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4.7

★★★★★

Clutch

Web applications and integrations

Custom tools your business and your customers actually use.

For when a website isn’t enough. Web applications, portals and integrations built around how your business works, and connected to the systems you already run on.

We design them the way we design websites, around the people using them. It’s why the schools platform we built in 2017 is still used every day by more than 5,000 schools.

Your business runs on workarounds.

Off-the-shelf software almost fits, so the gaps get filled with spreadsheets, copy and paste, and the one person who knows how it all works.

The CRM knows who your customers are. The booking system knows what’s free. Your website knows none of it. Every change needs a developer, and nobody’s sure what’s possible without replacing everything.

So the work happens by hand, and it all stops when that one person is off.

The impact

What that costs you

By hand

The gap between the two gets filled by a person.

  • A person is the integration. The same event, listing or price gets typed into three places, and at least one of them is wrong right now. When they’re off, it stops. When they leave, it goes with them.
  • It goes stale and people notice. Nobody has time to update it by hand, so it drifts, and the visitors who spot it quietly stop trusting the rest of the site.
  • Good ideas die in the meeting. Every improvement turns into “we’d need a developer for that”, so it never gets past the discussion.

Connected

The website knows what your business knows.

  • Nobody types it in twice. Events, listings and prices update on the site when they change in the system that owns them.
  • Enquiries land where sales work. Tagged and sent straight to your CRM, so you can show what the website brings in.
  • Ideas get built, not parked. The changes that used to need a developer and a meeting become something the site just does.

Most of this is fixable without replacing anything. The systems you’ve got already hold the answer, they’re just not talking to the website.

Pupils watching a science experiment in class

Governor Space

One platform, assembled from the systems the client already ran on.

500

schools onboarded in 48 hours

6 years

still in daily use

What we build

The things people come to us for

Custom web applications

A tool your team or your customers use every day, built around how the work is actually done. Like the platform more than 5,000 schools use to manage key parts of how they run.

Client and member portals

Log in, see the thing that’s yours, do the thing you came to do.

Live bookings, stock and pricing

Pulled from the system that already owns it, so there’s one version and it’s the right one.

API integrations

Two systems that were never meant to talk to each other, connected properly and built to keep working.

CRM connections

An enquiry that lands where sales actually work, tagged and attributed, instead of in a shared inbox.

Calculators, configurators and tools

The interactive thing that answers the buyer’s question before they’ll get in touch.

Why people bring these to us

  • We build against your systems, not around them. We start with what you already run on. Replacing it is a last resort, not the opening suggestion.
  • We tell you early if it can’t be done. Better an awkward conversation in week one than a workaround you’re living with in year three.
  • It’s built to fail safely. Every connection has a plan for the day the other end stops answering.
  • You own it. Documented, handed over, no lock-in, and no dependency on us to keep it running.

Colmore Life platform

The Colmore Life platform on a laptop
Felicity Blades

Project management was highly effective throughout, with clear communication, structured phases, and regular check-ins ensuring the project stayed on track despite a tight turnaround.

–Felicity Blades

Marketing Manager, Colmore Life

Is this you?

Who it’s for

Tap any that sound like you.

  • We’ve got a website and systems that live in two separate worlds.
  • We’ve got someone in the middle holding them together by hand.
  • We need it connected, and still something people want to use.

Sounds like something we can connect.

Sounds like something we can connect. More than one of these usually means someone’s doing it by hand right now.

Not for you if you need pages, copy and images done well and nothing more. That’s web design, and it costs less. We’ll say so if that’s what you actually need.

Not ready to talk?

Build the case before you spend anything.

Use our free calculators to work out what the project’s worth and what waiting is costing you. Then get your MD to say yes.

Proof

Built to run without anyone.

Colmore BID

One site, fed by the systems behind it.

Events, businesses and projects were each owned somewhere else and kept in sync by hand. Now one route through the site, and nobody retyping any of it.

Governor Space
Governor Space

Five hundred schools in 48 hours.

Still in daily use six years later, run by the people who own it.

6 years still in daily use
Read the case study

What it was like to work with us.

“

What stood out most was their genuine care and attention to the project.

Felicity Blades

–Felicity Blades, Marketing Manager

Colmore BID

View all case studies

FAQs

Your questions, answered

What’s the difference between a website and a web application?

A website shows people information. A web application lets them do something: log in, book, search, configure, submit, see what’s theirs. Most businesses need a bit of both, and the line matters mostly because they’re priced and built differently. If someone has to be logged in for it to make sense, it’s an application.

Can you work with the systems we already have?

That’s the starting assumption. We build against what you already run on, whether that’s a CRM, a booking system, a finance package or something built for you years ago. Replacing it is a last resort rather than the opening suggestion, and if it genuinely can’t do what you need, we’ll tell you in week one rather than year three.

What if our system doesn’t have an API?

Fairly common, and usually still solvable. There’s normally a scheduled export, a database view or a middleware route that gets you most of the way. What we won’t do is build something fragile and let you find out later, so if the only honest answer is that it can’t be connected properly, that’s what you’ll get.

How much does a web application cost?

Quoted per project, because the range is enormous. A listings feed that populates itself is a different job from a member portal with logins and permissions. What we can do quickly is tell you roughly which end of the range you’re at, before anyone writes a specification.

Who owns it afterwards, and can someone else maintain it?

You own it. Documented, handed over, on your hosting, with no licence back to us. If you want another developer to take it on later, they can, and they’ll be able to read what’s there. We’d rather you stayed because it’s working than because leaving is difficult.

What happens if the other system goes down?

The site keeps working. Every connection is built with a plan for the day the other end stops answering, so a page shows the last known good version or a sensible message rather than an error. Integrations that assume both ends are always up are the ones that embarrass people.

The Squibble team holding their B Corp certification plaque

Latest insights

All insights →

Start here

Tell us what somebody’s doing by hand.

Describe the job and which systems it touches. We’ll tell you whether it can be connected before you commit to anything.