Custom Web Applications
Software shaped to your business,
not the other way round.
Off-the-shelf software works until it doesn't. Then you spend more time working around its limitations than getting your actual work done. We design and build bespoke web applications for businesses that have outgrown what off-the-shelf software can do: customer portals, internal tools, booking systems, calculators, dashboards. Built on solid foundations, shaped around your business, and built to evolve as it does.
What's included.
Discovery & Specification
We start by understanding the problem, the users, the data, and the integrations. A clear specification comes out of that work, not the other way round.
Design & UX
Interface design built around real workflows, not feature lists. We design for how your team or your customers actually use the application, day to day.
Development
Modern, maintainable code on Next.js, TypeScript, and a stack chosen to fit the job. Built to scale with you rather than paint you into a corner.
Hosting & Care
Web applications need active care. We host, monitor, patch, and evolve the application after launch so it keeps doing its job as your business changes.
Start with the business.
Build from there.
Custom web application development goes wrong when scope and reality come apart. The 'build everything in version one' approach burns budget; the 'minimum viable product so thin nobody wants to use it' approach delivers something that doesn't earn its keep. We work somewhere in the middle: small enough to ship and learn from real use, complete enough to actually do its job. Then we evolve from there.
Understand
We learn the work the application is meant to do, who's doing it now, and where the current process slows down or breaks.
Specify
We define what the first version needs to do, what it deliberately doesn't, and what gets queued for later releases.
Build
Design and code together, with you involved at every stage rather than only at the end. Releases ship in usable chunks, not a single big-bang launch.
Evolve
Once it's live, we keep refining. Web applications get better when they're used by real people, not just when they're built.
Ready to talk it through? Start a conversation
Who this is for
Businesses with a real workflow problem that off-the-shelf software hasn't solved. Established businesses building internal tools, service businesses building customer portals or booking systems, founders building product. If you've tried wedging your business into someone else's software and it isn't working, or if the spreadsheet has finally stopped scaling, let's talk.
See it in practice.
Projects where this work shaped the outcome.
Questions we get asked
A web application is software that runs in a browser and does real work for its users beyond delivering pages of content. Customer portals where people log in and see their own data. Booking systems that hold availability and take payments. Internal dashboards that surface business metrics. Calculators and configurators that produce custom outputs. Multi-step workflows that replace spreadsheets or paper forms. If your idea has logged-in users, custom data, or business logic behind it, it's an application rather than a website.
Custom web applications are the core of it, but the same approach covers a lot of ground: bespoke business software, internal tools and dashboards, bespoke databases that replace overgrown spreadsheets, customer portals, booking systems, and bespoke CRMs. If it's software shaped around your business rather than bought off the shelf, it's the kind of thing we build.
Yes, bespoke CRMs are one of the most common custom applications we build. We've given it its own page, covering when a custom CRM is worth building over off-the-shelf options like Salesforce or HubSpot. The short version: when working around the limits of off-the-shelf software is costing you more than it saves.
More variable than a marketing site, because scope can range from a few weeks of work to a multi-year programme. A focused first version of a custom application typically lands between £8,000 and £40,000. Larger or longer-running products get scoped over multiple releases rather than priced as a single number. We always start with discovery so we can give you an honest figure rather than guessing in a pitch. The cheapest version of custom application development is usually the one that goes wrong, so we'd rather quote properly than quote low.
A focused first version typically takes 6-14 weeks from discovery to launch, depending on the complexity of the data, the number of user roles, and what it needs to integrate with. Larger applications run on a release cadence rather than a single launch: ship something useful in three months, then evolve from there. We'd rather get a small, working version live and learn from real use than spend a year building something that turns out to be the wrong thing.
Custom web applications get built on Next.js with TypeScript, with the database, hosting, and authentication layers chosen to fit the application. Postgres for most relational data, Sanity or Payload when content management is part of the picture, Stripe for payments, and standard auth tooling for sign-in. We pick the boring, well-supported tools where we can. Custom application development goes wrong when the build is also a science experiment in new infrastructure.
A website's main job is to communicate. People arrive, read or browse, and either take action or leave. A web application's main job is to do work. People log in, interact with their own data, run processes, and produce output. The disciplines overlap (both need solid design, both need clean code) but the engineering decisions and the user experience considerations are different. The maintenance burden is also fundamentally different: applications need active care in a way that brochure sites don't.
Often yes, depending on the stack and the state of the code. We start with an audit: codebase, deployment setup, dependencies, documentation. If the application is on a stack we work with (typically Next.js, Node, Postgres, or similar mainstream tooling) and the code is in reasonable shape, takeover is straightforward. If it's on something more unusual or the code is in a difficult state, we'll be honest about whether takeover, partial rebuild, or full rewrite is the better call rather than charging you for a contract we can't properly deliver.
No. The code we write is yours. We work in standard, well-supported technologies that other agencies and freelance developers can pick up if you ever want to move the work. We don't build on proprietary lock-in tooling, and we won't bury our work in undocumented complexity that only we can maintain. We'd rather keep your business through doing good work than through making it painful to leave.