Start From Where You Actually Are
Nobody arrives at a software company asking for “a multi-tenant web application with role-based permissions”. They arrive with a situation. This page begins with four situations, routes each one to the work that fits, and then lists everything we build.
Four Starting Positions, and What Each One Needs Next
The right first purchase depends far more on what you already have than on what you eventually want. These four cover the overwhelming majority of enquiries that reach us.
Nothing Exists Yet Beyond the Idea
You can describe the product, possibly in some detail, but there is no code, no designs and no decision about platforms. The risk here is not building badly. It is building the whole thing before anyone has confirmed that people want it, which is how most of the wasted software budgets we hear about were spent.
Expect us to spend the first conversation removing features rather than adding them, and to suggest a clickable prototype ahead of an app if the idea still needs testing on real people.
MVP development Design and prototypingThe Process Works, but It Lives in Spreadsheets
A letting agent tracking maintenance jobs across four branches. A charity reconciling Gift Aid claims by hand. A distributor whose pricing rules exist only in one workbook and one person’s head. The business runs, but it does not scale, and every new starter spends a fortnight learning the workarounds.
This is rarely a mobile app. It is usually a web application with roles, an audit trail and an honest data migration — which is half the job and gets scoped as such rather than assumed.
Custom business software Reporting and dashboardsSomeone Built It and the Project Has Stopped
There is a repository, an invoice history and a contractor or agency who no longer replies promptly. Nobody in your company can say with confidence how much of it works. The temptation is to commission the remaining features from whoever answers the phone first.
Do not. Have someone read the code, then decide. A fixed-price audit gives you a written verdict on whether continuing or rebuilding costs less over the next twelve months, and you keep that document whether or not you hire us.
Project rescue and takeover Independent technical reviewIt Is Live, and It Cannot Stand Still
Real users, real revenue and a backlog growing faster than anyone is clearing it. Operating systems change twice a year, dependencies expire, the app stores tighten their rules, and your largest customer wants one integration nobody has time to build.
If the backlog is mostly upkeep and defects, a support retainer is cheaper. If it is genuinely new capability, named engineers by the month fit better than a series of small fixed-price projects.
Maintenance and support Dedicated development teamWhen There Is Nothing to Inherit
Nine service lines for a first version, a new platform or a product that does not exist yet. Each of these pages says when that choice is wrong as well as when it is right.
MVP Development
A first version scoped to be finished rather than admired. Enough product to reach real users, gather real feedback and give an investor something to open.
Learn moreMobile App Development
One codebase to both stores where that is sensible, native where it is not. Including the submission paperwork and developer accounts held in your company name.
Learn moreiOS App Development
Swift and SwiftUI where the product leans on the device itself, and a route through App Review that does not surprise you a fortnight before launch.
Learn moreAndroid App Development
Kotlin and Jetpack, tested on the inexpensive handsets your field staff actually carry rather than only the flagship in the office drawer.
Learn moreWeb Application Development
Customer portals, booking systems, member areas and the internal tools your staff sit inside all day. Built to WCAG 2.2 AA from the first screen.
Learn moreSaaS Product Development
Tenant separation, subscription billing in sterling with VAT handled correctly, and the admin area every founder forgets to put in the budget.
Learn moreDesktop Applications
For work that cannot live in a browser tab: local hardware, very large files, or a machine on a factory floor with no dependable connection.
Learn moreEcommerce Development
Storefronts and trade portals where the pricing rules are the hard part — account-specific rates, VAT treatment, delivery zones and card fees.
Learn moreUI/UX Design & Prototyping
Screens and a clickable prototype before production code, so the expensive arguments happen while everything is still a drawing.
Learn moreThe Half of the Build Nobody Sees in a Demo
Servers, data models, integrations and reporting. This is where a product either absorbs growth quietly or falls over in front of your customers.
Backend & API Development
The services, integrations and database design that quietly set your ceiling — including the Sage, Xero and CRM connections nobody budgets for.
Learn moreAI Application Development
Document handling, search and assistants grounded in your own content, with the failure modes and the data processing implications stated up front.
Learn moreCustom Business Software
Job sheets, approvals, scheduling and compliance records — the operational spine of a firm, taken out of workbooks and given roles and an audit trail.
Learn moreAnalytics & Dashboards
One agreed definition of each number, so the board pack and the operations screen stop disagreeing about what last month actually was.
Learn moreBrowser Extensions
Chrome, Edge and Firefox add-ons that put your tooling inside the systems your team already has open all day, with no extra tab to remember.
Learn moreIoT & Connected Devices
Companion apps, provisioning flows and telemetry for hardware — sensors, meters, trackers and equipment that has to report from a poor signal.
Learn moreWork That Begins With Somebody Else’s Repository
A large share of what we do starts with code we did not write. It is the least glamorous part of this industry and the part UK buyers most often struggle to find anyone willing to take on.
Project Rescue & Modernisation
Stalled builds, abandoned codebases and systems that have aged badly. Starts with a fixed-price audit and a written verdict on continue or rebuild, plus a plan for getting the accounts and repositories back into your company’s name.
Learn moreMaintenance & Support
Security patches, the annual iOS and Android platform changes, dependency upgrades, defect fixes and small features on a monthly retainer — on software we built or on software you inherited from someone who has moved on.
Learn moreWhat Every Line on This Page Includes
These are not extras quoted separately. They sit inside the scope of a browser extension and a SaaS platform alike, because leaving them out produces work we would rather not be paid to fix later.
UK GDPR Decided Early
What personal data is held, which region it sits in, how long it is retained and how a subject access request gets serviced. Settled in architecture, not in a policy written after launch.
WCAG 2.2 AA as the Default
Keyboard operation, focus order, contrast and labelling done as we build. If you sell to a council, a university or an NHS trust you will be asked for an accessibility statement.
Accounts in Your Company Name
Repositories, cloud subscriptions, domains and store listings registered to your limited company in week one. Intellectual property transfers on final payment.
Documentation a Successor Can Read
How it deploys, what the environment variables are, where the data lives and what would break first. Written for the next team, whoever that turns out to be.
Three Ways to Pay for Any of It
The service decides what gets built. The engagement model decides who carries the risk when an estimate turns out to have been optimistic.
Fixed-Price Project
- An agreed scope, a figure in sterling excluding VAT and a written change process.
- Staged payments against milestones rather than one sum up front.
- Where our estimate was wrong, the extra hours come out of our margin.
- Suits work you can describe today: a first version, a portal, a defined integration.
Dedicated Engineers by the Month
- Named people working your roadmap, re-prioritised whenever your plans move.
- Invoiced monthly per engineer, with one month’s notice on either side.
- Suits a live product where the next six months genuinely are not settled.
- Costs more than a fixed price for identical scope, and buys flexibility instead.
Retainer or Fractional CTO
- A monthly block of hours for fixes, platform updates and small changes.
- Or architecture oversight and supplier scrutiny for a founder with no CTO.
- Useful during due diligence, when someone independent has to answer for the stack.
- Suits software that is already live, including software we did not build.
When None of This Is What You Need
Some enquiries should not become projects, and saying so early is cheaper for everyone than discovering it together in sprint three.
- If an off-the-shelf product covers eighty per cent of what you described, buy it and configure it. Bespoke software earns its cost when the remaining twenty per cent is your actual competitive advantage, not when it is a preference about layout.
- If the process you want automated is still changing every month, automate it later. Software fixes a process in place, which is a benefit only once the process is worth fixing.
- If the budget available sits well below the bottom of our published ranges, a scoped prototype or a smaller first slice is a better use of it than a compromised full build that stops at eighty per cent.
- If you need somebody permanently in your office and in your timezone all day, we are the wrong shape of supplier. Our overlap with the UK working day is genuine, and it ends in the early afternoon.
We would far rather give you that answer on a first call than take a deposit and arrive at it together in month four.
What Buyers Ask Before Choosing a Service
Do you really build all seventeen of these, or is some of it subcontracted?
The work is done by the same delivery team, and the list is narrower than it looks. A mobile app, a web portal and an internal operations system share most of their engineering: a data model, an API, authentication, permissions, testing and a release process. What differs is the layer the user touches. Where a build genuinely needs a specialism we do not hold — embedded firmware on a physical device, for instance, rather than the companion app — we say so at the estimate stage instead of learning it halfway through.
Does everything on this list have to deal with UK GDPR?
Anything holding personal data does, which in practice is most of it. We treat it as an architecture question rather than a policy document: what personal data the product genuinely needs, which region it is stored in, how long it is kept, who inside your company can see it, and how a subject access or deletion request is actually serviced when one arrives. Deciding that in week one costs almost nothing. Retrofitting it after launch is one of the more expensive jobs in this industry, and we have been paid to do it more than once.
We sell to councils, the NHS and universities. Can you meet their accessibility requirements?
We build to WCAG 2.2 AA as the default rather than as an extra, because public sector buyers ask for an accessibility statement and will read it. That means keyboard operation, sensible focus order, colour contrast that passes, form labels that screen readers announce properly, and text that survives being enlarged. We can also arrange an independent audit before you publish a statement, which we would recommend if the contract depends on it. What we will not do is tell you a build is certified compliant on our own say-so.
If the budget only stretches to one of these, which should we buy?
Buy the one that removes the largest amount of manual work or unblocks revenue, and buy it small. In practice that is usually custom business software for an established firm drowning in spreadsheets, and an MVP for a founder with nothing built yet. If you already have code that somebody else wrote, the answer is a code audit first — it is the cheapest item on this site and it stops you spending a much larger sum on the wrong decision.
How soon can you start, and who is on the other end of the calls?
Typically two to four weeks from a signed scope, sooner for an audit or a small piece of maintenance. Your calls are with the people doing the work, booked inside the morning overlap between our Indian Standard Time working day and yours, which runs from roughly 9am to early afternoon UK time. You get a written update at the close of each working day and a reply within one business day. The honest limit: something you send at 4pm UK time is answered the following morning, not that evening.
Describe the Situation, Not the Service
Send us a paragraph about what is going wrong or what you are trying to launch. You get back the service that fits, an indicative sterling range excluding VAT, and the questions we would still need answered.