Custom mobile & web apps
App Development for real businesses
Custom mobile and web applications that increase sales, strengthen your brand, and streamline how your business runs — designed and built by the same person who ships them.
Why build an app
Apps that move the needle
A professional, dedicated app for your business does more than look good — it drives measurable results.
Increase Your Sales
Give customers a faster, friction-free way to buy, book, and reorder — putting your business in their pocket and driving repeat revenue.
Enhanced Brand Visibility
A branded app on the home screen keeps you top of mind, builds credibility, and sets you apart from competitors still relying on a website alone.
Streamline Operations
Automate bookings, payments, notifications, and workflows so your team spends less time on busywork and more time serving customers.
The proof
Real software, not a website with an app icon
HaulerBoss: a purpose-built SaaS platform
The clearest proof is HaulerBoss — an active SaaS platform built from scratch for independent horse transporters and hotshot haulers, running on Rust and HTMX. It handles smart quote generation with route-based pricing, secure deposit collection, document management, and GPS-powered itinerary and trip dashboards, with zero marketplace commissions for the haulers using it. That's not a template with a logo swapped in — it's a purpose-built application solving a specific industry's problem.
Building things before the market caught up
In 2010, Todd Twining built igofresh.com — a working grocery delivery e-commerce platform on PHP and ZenCart, running as a real business for a full year before Instacart existed (2012) or Postmates launched (2011). It was eventually retired because it couldn't scale as a solo operation, but it's the origin of everything that followed: understanding inventory, checkout flow, customer trust, and what it actually means when a site goes down at 8pm on a Friday, because it was his own business on the line.
A pandemic-era alternative to DoorDash's cut
MenuMinion was a React-based ordering and pickup platform built in 2020, when restaurants and food trucks suddenly needed a way to take orders online with no time to figure it out. Instead of handing a percentage of every sale to DoorDash or GrubHub, MenuMinion gave local businesses a direct ordering channel of their own. It ran successfully for three years before being retired in 2023, once the mainstream delivery platforms had grown large enough that an independent alternative couldn't keep competing for attention — but for those three years, it gave local food businesses a real option besides paying a middleman.
Software for problems most agencies won't touch
Bespeek, built in Laravel, is a legacy and final-wishes planning platform — genuinely unglamorous, sensitive subject matter that most web design shops would turn away rather than figure out how to build well. It's a reminder that "app development" here doesn't mean a narrow menu of e-commerce stores and booking widgets; it means taking on whatever software problem a client actually has, including the ones that don't fit a template.
The right technology for the job, not one template for everyone
Most local agencies build everything on a single platform, whatever it is. Twining Original Design picks the stack the project actually needs — Laravel for EventPeace's event-booking and management system, and a custom PHP WordPress plugin for First Pacific Financial's real-time finance flyer generator, which shows realty buyers payment scenarios specific to a listed property. The platform follows the goal — it never leads it.
A wide range of problems solved
The portfolio also includes Toldubid, an online penny auction platform built in PHP, and ExpressYourHeart, a client-commissioned fortune and tarot card entertainment platform launched in 2025. Different industries, different technical requirements, different audiences — the constant is a working product built for the specific problem in front of it, not a repurposed template.
Not every project gets accepted
Twining Original Design declines work from adult entertainment or escort services, conspiracy-theory-based businesses, and pseudoscience or medically dubious claims. That's not a legal disclaimer — it's a standard. Building software for a client means the reputation of everything already built stands behind it too, and being selective about what gets built is part of what keeps that reputation intact.
Case study: Shields Date Garden
A full WooCommerce build for this historic Palm Springs date farm, established in 1924, turned a century-old family business into a multichannel e-commerce operation generating over $500,000 in annual online sales. It's proof that "custom app development" doesn't only mean SaaS platforms — sometimes the highest-impact software project is the e-commerce engine behind a business that's been operating since before the internet existed.
Scoped around outcomes, not features
Every project starts with user stories — "as a [type of user], I want [goal], so that [reason]" — before a single screen gets designed. That shifts the conversation away from a feature checklist and toward what the app actually needs to accomplish for the people using it, whether that's a customer placing an order, a hauler tracking a load, or a realtor generating a financing flyer. The technology gets chosen afterward, from a stack that includes WordPress and WooCommerce, Shopify, PHP, Laravel, React, Rust, Medusa.js, and Astro — whichever actually fits.
What it costs to build something real
Custom SaaS and web applications start at $10,000, scoped to what the project actually needs. Native iOS and Android mobile apps start at $30,000. Every project follows the same 7-phase process used for every build — analysis, planning, content, development, testing, and launch — and every conversation, every build decision, and every support call is handled by Todd personally, not handed off to a rotating team.
Have an app idea?
Are you looking to take your business to the world with a custom app? Let’s talk about what’s possible.