Almost every conversation about software ends with the same uncomfortable question: what happens if tomorrow I no longer want to work with you. It is a healthy question, and the answer should be in writing before anything is signed.
At Almendro it is in the terms: once the project is paid, the code is in your name. That is not brochure language, it is a clause, and it is worth understanding what it delivers and what it does not.
What you actually receive
When the project closes, you keep four things:
- The full repository, with its history. Not a zip file with the latest version, but the record of how it got there, which is what anyone continuing the work will need.
- The database and its structure, with the migrations that build it from scratch. Without that, the code is a key with no lock.
- The technical documentation: how to set up the environment, how to deploy, what variables it needs, and what decisions were made along the way.
- The written procedures from the documentation phase, which describe your operation, not just the program.
What you can do with it
You can stay with us, which is what we hope for. You can hand it to your internal team. You can hire another company to continue it. And you can do so without asking permission or paying a ransom, which is exactly the point of the clause.
The next question is usually: if clients can leave whenever they want, how do you keep them. The answer is simple and it is the only one that holds: by doing good work. A client who stays because they cannot leave is not a satisfied client, they are a hostage, and sooner or later they leave anyway, with a worse memory of it.
The difference with a subscription
In a subscription service you rent access. The day you stop paying, you stop logging in, and your data sits on the provider's side. It is a legitimate model and for many things it is the right one: nobody should commission their own email system.
But when the program is your operation, the one that gives you an edge, renting it carries a cost that never shows on the monthly invoice: you cannot change it at your pace, you cannot take it with you, and its continuity depends on another company's decisions.
And if Almendro disappears
This is the most welcome question, because hardly anyone asks it out loud. If Almendro closes tomorrow, you have the code, the database and the documentation, and any team working with the same technology can continue it. It may cost you time and money, but you are not left without your system, which is the difference that matters.
That is why the software is built with ordinary, well documented technology, not with in-house inventions only its author understands. Originality goes into solving your problem, not into the scaffolding.
What to check in any contract
With us or with anyone else, before signing look at three things:
- Who owns the code, stated in those words and not through phrases like "perpetual usage licence", which is not the same thing.
- Where your data lives and how you get it back, in what format and how quickly.
- What happens the day the relationship ends: what is handed over, within what deadline, and with what support.
If those three answers are in writing, the conversation starts in the right place.