Looking for a Freelance Web or App Developer? How GrowMint Works

People who search for a freelance developer usually want three things. They want to talk to the person doing the work, not a salesperson. They want a price that makes sense for a small business. And they want someone who'll actually care whether the thing works.

They're also usually worried about three things: the freelancer disappearing halfway through, a price that keeps growing, and ending up with a site or app they can't touch without that one person.

GrowMint is built around that list. We're two people in Mississauga. The person who takes your first call writes the scope and then builds it, which is the part of freelancing people like. The part we've added is the paperwork and the habits that stop the second list from happening. This post is how that works in practice.

What we build

• Business websites, hand-coded in Next.js, from a five-page site for a local service business to a large site with a page for every service and city. See web design and development.
• Online stores, either custom-built or on Shopify when that's the better fit. Velvéa, a Mississauga gift basket shop, is a custom store with English and French, a delivery page for each city and its own admin panel. Tiarah Designs is a deliberately simple Shopify store for sarees and ethnic wear, built to the client's own design.
• Mobile apps for iOS and Android in React Native, one codebase for both stores. See mobile app development.
• Mobile games. Prism Potions is a puzzle game we built for a client and shipped to Google Play and the App Store.
• Custom web applications: portals, dashboards, booking tools and internal software for workflows that off-the-shelf tools don't fit. See custom web apps.
• Smaller fixed jobs: a landing page for a campaign, a speed and Core Web Vitals pass, a technical SEO audit with the fixes, or a Google Business Profile setup.

Most of our clients are restaurants, bakeries, trades, clinics, retailers and service businesses in Mississauga, Brampton, Oakville, Etobicoke and Toronto. Some are a lot further away. The work is done remotely either way.

How a project runs

Every project goes through the same six stages, whether it's a landing page or an app.

1. First call

You talk to the person who will build it. That's Tom for websites, stores and apps. The call is about your business, your customers and what you want the site or app to make them do, not about technology.

Sometimes the call ends with us saying you don't need us. If you're not trading yet, a builder like Squarespace is often the right call. If you want an app but your customers would be better served by a fast mobile website, we'll tell you, because getting people to install an app is a much higher bar than getting them to open a page.

2. Fixed quote

Within 24 hours of the call you get a written scope, a timeline and one price. The scope lists the pages, features and integrations, what you're providing (usually text, photos and logins), and what isn't included.

That price is fixed for that scope. If you later want something that wasn't in it, you get a separate number for the addition before any work is done, and you can say no. There's no hourly meter running in the background.

3. Design

We design around how your customers actually decide, not around a theme. For a bakery that might mean the menu and prices as text up front. For an HVAC company it means a page per service and the area you cover. You review wireframes first, then the finished design, and you sign off before the build starts.

4. Build

You get a live preview link early and it updates as we work, so you never have to wait for a "reveal" to see where things are. For apps, you get test builds you can install on your own phone.

Every website has to score 99 or better on Google's Lighthouse checks for performance, accessibility, best practices and SEO before we call it done. It's a simple, checkable standard, and you can run the test yourself.

5. Launch

Launch means more than switching the site on. Redirects from any old pages, Google Search Console, analytics, structured data and your Google Business Profile are set up on the day, so search engines and AI assistants can read the site from the start.

For apps, launch includes the App Store and Google Play submissions. First submissions get rejected often, usually for procedural reasons like a missing privacy disclosure or a demo login that doesn't work. Prism Potions' first iOS build was rejected over Apple's tracking permission prompt. We fixed it and resubmitted, and that kind of fix is included in the project, not billed as extra.

6. After launch

The same person who built it answers your email afterwards. There's no ticket queue and no handoff to a support team you've never met. You can stop there, pay for small changes as they come up, or move to a monthly plan for maintenance, search and marketing.

Apps need this more than websites do. Apple and Google release a new OS every year, and Google Play regularly raises the minimum Android version an update has to target. Since August 31, 2026, updates have to target Android 16. An app nobody maintains eventually can't be updated at all, so we'll tell you what upkeep costs before you commit.

How pricing works

We publish our starting prices on the pricing page:

• Sprints at $1,499 for one bounded job with a deadline: a landing page, an audit and its fixes, a speed pass, or local search setup. Four to six weeks.
• Websites, stores, apps and games are quoted individually, because a five-page site and a store with 300 products, payments and shipping rules aren't the same project. You get the full number within 24 hours.
• Monthly work from $450, if you want ongoing help after launch.

All prices are before HST, which is added at 13% on Canadian invoices. That's worth checking on any quote you compare us with, because a quote that leaves tax out looks cheaper than it is.

For context on what's normal in this market, we've written up what a business website costs in the GTA and how long one takes to build.

What you own at the end

This is the part that goes wrong most often with freelancers, so we're specific about it.

• The code, content, design files and images are yours once the project is paid for. No licence, no lock-in.
• Your domain, hosting and analytics are in your name, on accounts you can log in to.
• App store developer accounts are in your company's name. If an app is published under a developer's personal account, moving it later is slow and sometimes impossible.
• Your Google Business Profile and ad accounts are yours. If we manage ads, the spend goes straight to Google or Meta from your card, not through us.

If you've ever been stuck waiting for a developer to give you a password, we wrote a guide on what to do when a developer won't hand over access. We'd rather nobody needed it.

A real timeline

Velvéa is a good example of how fast a well-prepared project can move. Development started on September 6, 2026. By the third week of September the full catalogue was open to search engines, including the store, the admin panel, English and French versions, eleven delivery city pages and the search and analytics setup.

Most of that speed came from deciding the delivery rules, store policies and page structure early, so nobody was waiting on a decision. In our experience, projects that run long are almost always waiting on content, photos or approvals, not on code.

When you shouldn't hire us

We'd rather tell you on the first call than halfway through a project. We're the wrong fit if:

• You need a site this week for under a few hundred dollars. Use a website builder and come back when the business has outgrown it.
• You want someone billing hourly to sit in your team's Slack. We work to a fixed scope, not as staff augmentation.
• You're building a 3D or console-grade game. We build 2D, casual and branded games with web technology. A 3D game is better built in an engine like Unity, by a team that specialises in it.
• You want an app mostly because competitors have one. If nobody will open it more than once, a better mobile website will do more for you.

How to start

Send us a short description through the contact page or book a call. It helps to include:

1. What the business does and who the customers are.
2. What you want the site or app to do: take bookings, sell products, get calls, replace a manual process.
3. A link to your current site or app, if there is one.
4. Any deadline that actually matters, like a launch, a season or a lease date.

You'll hear back within one business day, from the person who would do the work.