Paying removes the ads
Not fewer ads, not smaller ones. Once an app is paid for it stops asking the ad network for anything at all. The apps we publish for faith and charity have never carried an advert on any tier.
Simple tools that respect your time
Software that stays
out of your way.
Every ClearStack app holds its data on your device. Most need no account. None of them lock what you have already written. Those three sentences are the whole position, and the rest of this page is what they cost us to keep true.
Principle one
Your data is yours
When a trial ends, everything you created stays readable. Always. No exceptions.
A lapsed subscription does not close your logbook. Every entry you already made can still be opened, edited, printed and exported after the trial runs out, after a renewal fails, after you decide the app was not for you. Where a free tier caps how many records you can keep, the cap applies to the next one you create — never to the ones already sitting there.
This is written into the apps rather than into a policy. The entitlement check that gates a purchase asks one question, whether this is a new record above the cap, and it has no code path that hides or deletes an old one. A tool that holds your own paperwork hostage is not a tool, and a notary or a tester who has trusted a logbook for three years should never have to find that out the hard way.
Principle two
You buy it, or you don't
No ads once you have paid. Lifetime options on most. No renewal you forgot about. The transaction is meant to be finished, not managed.
A lifetime price on most of them
Most apps in the catalogue sell a one-off lifetime unlock next to the monthly and yearly options. Buying it ends the relationship in the good way: you own the thing, and you keep every feature it had.
Priced to the way the tool is used
A calculator you open twice a year is a one-time purchase, because charging rent for it would be absurd. A logbook you add to every working day is a subscription or a lifetime unlock. Nothing is priced per seat or per member.
Principle three
Built for one trade at a time
A backflow tester's report is not a generic form. We build it the way the trade actually works — which is why the catalogue looks like a dozen unrelated products rather than one configurable platform. A generic form asks you to describe your job to it. These ask the questions your paperwork already asks.
Backflow testers
Backflow Test Report LogA backflow report is not one form. An RP, an RPDA, a DC, a DCDA, a PVB and an SVB each take different readings, and the water purveyor wants them laid out its own way. The app records the PSID readings the assembly type actually calls for, tracks the annual due date per assembly, and prepares the signed report in the layout the purveyor expects.
Inflatable hire operators
Bouncy Castle Safety LogBS EN 14960 and AS 3533.4.1 decide what has to be written down at a bouncy castle hire: wind speed, internal pressure, anchorage. So those are the fields, in that order, with a pre-use check and a handover the hirer signs on the phone before you drive away.
Turf and lawn sprayers
TurfLogA spray record is only worth keeping if it holds the product, the EPA registration number, the rate, the site and the weather at the time. TurfLog asks for exactly that, on the truck, with no signal, and hands the customer their copy before the next job.
The same applies to a process server logging every attempt with its time, outcome and GPS fix in ServeLog, and to a notary putting signer, ID, document, fee and signature into one entry in NotaryLog. Different trades, different records, different apps. It is slower than building one product with a settings screen, and it is the reason any of them are worth installing.
How an app gets made
The method does not change between a knitting row counter and a fire extinguisher inspection log, which is the only reason one catalogue can hold both.
STEP 01
Start from the record, not the idea
Every one of these apps replaces something already being kept by hand — a clipboard, a duplicate book, a spreadsheet nobody enjoys opening. If nobody is keeping the record yet, there is no app to build.
STEP 02
Build the job, and stop
One app, one job. No dashboard, no team seats, no tour on first launch. A feature that is not the job does not go in, however easy it would be to add.
STEP 03
Ship it and stand behind it
It goes on the store, it gets fixed when it breaks, and it stays there. Support email is answered by the people who wrote the code, not routed away from them.
Not all of it is a single-job app. A few platforms collect dues and fees for small clubs, dojos and kennels through Stripe, and those sit together under for business. When the tool a business needs does not exist at all, custom development is the other half of the work. Notes on how any of this gets built go on the blog.
Questions people actually ask
- What happens to my records if I stop paying?
- They stay. Everything you already entered can still be opened, edited and exported. Only new entries above a free cap are blocked. Nothing is hidden or deleted.
- Do I need an account?
- For most apps, no. They keep their records on the phone itself and never ask you to sign up. The few that sync or take card payments need one and say so on their own page.
- Is there an iPhone version?
- Not all of our apps are on both platforms.
- Is there advertising in the apps?
- On free tiers, a banner. Paying removes it completely. The faith and donation apps carry no advertising at all, on any tier.
- Will the app I buy still be here in two years?
- That is the intention, and it is why the catalogue is built the way it is. Small apps with no server behind them are cheap to keep running and hard to kill.
- How do I get help?
- Email support@clearstackapps.com and say which app it is. For anything else, hello@clearstackapps.com or the contact page.
Find the one that matches your paperwork
The whole catalogue sits on one page, grouped by trade, with a search box. If the record you keep is not in there yet, tell us what it looks like.