Services
Everything from a first brochure site to the software your business runs on, plus senior contract engineering for teams that need another pair of hands. Here's what I do and how each kind of engagement tends to work.
Custom software development
For businesses that have outgrown spreadsheets, off-the-shelf tools or a system nobody wants to touch.
Bespoke web applications, designed around how your business actually works. I design the data model, build the application, get it into production and keep it there. You get working software early and often, not a big reveal at the end.
- Typical projects
- Customer, supplier and member portals
- Booking, quoting and ordering systems
- Internal tools and admin dashboards
- SaaS products, from first version to paying customers
- Replacing legacy systems with modern ones that do everything the old one did (see Symphony Group)
- Built with
- PHP and Laravel, TypeScript and Node (NestJS, Next.js), React or Vue on the front end, Go where performance matters, PostgreSQL or MySQL underneath. Hosted on AWS, Laravel Cloud, Vercel or your own infrastructure. If you already have a stack, I'll work in it.
Website design and build
A site that loads fast, reads well, ranks for the searches that matter and makes it easy to get in touch.
I design and build the site, set up hosting and analytics, and structure it properly for search engines from the start rather than bolting SEO on afterwards. Where it makes sense I'll build it so you can edit the content yourself.
- Typical projects
- Brochure and services sites for local and national businesses
- Landing pages for a product, service or campaign
- Sites with booking, payment or members' areas
- Redesigns of sites that have stopped pulling their weight
- What's included
- Design, build, hosting setup, structured data and on-page SEO, performance work, accessibility basics, and a handover that explains how it all fits together.
Starter
from £1,500
For a new business or sole trader whose site needs to look right, load fast and get found.
- Up to five pages, designed and hand-built
- Contact form and click-to-call
- On-page SEO and structured data
- Hosting and domain set up for you
- Live in two to three weeks
Business
from £3,000
For an established business that needs a site it can keep adding to.
- Up to twelve pages, plus news or blog
- Edit your own content
- Enquiry forms routed to the right people
- Local SEO and analytics set up
- Performance and accessibility work
- Live in four to six weeks
Bookings, payments or accounts
from £5,000
For a site that does something: takes bookings, sells, or gives customers a login.
- Everything in Business
- Booking, checkout or members' area
- Connected to the systems you already use
- Scoped and quoted after a call
Prices exclude VAT. The price is fixed in writing before work starts, with half up front and half on launch. Hosting, updates and small changes are available from £75 a month afterwards, with no tie-in.
Integrations and automation
Most businesses run on half a dozen systems that don't talk to each other.
I connect them: payments, email, CRMs, accounting, suppliers' APIs and the odd legacy system with no API at all. The goal is always the same, which is that your team stops re-keying data and the numbers in one place match the numbers in another.
- Typical work
- Stripe payments, including Connect marketplaces and subscriptions
- Transactional and marketing email with Postmark or Amazon SES
- Third-party and partner APIs
- Imports, exports and scheduled syncs
- Webhooks, queues and background processing
- Approach
- Small, well-tested pieces that fail loudly and can be re-run safely. Everything logged so that when something upstream changes, you find out from a monitor rather than a customer.
Contract engineering and team extension
A senior engineer for your team, by the day, without the recruitment cycle.
If you have a team and need another senior pair of hands, I work as a contractor: embedded in your repository, your stand-ups and your tooling, for as long as the work needs. Eighteen years full-stack across PHP, TypeScript, React, Vue and Go means I'm shipping in the first week, and I'm as comfortable leading a piece of work as picking tickets off the board.
- Typical engagements
- Senior full-stack engineer on an existing product
- Lead on a greenfield build inside a larger team
- Covering a gap: a departure, parental leave, a deadline
- Taking a legacy system off a team's hands
- Shorter pieces: an audit, a migration, a performance fix
- How it works
- Day rate, fully remote, through my limited company on outside-IR35 engagements only. Weekly or monthly invoicing. From a couple of days a week to full time, with notice periods agreed up front. Happy to work through an agency or direct.
Fractional CTO
Senior technical leadership, a few days a month, without a full-time salary.
Plenty of businesses depend on software but don't need, or can't yet justify, a full-time CTO. Decisions still have to be made: what to build, who to hire, which supplier to trust, and whether the system you have will survive the next stage of growth. I've made those decisions for my own businesses for eighteen years, and as a senior engineer inside much larger organisations, and I bring both views to the table.
- Typical work
- Technical strategy and a roadmap the team can deliver
- Architecture reviews and decisions on build, buy or replace
- Hiring: writing roles, interviewing and onboarding engineers
- Managing agencies and suppliers, and checking their work
- Technical due diligence for investment or acquisition
- A senior voice in board and investor conversations
- How it works
- A monthly retainer for an agreed number of days, usually two to six a month, with a standing weekly call and time on hand between them. Short fixed-price engagements for a single piece, such as an audit or due diligence, are available too.
Support and maintenance
Software needs looking after once it's live.
After launch there are dependency updates, monitoring, security patches and the occasional "can it also do this?". A monthly retainer covers all of it, so the software you rely on keeps working and keeps improving.
- Options
- Monthly support and development retainer
- Hosting, monitoring and security updates
- Code review and health checks for existing systems
- How it works
- A fixed monthly fee with an agreed number of days, a shared backlog, and a standing call. Unused time doesn't vanish; it's reviewed each quarter.
How pricing works
Websites start from the package prices above. Other projects are fixed price where the scope is clear, and day rate for open-ended or embedded work. Retainers are billed monthly. Every quote comes with a written scope, so you know exactly what you're paying for and what would count as a change.
If you have a budget in mind, say so on the first call. It's the quickest way to work out what's realistic.
Common questions
How much does a website cost?
Brochure sites start at £1,500 and most land between £1,500 and £4,000 depending on page count and how much you need to edit yourself. Anything with bookings, payments or customer accounts is quoted after a call, usually from £5,000. The packages above give the detail.
Do you work with businesses outside Lancashire?
Yes. The work itself is remote, so where you are makes no difference: calls, demos and reviews happen over Teams or the phone, and the code lives in a repository you can see at any time. If you're local to Lancashire or the Fylde coast, I'm happy to come and see you.
Who owns the code?
You do, once the final invoice is paid. You can see the repository and working builds throughout the project, and on final payment the code, repository, hosting accounts and domains are transferred to you in full, with no licence fees or lock-in.
Can you take over an existing project?
Usually. I'll review it first and tell you plainly whether it's worth building on or better replaced.
What if I'm not sure what I need?
Book a call. Half the value of the first conversation is working out what you actually need, and sometimes the answer is a tool you can buy off the shelf.
Do you use AI tools?
Yes, seriously and carefully. They make me faster; they don't lower the bar on review and testing, and you get a say in how they're used on your project.