Web apps & platforms
Software your customers log into — in weeks, not quarters.
Custom web applications — portals, dashboards, marketplaces, community platforms and internal systems with accounts, permissions, payments and live data — shipped in days to weeks.
Some businesses don't need a website; they need software their customers or staff log into and use. A portal where clients see their jobs, quotes and invoices. A searchable database of your catalogue. A marketplace, a planner, a calculator, a community platform. This is the work that used to demand an agency, a team and a six-figure budget — and it's exactly where AI-assisted development, on top of 12 years of production engineering, changes what's possible. I shipped an entire community trading platform — 6,376-item catalogue with accurate rarity data, peer-to-peer trading, guided two-player trades, a live highscores board pulled from an external API, accounts and secure authentication — within days of starting, against quotes elsewhere measured in months. It was serving 5,000 visitors a day within its first week.
- Fixed written quote
- Free scoping call
- Code and data are yours
When this service makes sense
You probably need this if…
Your idea needs logins, user accounts, and data that belongs to each customer.
You're running a service on spreadsheets that customers or staff should be able to see themselves.
You've been quoted months and a large budget by an agency for something you think should be simpler.
You want to validate a software idea quickly without spending a year and a fortune finding out.
An off-the-shelf SaaS tool almost works but you're bending your business around its limits.
How I approach it
My approach, step by step.
- 01
Find the smallest version that's genuinely useful
Most failed software projects fail by building too much before anyone uses it. I cut the idea down to the core that delivers value on day one, ship that, and grow it from real usage — so you learn from a live product in weeks instead of guessing for months.
- 02
Get the foundations right first
Accounts, authentication, permissions and data modelling are what everything else rests on, and they're expensive to fix later. I build these to the standard I'd ship for an insurer or a bank — secure first-party authentication, sane data structures, proper access control.
- 03
Build at AI-assisted speed, under senior review
AI tooling handles the volume — the screens, the plumbing, the boilerplate — while the architecture, security and edge cases stay under my judgement. That's why a platform can go from nothing to live in days without the corners that usually get cut to hit a deadline.
- 04
Make it fast and findable
Modern web apps can be both interactive and properly indexable. The trading platform I built ranked number one on Google for its category inside a week because search was designed in from the first line of code, not bolted on afterwards.
- 05
Ship it, watch it, improve it
Deployed on infrastructure that scales, with monitoring and error tracking so problems surface to me rather than to your customers — then iterated based on what real users actually do.
What you get
Concrete deliverables.
- A working web application, live on your own domain
- User accounts, secure authentication and role-based permissions
- The data model, database and admin tools behind it
- Payments, subscriptions or in-app purchases where the product needs them
- Hosting, monitoring and error tracking configured from day one
- Documentation and handover so the codebase is genuinely yours
Typical timeline
A focused first version can be live within days to a couple of weeks — that's the whole point of how I build. Larger platforms run as day-rate work with a two-week minimum, staged so something usable exists early rather than at the very end.
Proof, not promises
Where this comes from.
Gaming · Community platform
OSRS Card Exchange
A full community trading platform, live in days — where other quotes said months.
5,000/day visitors within the first week — and #1 on Google for its game mode
Read the case studyInsurance · InsurTech
Uinsure
A self-serve call-recording platform that turned a manual dev job into a few clicks — saving hours every week.
Hours/wk saved — a manual dev task became self-serve
Read the case studyInsurance
Covéa Insurance
A customer claims platform that turns complex policy rules into an accurate, guided process.
CEO-recognised Innovation Day · AWS, MongoDB, IBM
Read the case study
Common questions
What clients usually ask.
How can a platform really be built in days?
Because most of a build isn't invention — it's volume. Screens, forms, plumbing between database and page, admin tooling. AI-assisted development collapses that volume, and 12 years of engineering decides the architecture, the security model and the edge cases. You're not getting a shortcut; you're getting the same work with the slow parts removed. OSRS Card Exchange is the proof: quoted at months elsewhere, live in days, 70% cheaper, and top of Google in week one.
Is it safe to hold customer data in a custom app?
It's safer than most off-the-shelf setups when it's built right. Authentication, encryption, access control and data-protection practice come from years working in insurance and banking, where getting this wrong isn't an option. Where privacy is critical, everything can be kept inside your own perimeter — that's how I built the AI side of an energy platform to GDPR standards.
What if I need it to scale later?
It's built assuming you will. I've re-architected a SaaS platform from a monolith to microservices so each client's processing scaled independently, and worked inside a high-traffic retailer's core systems. Starting simple and scaling deliberately is a well-understood path when someone's walked it before.
What does a web app cost?
Far less than the agency quote you're probably comparing it to. Small focused apps can land near the top end of website pricing; substantial platforms are day-rate with a two-week minimum. You get a fixed written quote and a staged plan after a free call, so you're never far in without something working to show for it.
Want to talk about web apps & platforms?
Tell me what you're trying to do. It's me who reads your message, and I'll reply within one business day.
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