Frequently Asked Questions

Our first conversation is free. You tell us what you are trying to fix or build, and we tell you honestly whether it is something we can help with.

If it is worth taking further, we run a short audit, usually three to five days. You get a written document setting out our understanding of the project, a realistic budget and a timescale. The audit is a fixed fee, and we credit it against the work if you decide to go ahead.

For new build work, the audit documents what a realistic build looks like, including budget and timescale, so you have an honest basis for a decision. For a rescue we tell you within five working days what is actually there, what the risks are and what a realistic rescue plan looks like. More on how we start a build.

No. If you proceed with the work, the audit fee is credited in full against the project cost.

You keep the audit. It is written to be useful on its own, whether you build with us, build with somebody else or decide to leave things as they are.

Normally 50 per cent before we start, with the balance on completion unless we have agreed a payment schedule with you. Invoices are due within 14 days. Monthly and annual services are billed in advance.

See our Terms of Business

Timescale comes out of the audit rather than out of a first phone call. Once it is agreed, the time and the cost are fixed before we start and there is nothing added later.

Yes, two years on the work we carry out. It covers code functionality and performance, and compatibility with the platforms agreed at the outset. Rescue work is treated differently, since we are often working with code we did not write, and the terms for that are set out in our Terms of Business.

Before work commences the fee is 25 per cent of the quoted price. During development it is prorated against the work completed, plus 20 per cent. Once a project is more than three quarters complete the full cost applies.

See our Terms of Business

No. Our pricing is transparent with no hidden costs or commission. Where a project needs a specialist we coordinate with trusted partners and remain responsible for their work.

See our Terms of Business.

No formal minimum, though it is worth being honest about fit. Most of what we build is a system that changes how a team works rather than a single task, and the first conversation is there to establish quickly whether that is what you need.

Yes. We are not tied to Devon and Yorkshire, our existing clients are based across England, and we are happy to travel and be in person where it helps, particularly early in a project.

We can also work with US and EU businesses that have a UK office, since that gives us the same ability to meet in person when needed. Day to day work happens remotely.

Contract catering, financial services, manufacturing and education are where most of our work sits, and you can see examples of each on our Success pages.

We also have long standing clients in professional membership organisations and the NHS.

Both. Most work reaches us one of two ways. Either something new that no off the shelf product quite covers, which we cover under Build, or something already running that needs somebody to take responsibility for it, which we cover under Rescue.

The people who write your code. We are UK based, in Cullompton, Devon and Leeds, West Yorkshire where some of our client relationships have surpassed fifteen years.

We work to a simple rule of thumb: around two hours for something urgent, two working days for something important, and about two weeks for a routine change. You are approaching the people who built your system rather than a ticket queue, so most things are dealt with sooner.

Where a formal support agreement is in place, that agreement's response times apply.

Good work is not necessarily rapid. The name is about what happens to your business afterwards: a quote that took two days taking ten minutes, a report that took a morning arriving on its own, an application process that stops needing a phone call.

The name came from Rapid Answers, the system built for contract caterers and stayed with us when the businesses came together.

No. We do technical work: applications, portals, integrations and the websites around them. We are happy to work alongside your marketing team or your agency, but we do not sell advertising, social media or search retainers.

Yes, where it is agreed in writing. The project source code is deposited with an independent escrow agent and released to you on defined triggers, such as us ceasing to trade or failing to provide contracted maintenance. Escrow covers the work built for you rather than our own frameworks and libraries please see 7.6 in our Terms of Business.

Either side can end the arrangement with 30 days' written notice. We hand over all completed work and the files you need, outstanding invoices become due and ongoing services stop unless we agree otherwise.

Anything relating to source code follows the licence position in our Terms of Business.

It does not transfer automatically. If you are acquired, merge or otherwise change hands, the acquiring business needs to agree a new licence with us directly to carry on using the system. Worth raising early in a transaction rather than after it completes please see our Terms of Business.

Your own material stays yours: your branding, your copy, your images and your data. Bespoke visual design and written content transfers to you once that work is paid for. The software itself, meaning source code, integrations, database structures and the frameworks behind them, remains ours, and you hold a licence to use it for as long as you are running the system.

See section 7 in our Terms of Business

We host it, we support it and a good deal of our rescue work involves it. What we avoid is building a heavy content websites on it.

Plugins that solve one problem tend to create several, and once a site carries custom integrations and compliance sensitive pages the maintenance grows while the performance drops.

Because the sites we look after are large, structured and long lived. Rapid CMS is a single platform rather than a stack of third party plugins, so there is nothing to clash or break on update, and a change made once flows through everywhere it is used.

Where a standard product fits, use it and spend the money elsewhere.

Off the shelf software is built for the broadest use cases, and when your process is specific the compromises accumulate until your team is maintaining workarounds instead of working.

That is when building something is worth it. You get a system that fits how you actually work, and once you weigh that against the cost of the workarounds, it is often cheaper than buying too.

Because somebody has to, and most of the industry would rather start again. A rebuild is not always the right answer, and a system that is stabilised and understood buys you the time to decide properly. It is also how a lot of our longest client relationships began.

See how rescue works

Because a proposal is a sales document and an audit is a piece of work. You end up with a realistic budget, a timescale and an honest view of the risks, which is useful whoever you decide to build with.

The fee is credited in full if you go ahead with the build or the rescue.

We will help you work out what you actually need before anything gets built, and start with something small enough to be useful quickly rather than a system you have to commit to up front.

See Databases

Yes. A spreadsheet is a common starting point for most jobs, from quoting and scheduling to tracking orders and managing records. Over time you become dependent on the person who built it (a single point of failure) and the spreadsheet grows fragile as new rules are added.

We turn that logic into a proper system that works reliably for all your staff, keeps a central record and can share data with your other tools through an API. The knowledge stops living in one spreadsheet and in one person's head.

See Build New Software

Yes. A portal gives the people outside your core team, clients, dealers, agents or staff on other sites, a place to place orders, complete a process or check their own history, without it all coming back through you by phone and email.

Everyone sees only what their role allows.

See Portals

As much or as little as you like. We agree with you at the start how much you want to manage yourselves and tailor the system to match. Page content is normally yours to edit, along with lists such as dropdowns, and if there is something specific you want control of we build it to be editable.

Editing is controlled by user permissions, so each person can only change what their role allows, and the system records who last changed what.

Anything you would rather leave with us, we action quickly rather than leave you waiting.

See Content Management Systems

Yes. Producing a formatted, branded document at the end of a process is something we have built several times, whether that is a quotation, a requirements report or a compliance record.

See Business Case Generator

Yes. Where a product has options, compatibility rules or certification to get right, we turn that into a tool that produces an accurate, compliant quote in minutes, so it does not depend on the one person who knows the detail.

Resellers and agents can be given their own login too.

See Configurators

Usually. If it has an API we will work with it, and if it does not there is often still a supported route in. The point is that the new part fits how you work while the existing platform stays the system of record.

See our page on APIs and integration

Yes. Long paper forms translate well to screen when they are designed properly: only the questions that apply, validation as you go, signatures captured on a phone or tablet, and the results going somewhere your existing systems can use.

See Database Systems

Yes. Every website we build is designed mobile first, so it works properly on a phone before it is scaled up to a desktop, rather than a desktop site shrunk down as an afterthought.

Where you need more than a website, we build progressive web apps (PWA) that work on a phone out in the field, on site or in a vehicle, and stay as secure as they are at a desk.

See Mobile and Progressive Web Apps

More common than it should be. We can assess what you are running, document what we find and take over the maintenance from wherever things were left. This is what our rescue work is for.

There are several routes to recovering a site or database, depending on who holds the domain, hosting and the code. Tell us what you have access to and we will tell you where you stand.

Initial conversations are free. You need to know your options before you decide anything, and there is no cost to finding that out.

See Rescue

No. Not every problem needs a rebuild. Sometimes a system just needs somebody who understands it to stabilise and keep it running while you work out what comes next.7

See Rescue

If the code is readable, no. Our billing comes down to how much you have asked for, how long it takes and how complex it is.

Bespoke on its own is not a surcharge.

See Rescue

WordPress suits plenty of sites but it can become a liability when you depend on a stack of plugins, need faster performance or want features it was never designed for.

If you find yourself fighting the platform, paying for plugins to do basic things or worrying about the next security update, it may be time to move.

We build fast sites without that plugin overhead, and we migrate your content and integrations across so nothing is lost in the move.

See Content Management

Yes. An online shop works best when it is not an island.

Connected to your stock, pricing and order systems, it saves double entry and keeps everything in step as things change.

We integrate stores such as Shopify with internal databases and back office systems like Sage 200 and SAP SBO. From a single source we can also push the same products out to channels like eBay and Google Shopping, so you are not maintaining your catalogue in several places at once.

See how we did this for GR Scott and Scanstrut.

Yes. We look after Access applications for several clients: new reports, speeding up the ones that have got slow, adding fail safes, and where it makes sense, a route off Access altogether.

Yes, including optimisation, reporting and connecting it to a web front end.

Yes. Older VB.NET and ASP.NET WebForms applications are a regular part of what we look after.

Yes. Most WordPress work reaches us because somebody has fallen out with a supplier or needs a site stabilising, in which case we usually host and maintain it as it is.

We have worked with all of them. If you are running one and need it supported, ask.

Yes. We work with .NET applications regularly and are familiar with Umbraco.

Yes, and it is a large part of what we do. Complicated spreadsheets with VBA behind them can usually be rebuilt as a proper application that keeps the logic and loses the fragility, while still connecting to the systems around it.

See Database Systems

Yes. If it has an API we will work with it, and we have built integrations with finance, back office and CRM platforms including Sage, SAP Business One, Salesforce and Intelliflo. Where there is no API there is often still a supported route in.

See APIs and integration.

Yes, across Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and our own Linux and .NET environments, configured around what your application actually needs rather than standard packages.

See Hosting and Cloud Services

Everything we host is backed up routinely. Recovery can be requested at any time, and in most cases we can retrieve an individual file or database record rather than rolling the whole site back.

See Hosting and Cloud Services

Usually yes, down to the individual file or record. Tell us roughly when it happened and what changed.

We recommend Cloudflare as a web application firewall and will configure it as part of your hosting. Patching and updates to the environment are handled by us rather than left to you.

See Hosting and Cloud Services

Security, accessibility and data protection are built into the standards you answer to. For publicly funded and regulated clients that means WCAG 2.2, with the content structure and editor prompts to keep a site compliant as it grows.

See Content Management

In the UK by default. Project material sits in Microsoft SharePoint and live systems run on dedicated cloud servers rather than shared hosting alongside other people's applications, both in UK regions unless you ask us for something different.

We work to the UK Data Protection Act 2018 and UK GDPR, as set out in our Terms of Business

We target 99.9 per cent availability, excluding planned maintenance. Planned maintenance windows are notified seven days in advance. Emergency fixes occasionally need immediate action, and we will tell you when that happens.

This comes from your bank or payment provider asking you to prove PCI DSS compliance and the report is written for security engineers rather than for you.

Most of what it flags is fixable, and some of it is noise. We read the report, separate the real vulnerabilities from the false alarms, fix what needs fixing on your website and hosting, and get you to a passing scan.

See Music School Payments story who were alerted by SecurityMetrics.

If your website takes card payments, PCI DSS applies to you in some form. Using a hosted payment provider keeps most of the burden off your own systems, and we integrate the gateway so card details never touch your server, which keeps compliance manageable.

See PCI Compliant Payments

Most of the time, the honest answer is that you may not need it. A lot of what looks like an AI problem is a logic problem, whereby a well structured database will handle it more cheaply, faster and in a way you can explain.

Where AI earns its place is deciphering natural language, emails, enquiries and images.  Read more on our AI work.

A small focused application that solves a visible problem tends to do more than an abstract business case. It builds confidence for whatever comes next, and you find out quickly whether the idea holds up outside a demo.

No. Where we use AI tools in our own work, training on our conversations is turned off and your material is not submitted anywhere for model training. If you want a model that understands your own content, that is a separate piece of work and we would build it on a dedicated instance that stays yours.