Legacy application modernization, without betting the company on it.
A VB6 desktop app from 2008. An Access database only one laptop can open. A PHP 5 site the host keeps threatening. It runs the business, everyone is afraid to touch it, and the developer who built it is gone. We rebuild systems like that as modern web apps — module by module, while the old one keeps running.
Same system. Twenty years younger.
Every legacy stack has an end-of-support date. Most have already passed.
Past those dates: no security patches, ever again. Cyber-insurance renewals now ask what end-of-life software you run, and unpatched known flaws remain one of the top entry points in ransomware cases. Even Microsoft's own VB6 policy "strongly recommends that you replace your applications" — the vendor's words, not ours.
VENDOR LIFECYCLE PAGES, 2026. STILL RUNNING ONE OF THESE? THAT'S EXACTLY WHO THIS PAGE IS FOR →"If it ain't broke" has an invoice too.
The few people who still write VB6 or FoxPro bill like the endangered species they are — reported specialist rates run $180–$280 an hour, against a $45 US average for standard web developers — and the pool retires a little more every year. Keeping one unsupported Windows 10 PC patched costs $61 the first year and doubles every year after: about $427 per machine over three years, just to stand still.
The meter is small next to the risk: small-business downtime runs $25,000–$100,000 an hour (ITIC 2024), and a breach on outdated software costs small companies about $160,000 versus $102,000 on updated stacks (Kaspersky). The firms ranking for application modernization services answer all this with a $10,000–$50,000 paid assessment and $50,000–$250,000 projects — surveyed enterprises average $1.5M per project, with 79% reporting failed attempts. A 20-person company's system needs none of that. It needs a fixed-price rebuild, in phases.
PUBLISHED RATES AND SURVEYS, 2024–2026. HERE THE READ IS FREE — 24H, PRICE IN WRITING →
No source code. No docs. Not a problem we haven't seen.
Half these rescues start the same way: the developer retired, the agency dissolved, the last email bounced. We work read-only from what actually exists — the running app, the database, and the person who uses it daily. Source code gets recovered when it's findable; when it isn't, the running system is the documentation and the data model tells the truth. Nothing gets uninstalled, and the first thing we ship is a backup.
Module by module. The old system never goes down.
Asked by every owner of an old system.
#01 What does legacy application modernization cost?
Typical single-system rebuilds here land $9,000–$30,000, fixed, split across phases you approve one at a time. The agencies ranking for this query publish $50,000–$250,000 for a mid-size app and sell the assessment alone for $10,000–$50,000 — here the read is free and the price arrives in writing within 24 hours.
#02 We don't have the source code. Is this still possible?
Yes. The running app and its database carry the business rules — screens show the workflows, the schema shows the data, and your team shows what actually matters. When source exists on some old server, we recover it; when it doesn't, we rebuild from behavior. The new screens match the workflows people already know, so retraining is minutes, not weeks.
#03 We can't stop operating. Not even for a day.
That's the design constraint, not an obstacle. The old system stays live through every phase; new modules run alongside it and read the same data; cutover happens only after a parallel run where the numbers match. If a phase disappoints, the old system is still there — you've lost nothing but the phase.
#04 It's "just" Access and Excel, not a real app.
It's real enough to run the company — that's the point. Access 2016 lost support in October 2025, and a database only one laptop can open is a single point of failure with a keyboard. The same columns and logic rebuild into a multi-user web app: everyone in at once, from anywhere, exports still one click away.
#05 Honestly — should we just keep it?
Maybe. If it's on a supported stack, backed up automatically, and more than one person can run and fix it — keep it, and don't let anyone scare you into a rewrite. The tells that it's time: extended-security bills that double yearly, an insurer asking about end-of-life software, one irreplaceable person, or a server nobody dares to restart.
#06 What do you rebuild in — and who maintains it after you?
A boring, mainstream stack — Go or PHP, PostgreSQL, plain HTML and JavaScript on your domain. No framework-of-the-month, nothing exotic to hire for. The repo and database are yours from commit one, any developer can take over, and 30 days of post-launch fixes are in the contract — so the story this page opened with never happens to you twice.
02 24H: PRICE + PHASE PLAN, WRITTEN
03 GO, OR KEEP THE PLAN AND WALK