Kanstex, Inc. · Independent software consultancy · Est. 2011 · Cedar Park, Texas v.2026.08

Architecture, code,
and the infrastructure underneath.

§ 00  —  Prospectus

An S-corporation for deep, long-horizon software work.

Kanstex is the consulting entity of Chris Alderson — a senior full-stack engineer and fractional CTO with twenty-five-plus years architecting enterprise systems, and a continuous record of AWS infrastructure work stretching back to 2008.

The practice today centers on two things: building custom applications end-to-end, and — the real specialty — taking apps that already exist, including the AI-assisted, vibe-coded kind, and turning them into hardened production systems with real DNS, real databases, real monitoring, and real uptime.

Launch your app → See what we've shipped →
25+
Years architecting production systems
2008
Running AWS infrastructure ever since
50+
Enterprise & startup engagements delivered
4
Products of our own live in production
§ 01  —  Launch

You vibe-coded the app. Now make it real.

The build got easy. Production didn't.

AI tools have made building an app the easy part. A weekend with Claude Code or Cursor and you have something that genuinely works — on your laptop. What you don't have is a domain that resolves, a server that stays up, a database with backups you've actually tested, monitoring that texts you before your users do, and infrastructure that scales when the launch goes better than expected.

That gap is exactly what Kanstex closes. Bring an idea, a prototype, or a vibe-coded repo — Kanstex builds what's missing and stands up the production environment around it, end to end.

Step 01

Bring what you have

An idea on a napkin, a half-finished prototype, or a vibe-coded repo that only runs on your laptop. Any starting point works.

Step 02

Kanstex makes it production

The code hardened where it needs it, then the full environment stood up around it — domain, servers, database, pipelines, monitoring.

Step 03

You launch — and own it

Documented, monitored, and handed over with the keys. No platform lock-in, and no dependency on Kanstex to keep it alive.

§ 01.1  —  The offer

From localhost to launched.

Kanstex takes your working app and gives it a real production home on AWS — the same playbook used to launch Questkins, Hardwood CourtIQ, and RoadTrippinBuddy, backed by seventeen-plus years of running production cloud infrastructure.

Not a platform, not a reseller: a senior engineer who sets it up properly, documents it, and hands you the keys.

kanstex launch your-app → domain + dns ......... route 53 ✓ → tls certificates ..... auto-renew ✓ → servers .............. ec2 · docker ✓ → database + backups ... rds · tested ✓ → ci/cd pipeline ....... zero-downtime ✓ → monitoring + alerts .. armed ✓ → auto-scaling ......... standing by ✓ ✓ https://your-app.com is live
L·01

Domain & DNS

Registration, Route 53 zones, and DKIM / SPF / DMARC so your email actually lands in inboxes.

L·02

Servers & deploys

EC2 provisioning, Docker, Kamal 2 zero-downtime deploys, and separate staging and production environments.

L·03

Database & backups

RDS / Aurora or Postgres setup, migrations, and automated backups with restores that have actually been tested.

L·04

TLS & security hardening

Auto-renewing certificates, VPC and firewall rules, IAM least-privilege, secrets management, rate limiting.

L·05

Monitoring & alerting

Uptime checks, error tracking, log aggregation, CloudWatch dashboards — and alerts that reach you before your users notice.

L·06

Auto-scaling & load

Load balancing, scaling policies, and performance profiling done before launch day, not after the outage.

L·07

CI/CD pipelines

Test-gated pipelines from git push to production, with one-command rollbacks when you need them.

L·08

Email deliverability

Amazon SES setup, domain reputation warm-up, and transactional email that doesn't end up in spam.

L·09

Cost control & runbooks

Right-sized instances, budget alarms, and documentation so you're never hostage to your own stack — or to Kanstex.

§ 02  —  Product Lab

Built, shipped, and running in production.

Kanstex doesn't just consult on launches — it runs its own. Every app below was designed, built, and productionized in-house, on the exact playbook offered to clients: Route 53 DNS, EC2 servers, managed databases, monitoring, and zero-downtime deploys.

Kids · EducationP·01

Questkins

questkins.com

A vocabulary-quest adventure for children — daily word quests, collectible companions, and parent dashboards, with child data encrypted at rest.

Rails 8Hotwire NativeKamal 2EC2MySQL
Visit questkins.com ↗
Sports AnalyticsP·02

Hardwood CourtIQ

hardwoodcourtiq.com

College basketball analytics — adjusted efficiency ratings with honest uncertainty bands, matchup breakdowns, and daily-updated team pages.

Rails 8HotwireTailwindRatings engine
Visit hardwoodcourtiq.com ↗
Travel · iOSP·03

RoadTrippinBuddy

roadtrippinbuddy.com

A SwiftUI road-trip navigator with live per-stop ETAs, backed by a Rails 8 API — privacy-first accounts with opt-in sync.

SwiftUIiOSRails 8 APIKeychain auth
Visit roadtrippinbuddy.com ↗
§ 03  —  Principal

Two decades of building production systems that hold up.

Chris Alderson — full-stack engineer, architect, fractional CTO.

Chris has spent his career at the architectural seam between application and infrastructure: designing systems from the database up, writing the code that ships, and running the servers that keep it alive. He's led teams from two to twenty, managed offshore developers across continents, and personally deployed applications on AWS since the service was still in its infancy in 2008.

He operates Kanstex as his independent consulting vehicle — the entity through which he takes on selective engineering, architecture, and technical-leadership engagements for clients who need both senior judgment and hands-on delivery, without the overhead of a larger firm.

The through-line across every engagement is a commitment to well-structured, pattern-driven code and established engineering practice — the kind that still reads cleanly five years in — paired with hands-on fluency in modern AI tooling like Claude and Claude Code, used judiciously to raise the quality bar rather than replace it.

Certifications & Education
  • Sun Certified Enterprise Architect (Java)
  • Sun Certified Business Component Developer
  • Sun Certified Web Component Developer
  • Sun Certified Developer (Java 2)
  • Sun Certified Programmer (Java)
  • IBM Certified Enterprise Connectivity, J2EE
  • IBM OOAD with UML
  • B.S. Environmental Studies, University of Kansas (1997)
Entity
Kanstex, Inc. — Texas S-Corporation
Established
April 2011
Principal
Chris Alderson
Based
Cedar Park, Texas
Engagements
CTO, architecture, senior engineering, code review, team leadership
Formats
Fractional, contract, retained
Sectors
Enterprise SaaS, healthtech, sportstech, consumer, non-profit, fintech-adjacent
§ 04  —  Practice

What Kanstex is actually hired to do.

01 · ArchitectureCore

System architecture & modernization

Taking monoliths apart into services without breaking them. Rails upgrade paths. Java / J2EE platforms. Event-driven systems, ETL, data-sync services at scale. Codebases that were fast to build and are now hard to change.

Keywords  —  SOA · Rails 8 · J2EE · Strategy pattern · Namespacing · Bulk preloading · ElasticSearch
02 · CloudSince 2008

AWS infrastructure engineering

Production cloud work from the EC2 pre-launch era to Kamal 2 and Docker today. VPC design, cross-region PrivateLink, RDS/Aurora, reporting via Athena/S3, SES, Route 53, CI/CD, and the unglamorous runbook work that keeps things up at 3 a.m.

Keywords  —  EC2 · VPC · RDS · Aurora · S3 · SES · Route 53 · Athena · Kamal · Docker · Capistrano
03 · Full-StackRails · Java

Senior full-stack development

Ruby on Rails (6, 7, 8), Java / J2EE, and .NET systems built to production standards. HAML / Stimulus / ESBuild front-ends, REST and JSON APIs, background processing, OAuth and Devise auth, Shrine, payment and identity integrations.

Keywords  —  Rails · Spring · Struts · Stimulus · jsbundling · Devise · CanCanCan · Shrine · ElasticSearch
04 · LeadershipCTO · VP Eng

Fractional CTO & technical leadership

Acting as the technical head for early-stage companies. Hiring, code review, offshore team management across continents, roadmap, architecture decisions, vendor evaluation, and the conversations with founders about trade-offs that only a senior engineer can have honestly.

Keywords  —  Fractional CTO · Offshore team mgmt · Agile Scrum · Code review · Hiring · Due diligence
05 · Data & IntegrationETL · Sync

Data pipelines & system integrations

Large-scale data synchronization services, including one reduced from ~6 hours to ~30 minutes through bulk preloading, chunking, and audit-logged debug modes. Integrations with Facebook, Twitter, Brightcove, Salesforce, ExactTarget, Apple & Google OAuth, Geoapify.

Keywords  —  ETL · Data sync · JSON · SOAP · REST · OAuth2 · Webhooks · Audit logging
06 · Product0 → 1

Greenfield product engineering

From blank repo to live in front of users. Independently shipped apps include Questkins, Hardwood CourtIQ, and RoadTrippinBuddy — see § 02, Product Lab — plus PelviZen, a pelvic-health platform on Rails 8 / EC2 / Kamal.

Keywords  —  Rails 8 · Kamal · Docker · Propshaft · Solid Queue · Stimulus · Tailwind · TestFlight
07 · CraftQuality

Well-structured code & lasting patterns

A quarter-century of engagements builds a strong conviction: the codebase three years from now has to be maintainable by someone else. Kanstex commits to well-established practices — SOLID principles, clear separation of concerns, idiomatic framework use, Strategy and Factory patterns applied with intent — and to the disciplined code review, refactoring, and documentation work that keeps systems honest.

Keywords  —  SOLID · Design patterns · Code review · Refactoring · Test coverage · Documentation · Linting
08 · ToolingAI-Assisted

AI-accelerated development

Hands-on experience setting up and working with modern AI coding tools — including Claude and Claude Code — as a genuine force multiplier on delivery velocity and code quality. Used with judgment: senior engineering stays firmly in control of architecture and correctness, while AI accelerates the boilerplate, refactoring, test generation, and research that used to consume days.

Keywords  —  Claude · Claude Code · AI-assisted review · Prompt engineering · Agent workflows · Accelerated delivery
§ 05  —  Selected Work

A partial catalog of engagements.

Work delivered for & alongside

Standard & Poor's · U.S. Postal Service · TD Ameritrade · Adobe · Macy's · Ford · Verizon · RIM · Wachovia · OrthoFi · NABC · Digital Sports Ventures

01
MyPelvizen
Chief Technology Officer  ·  Current
Women's health technology company building a pelvic-health platform for incontinence. Technical leadership, Rails 8 architecture, AWS infrastructure, SES email deliverability, marketplace feature with CanCanCan permissions and Shrine/S3 assets, and management of an offshore developer.
Ruby on Rails 8AWS EC2Kamal 2DockerPropshaftAmazon SESRoute 53
Active
2025 — Present
02
HaymakerSpace
Chief Technology Officer
CTO for a venture-backed startup building a Vue.js front-end on a Ruby on Rails API. Set the technical direction from the ground up, architected the system, hired and managed a pair of offshore developers, and handled the code review and release process.
Vue.jsRuby on RailsCapacitorJSOffshore team mgmtAWS
Startup
2021 — 2024
03
OrthoFi
Senior Developer
Development work on OrthoFi's orthodontics practice-management software, working in .NET/C# on the core billing and patient-facing systems used by orthodontic practices across the United States.
.NETC#SQL ServerEnterprise SaaS
Healthcare
2023 — 2024
04
TicketAdvantage
Developer
Engineering work on an online sports-betting platform. Application development, integration work, and production support in a regulated, real-money-transaction environment.
Web platformBetting marketsPayments
Fintech-adj.
05
National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC)
Architect & Lead Engineer
Architected and built the NABC's membership-management application and online member portal from scratch. Managed an offshore development team through implementation, stood up and maintained the AWS EC2 infrastructure, and consulted on the membership team's business processes.
Ruby on RailsAWS EC2MySQLOffshore team mgmtMember portal
Association
06
Maternity Media
Senior Developer
Feature development on the Belly Bunch web application — a social platform for expectant mothers — plus setup and ongoing maintenance of the AWS infrastructure that ran it.
Web appAWSSocial platformRuby on Rails
Consumer
07
Digital Sports Ventures
Development Manager & Senior Architect
Architected a high-throughput Java application server that backed nearly all of DSV's products; designed a code-generation layer that automatically produced DAO/BD code for PostgreSQL, Twitter, Facebook, Brightcove, and Salesforce; built an NCAA tournament bracket widget distributed to 300+ partner websites; and implemented a memcached caching strategy that dramatically increased system performance.
Java / J2EESpringPostgreSQLMemcachedFlexAWS EC2Ruby on Rails
Sports media
08
Kana Software (formerly eVergance)
Development Manager
Customized the Kana knowledge-management platform for Standard & Poor's, built custom JReports reporting for several enterprise customers, and managed a team of fifteen-plus developers across engagements for the U.S. Postal Service, TD Ameritrade, RIM, Macy's, Adobe, Ford, Verizon, Wachovia, and others.
Java / J2EESpringStruts2OracleWebSphereJReports
Enterprise
§ 05.1  —  Feature engagement

AWS since 2008. Before most teams had a word for it.

Kanstex has been architecting and operating Amazon Web Services deployments since the earliest days of EC2 — through every era from hand-rolled AMIs and stitched-together shell scripts, to Capistrano and Passenger, to Docker, to today's Kamal 2 and Aurora-backed production environments.

Not a vendor reseller; a practitioner who has personally set up the VPC, configured the DKIM, traced the Propshaft fingerprint mismatch, and done the 2 a.m. rollback.

EC2 · ECScompute
S3object store
RDS · Auroradatabases
VPC · PrivateLinknetworking
SESemail
Route 53DNS
Athenaanalytics
CloudWatchobservability
IAMaccess control
ACMcertificates

Fast to build is easy.
Built to last is the job.

— The standard every Kanstex engagement is held to
§ 06  —  Technology

The stack, assembled.

Languages11

  • Ruby
  • Java / J2EE
  • C#
  • JavaScript
  • TypeScript
  • SQL
  • Swift
  • HTML
  • XSL / XML
  • PowerBuilder
  • Flex

Frameworks12

  • Ruby on Rails (6, 7, 8)
  • Spring
  • Struts / Struts2
  • Vue.js
  • CapacitorJS
  • Stimulus
  • Hibernate
  • Devise
  • CanCanCan
  • Shrine
  • Sidekiq / Solid Queue
  • SwiftUI

Cloud & OpsAWS

  • AWS (since 2008)
  • EC2 · ECS
  • S3
  • RDS · Aurora MySQL
  • VPC · PrivateLink
  • Route 53 · SES
  • Athena
  • IAM · ACM
  • Docker
  • Kamal 2
  • Capistrano
  • Apache · Passenger

Databases6

  • MySQL · Aurora
  • PostgreSQL
  • Oracle
  • MS SQL Server
  • Sybase
  • DB2
  • ElasticSearch

IntegrationsPlatforms

  • Facebook · Twitter (X)
  • Apple Sign In · Google OAuth
  • Salesforce
  • ExactTarget
  • Brightcove · Kaltura
  • Geoapify
  • Stripe / Payments
  • Siebel · Oracle CRM
  • Clarify
  • WebMethods

MethodPractice

  • Agile Scrum
  • Code review & mentorship
  • Offshore team management
  • Joint application design
  • System architecture
  • Performance profiling
  • Due-diligence review
  • Technical hiring
§ 07  —  Contact

New engagements, selectively.

Kanstex takes on a limited number of engagements each year — production launches for apps that need a real home, custom builds from a blank repo, fractional CTO work, and deep architecture or modernization engagements where the founder needs somebody they can trust to make the call.

Have an app idea — or a vibe-coded app that works on your laptop and nowhere else? That launch work is a well-defined, fixed-scope engagement, and the most direct way to start is by email at calderson@kanstex.com. Expect a reply within one business day.

Email
calderson@kanstex.com
Telephone
+1  888 · 707 · 4994
Office
Cedar Park, Texas
Entity
Kanstex, Inc. · S-Corp