer relationships. There is no minimum budget wall.

Honest scope × USD 10/hour, delivered as a written budget in the proposal document. The rate does not vary. What varies is the scope, and the client is always shown which pieces would slide out to hit a specific number.

Workana locks the full project budget in escrow at the moment the client accepts the proposal. From there, each milestone I complete triggers a release from that already-locked escrow — the client is never asked for additional funds mid-project. The client controls the release timing and the sign-off on each milestone.

Yes, on Workana Hourly contracts. The client approves the logged hours when they want and releases payment at their own pace — there is no automatic weekly billing (that is Upwork). Hourly is the right shape for open-ended maintenance and evolution work; fixed-price is the right shape for a defined deliverable.

Yes, when there is genuinely proprietary information to protect. In practice, most "secret ideas" are variations of known patterns and the moat is in execution speed, not in secrecy. An NDA does not delay the work — it is signed the same day it is requested.

Next.js 14/15 (Pages or App Router) + NestJS or Node.js + PostgreSQL + Prisma + TailwindCSS + TypeScript. This is the stack that has shipped the most reliably across 50+ delivered projects. It is also the stack most other senior developers can pick up if the client ever needs to hand it over.

On the client's own DigitalOcean droplet by default. Never on AWS, never on Vercel, never on Supabase. PostgreSQL runs on the same droplet as the application. The GitHub repository is transferred to the client's organization at delivery — the client owns everything.

No. Not Bubble, Webflow, Wix, WordPress, Shopify, Odoo, Zoho, Zapier, Make, n8n, PowerBI, Airtable, FlutterFlow, Glide, Memberstack, PrestaShop, Moodle. Every project is written in code the client owns and can hand to any other senior developer without training.

Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5 for reasoning, Haiku 4.5 for routing, chosen per turn by a complexity classifier. GPT-5 and Gemini available as fallbacks. Local models are considered when a client has strict data-residency requirements — usually Llama 3.3 70B via Ollama on a dedicated GPU droplet.

The client's timezone. I sync to their working hours so the daily written update lands before their morning standup, not after their day is over.

Not before the contract is active. Two reasons: Workana policy requires conversations to stay on-platform until the project is contracted, and written alignment produces higher-quality decisions than a 20-minute sales call. After the contract is signed, an async written cadence works better than recurring meetings — but if a call is genuinely useful, it happens.

Same day during the client's working hours, usually within 2–4 hours. If a reply will take longer (because I am mid-flow on a shipping task), the client gets a one-line acknowledgment with the ETA. Silence is never the answer.

English, Spanish, Portuguese and Polish, fluently in writing. I read all four and reply in the client's preferred language. Voice conversations happen in English or Ukrainian.

Yes. A 60-day warranty covers any behavioral defect free of charge from the delivery date. Warranty covers "the code does something other than what was specified" — it does not cover new feature requests, which are quoted separately.

Yes, on demand, charged per hour actually worked. No monthly subscription unless the client specifically requests one. Most clients stay in touch for evolution work (new features, new integrations), not for keep-it-running maintenance.

Send a written description of the feature. I come back with a written scope, an hours estimate, and a target ship date. If it fits inside a day, it is often absorbed as a courtesy. If it is a real feature, it is quoted at the same USD 10/hour rate.

No. Every client project is owned by that client — I do not distribute the source of paid work. Public URLs, screenshots, video walkthroughs and testimonials are the artifacts I share. A fresh 5-hour prototype for the new engagement is often faster than any tour of prior work anyway.