What we doThe Mansions · Custom software development firm

Custom software.

We sit down with you, work out exactly what your business needs, and then build the software around it.

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  1. 01Understanding what you need
  2. 02Designing it with you
  3. 03Building it
  4. 04Testing it
  5. 05Launching it
  6. 06Maintaining it

What custom software development actually is

Custom software development is writing software from scratch around the way one business works, instead of buying a tool made for everyone and bending your work to fit it. It can be almost anything a business needs. So as a custom software development company, we start by working out what that is.

  1. Your way of working

    Every tool on the market comes with someone else's idea of how the work should go, down to its steps and its screens. Software built for you starts from yours instead, so the people using it see the work the way they already think about it.

  2. When it's worth building

    Custom software is worth building when no tool on the market fits the way your team works, or one job is spread across tools that don't talk to each other. It also earns its place when the way you work is part of why clients choose you.

  3. When it isn't

    Sometimes, though, a tool on the market already does the job, and your team is happy working its way. Then building is the wrong call, and that's the first thing we check.

And AI can sit inside custom software too. It can read documents to fill in what's missing, or draft the next step for someone to check. The way we build it, a person has the last word on anything that goes out.

How we build custom software, stage by stage

  1. 01Understanding what you need
  2. 02Designing it with you
  3. 03Building it
  4. 04Testing it
  5. 05Launching it
  6. 06Maintaining it

Whatever we're building, our custom software development services follow the same six stages. At each one, there's work we do and decisions that stay with your team.

Station 01 · Understanding what you need

Every build starts with a conversation, and not only with whoever signs it off. We sit with the people who'll use the software every day and learn how the work really runs, including the workarounds nobody ever wrote down.

From there, we agree on what the software has to do and who it's for, and we write it down in plain words you can check.

And if your data needs deeper work before anything gets built, that's what our data architecture work is for.

Stays with your team

What the software is for, and what matters most to get right.

Station 02 · Designing it with you

Before any real code gets written, we sketch the screens and the way the work moves from one to the next.

Then the sketch becomes a working mockup you can click through like the real thing. You and your team try it, tell us what feels off, and we change it while that's still easy. The build only starts once you've said yes to what you've seen.

Stays with your team

The yes on how it looks and works, before any of it gets built.

Station 03 · Building it

We build the software one piece at a time, starting with the part that helps the most. Each piece is something your team can use the day it lands.

And because you're using it while it grows, what you learn in the first weeks shapes the pieces that come after.

Stays with your team

The order the pieces come in, and the yes on each one before the next.

Station 04 · Testing it

Software can work perfectly on made-up examples and still trip over real ones. So before anyone relies on a piece, we check it against your real data and the real cases your team handles, the messy ones included.

Then the people who'll use it run their own work through it and tell us where it's off. We fix what they find.

Stays with your team

The sign-off that a piece is ready to rely on.

Station 06 · Maintaining it

Software that fits your business today has to keep fitting it as the business grows. A few weeks of real use shows you things nobody thought of on day one.

Some of it is small, like a button in the wrong place, and some of it is a whole new part of the business you want to bring in. So we stay on it and keep improving what's there, and when you're ready for the next piece, we build it.

Stays with your team

What gets built next, and when.

What we build

  • Internal tools and operations hubs
  • Client portals and dashboards
  • Reporting platforms
  • Quoting and pipeline tools
  • HR and people tools

And anything else your business needs, because we build whatever needs to be built.

Software we have built

Every one of these is a real build, for a real business. The names are left out, and the numbers come from our own records.

Built

An operational hub the company runs on

An owner-run contractor

Enquiries came in through a messaging app and everything else sat in a cloud drive, so answering a client could take two days of looking. We built the company one web hub, installable on a phone, with its leads, pipeline, clients, quotes, contracts and tasks on its own database. A working mockup came first, and the hub was checked on the company's real data before it was handed over. When the owner came back with a list of changes, all nine we agreed went live 18 days ahead of the date we'd set.

18 days ahead

Read the contractor case

Built

A reporting platform under the agency's own name

An email marketing agency

Every month, the numbers for the agency's clients had to be rebuilt by hand from four places that didn't talk to each other. We built one dashboard to gather all four, on the agency's own accounts and under its own name, wired the first brand into it, and then handed the whole build over.

Read the reporting case

Built

Every client brand's channels in one dashboard

A digital marketing agency

We built one reporting dashboard to pull each client brand's channels, from social and ads to web analytics and email, into a single view every day. We set it up for 29 client brands through 113 connections, with a login for each client and every connection encrypted.

113 connections

How we work

It always starts with our free consultation. We study how your business really runs, then hand you the plan, with every problem priced and every fix designed. From there, the decision on what to build is yours, and once something's live, we stay on it and keep improving it.

See how the free consultation works

What you own, and what drives the cost

You own all of it

  • Your data, tools and builds. What we build is yours, so nothing stops working if we stop working together.

  • The report. Before anything is built, you hold the report, with every problem priced and the fixes put in the order to build them.

What drives the cost

We don't publish prices, because every business is wired differently. Four things move the cost of a build:

  • What it has to do. How much of the work it covers, and how many screens and steps that takes.

  • Who logs in. How many kinds of people use it, and what each one gets to see.

  • The tools it connects to. How many, and whether those tools let us in.

  • Your data. How much of it moves in, and how clean it is before we start.

Then there's what it costs to run, like hosting, the database and any AI usage the software needs each month. The report prices every build, to build and to run, next to what it gives back in hours or money, with the working shown.

Two ways to work with us

  1. Project by project.

    You pick what to build from the report, we build it, and you pay for that project.

  2. An AI subscription.

    Monthly access to the whole team, building your software one piece at a time and maintaining it once it's live.

Is custom software what you need?

Custom software isn't the answer for every business. Find the line that sounds most like you, and you'll see what you actually need.

If this sounds like youWhat you need
You've tried the tools on the market, and every one of them makes your team work its way instead of yours.
Software built around how your business already runs. That's what we do.
A tool on the market already does what you need, and your team is happy working its way.
That tool, set up well. It's a much smaller job than a build, and worth knowing before you spend anything.
Your tools are fine, but work still waits for someone to carry it from one to the next.
Automation, not new software, and we build that too.
Your information is spread across spreadsheets, inboxes and old files, and nobody's sure which version is right.
Your data sorted first, because software is only as good as the data inside it.

And if you book a free consultation and we're not the right fit, we'll tell you on the call, and you'll still leave with pointers to get organised and move forward.

Frequently asked questions

It depends on what the software has to do, so there's no price list. Whatever it is, you see its price in the report before anything starts. And because we build one piece at a time, you never pay for the whole thing in one go.

The honest answer comes once we've understood the job, because it depends on how much the software has to do. However big the build is, the mockup comes first, then one piece at a time, so your team is using the first piece long before the last one lands. For the contractor's hub on this page, the handover came a month after the owner said yes to the mockup.

You do. The code we write for your business is yours, and so is your data. If we stop working together, you can keep running it, change it or take it to someone else. When an email marketing agency ended its project with us, we handed the whole build over, code included.

Then that tool is probably where to start. Where it falls short, we can build just the missing piece and connect it to the tool. A full build makes sense when nothing on the market comes close.

Most of the time it's a custom web application, software that opens in a browser at a desk or on a phone. When the job needs an app, we build that too. The contractor's hub on this page installs on a phone like an app, because most of that team's work happens away from a desk. If what you have in mind is an AI product of its own, start with our AI products page.

Yes. We connect the software to the tools you already pay for, and where a tool's own connection falls short, we write one ourselves. For the contractor on this page, the link to its cloud drive is read-only, so the software can never change the files it learned from. And if what you really need is the work moving between your tools on its own, that's our automation work.

  1. 01Understanding what you need
  2. 02Designing it with you
  3. 03Building it
  4. 04Testing it
  5. 05Launching it
  6. 06Maintaining it

So what would you build, if your software could be anything?

Book a free consultationTake the free AI readiness quiz