Custom Platforms

When off-the-shelf
won't do it.

We don't only build on Magento and WordPress. When a job needs a system that doesn't exist yet, we build the backend ourselves — custom APIs, dashboards and data platforms, engineered properly.

Monitoring & control platforms

Custom dashboards and control systems — including a multi-site solar and UPS platform that polls inverters over the local network, stores time-series data, and gives operators a live dashboard, scheduling, control and reporting.

Secure platforms for sensitive data

Compliance-aware systems for sensitive information — custom relational data layers, role-based access and secure file handling, engineered with data-privacy law (POPIA) in mind from the start.

Custom APIs & integrations

APIs that connect systems never meant to talk — ERPs, accounting, hardware and third-party services, stitched together properly.

Data & reporting

Time-series capture, aggregation and reporting — dashboards and exports that turn raw data into decisions.

From the database up

Real systems, engineered properly.

A custom build isn't a bigger website. It's a data model, an API, a daemon talking to hardware, a dashboard someone runs their day from. We've built monitoring and control platforms that read equipment over the local network in real time, and secure data platforms for information you can't afford to get wrong.

Same discipline as everything else we do: think first, model the data, build it to last, and run it once it's live.

Tell us what you need built
When to build custom

Software that fits the business, not the template.

Most businesses are well served by WordPress, WooCommerce or Magento. Some are not: a distributor that needs a dealer portal talking to a live ERP, a monitoring platform that ingests sensor data from the field, a secure data-sharing platform for a regulated industry, a dashboard that joins three systems nobody has joined before. For those we build from the database up.

We design the data model first, then the APIs, then the interfaces that sit on them. That order matters: a platform designed from the screens inward becomes brittle the moment the business changes. Ours are built so the next feature is a module, not a rewrite.

Integration is the usual reason a custom build exists at all. We work with live APIs where a system offers one and with file-based exchange over SFTP, JSON and flat files where it does not. Every integration gets a reconciliation loop and guards at the money end, because every upstream system eventually sends something wrong.

Everything ships with documentation, tests where they earn their keep, monitoring, and a hosting arrangement that means the people who built it are the people who run it.

Questions we get asked

Straight answers.

What do you build custom platforms with?

PHP and Node on Linux, PostgreSQL or MariaDB, Redis, and modern JavaScript on the front end. Boring, well-supported tools that will still be maintainable in ten years. We avoid frameworks that lock a client into one vendor or one developer.

How do you scope and price a custom build?

A paid discovery phase produces a data model, a prioritised feature list and a fixed quote for the first release. You can take that document elsewhere if you want. After launch, work is either quoted per feature or run on a monthly retainer.

Can you integrate with our ERP or accounting system?

Almost certainly. We have integrated Epicor-based systems over live APIs and SYSPRO, Sage and others over file exchange. If the system has an export, we can build a reliable sync around it.

Who owns the code?

You do. It lives in a repository you have access to, with documentation, and nothing is hidden behind a licence that stops another developer taking it over.

Do you build mobile apps?

We build responsive web applications and progressive web apps that install on phones. For native iOS or Android we partner with specialists and build the backend and APIs they consume.

From the journal

How it goes in practice.

All journal posts