Software built around how you actually work.
Most businesses end up bending their process to fit their software. When the cost of that — the double entry, the spreadsheet nobody may touch, the monthly licence for features you never use — grows past the cost of fixing it, a system built for your work is the cheaper answer.
- Scoped and quoted before any work
- Built around your process
- You get the source code
- Supported after launch
A system that fits, instead of one you work around.
Off-the-shelf software is built for the average of thousands of businesses. That is usually the right choice — accounting, email and payroll are solved problems, and we will say so. Custom software earns its cost in the places where your business is genuinely not average: the part of the job that is yours, that the packaged tools do not have a screen for, and that currently runs on a spreadsheet, a shared inbox and somebody's memory.
- Built for one business — yours — rather than an industry average
- It changes when your process changes
- One system instead of four half-used ones with re-typing between them
- No per-user licence that punishes you for growing
- You own the code and the data it holds
The signs you have outgrown your tools
None of these is fatal on its own. Together they are what a business looks like just before somebody spends a week rebuilding the spreadsheet from scratch.
- The same information typed into two or three different systems
- A spreadsheet the business depends on that only one person understands
- Work tracked in a shared inbox, a WhatsApp group and somebody's head
- A monthly licence rising faster than the use you get from it
- Reports that take a day to assemble and are out of date by then
- A system that cannot do the one thing your business actually competes on
What a system built for you does instead
- Information entered once, available everywhere it is needed
- The process written down in software rather than in habits
- A clear record of what happened, when, and who did it
- Cost that follows the work, not the number of seats
- The numbers you run on, current, without assembling them
- The thing you are good at, supported rather than worked around
The cheapest system is the one you stop fighting.
If a packaged product already does the job well, we will tell you. A quote for software you do not need is the most expensive thing we could sell you.
The kinds of system we take on
Business software, in the ordinary sense of the phrase: the systems a company runs its work on.
Internal business systems
The system your team works in all day — records, jobs, customers, stock, scheduling — shaped around how your business actually runs.
Workflow and operations
Work that moves between people: requests, approvals, handovers, checklists and the reminders that stop things being dropped.
Dashboards and reporting
The figures you make decisions on, gathered from the systems that hold them and shown without a day of spreadsheet work first.
Customer-facing portals
A secure area where your customers see their own information and do things for themselves. Covered in full on our client portals page.
SaaS and multi-user products
Software you sell rather than only use: accounts, subscriptions, permissions and the operational side of running it.
Modernisation and rescue
A system that still works but is expensive, fragile or unsupported — moved forward in stages rather than replaced in one risky jump.
Not every idea should be custom software. If an existing product fits, we will say so — and if part of the job fits a product and part does not, an integration is often the smaller answer.
What a project includes, and what it does not.
Included in a custom software project
- A discovery stage that writes down what the software has to do
- A written scope and a quotation before any build work starts
- Design and build of the agreed system
- Secure sign-in and permissions appropriate to the system
- Testing, and a period to try it with real work before launch
- Your source code and your data, handed over
- Documentation of how it works and how it is deployed
- An agreed arrangement for support and further development
Not included unless it is in your quotation
- Custom software as part of a standard Website Plan — it is quoted separately
- Third-party licences, API charges or app-store fees
- Data migration from an old system, until we have seen the old data
- Unlimited changes after the agreed scope
- Regulatory, legal or accounting certification of any kind
- A guaranteed delivery date before the scope is agreed
Bespoke development sits outside the Website Plans. If you also want a website, the two can run alongside each other — see managed websites.
Built to be run, not just delivered.
Business software fails in production, at the worst moment, usually over something ordinary. These are the ordinary things.
Secure and reliable
Sign-in, roles and permissions designed in, not bolted on. Parameterised queries, validated input, CSRF protection and uploads checked on the server.
Maintainable and clear
Documented, with an audit trail of who changed what and when, and failures logged to us rather than shown to whoever is on the screen.
Backups you can restore
Set up as part of the build, with a restore tested — an untested backup is a belief, not a backup.
Ongoing support
Dependency and platform updates are part of the support arrangement. Software left alone for two years is not stable, it is out of date.
From a problem to something in use.
1. Talk it through
A conversation about the work, the people doing it and what currently goes wrong. Free, and often enough to conclude you do not need us.
2. Discovery
We map the process properly and write down what the software must do. You get that document whether or not you go ahead.
3. Scope and quote
A written scope and a price. Anything we are not yet certain of is named as such rather than buried in a contingency.
4. Build in stages
Delivered in pieces you can see and use, so the first version reaches real work early and the direction can still change.
5. Test with real work
Your team uses it on genuine cases before it replaces anything. Problems found here are cheap.
6. Launch and support
A planned changeover, then an agreed arrangement for support and the changes that always follow first contact with reality.
Software is never finished.
The version you launch is the version that has never met a full year of your business. Rules change, a supplier changes a format, a new person asks for the screen nobody thought of. Ongoing development is an arrangement we agree, not an afterthought.
- Platform and dependency updates
- Faults in what we built, fixed
- New features, quoted before they start
- Monitoring and backup checks
- A named person who knows your system
- Your code stays yours throughout
Custom software questions
How much does custom software cost?
It depends entirely on what the software has to do, and we will not pretend otherwise with a number on a page. What we can tell you is how the number is arrived at: a discovery stage establishes the scope, and you get a written, fixed quotation for that scope before any build work is commissioned.
Two things make the biggest difference to the figure — how many distinct jobs the software has to do, and how much it has to talk to systems you already run.
How long does a project take?
We will give you a timescale with your quotation, once the scope is agreed, because a date given before that is a guess presented as a commitment. Projects are built in stages, so useful software usually reaches real work well before the last item on the list is finished.
Do I own the software?
Yes. The source code and the data are yours, and you get them. That is different from a Website Plan, where the website itself stays with us and is covered by clause 4 of the Website Plan Terms — worth knowing if you are considering both.
Is custom software included in a Website Plan?
No. Website Plans cover a managed website. Bespoke software is scoped and quoted separately, and the two can run alongside each other for the same business.
What technology will you build it in?
That is a decision we make with you during discovery, and we will explain the reasoning rather than just naming something. The things that decide it are what the system has to do, what it has to connect to, what you already run, and what will still be maintainable in five years — not what is currently fashionable.
What if we already have a system that mostly works?
Then replacing it is usually the wrong answer. Modernising it in stages, or connecting it to something new through an API, is cheaper, less risky and does not ask your team to learn everything at once.
Can grants help fund this?
Digital funding schemes exist in Portugal and the UK and some businesses do use them for work like this. We can point you at the current official sources, but eligibility, values and deadlines change and are decided by the scheme, not by us — so nothing about your project should depend on funding until the scheme itself has confirmed it.