Lessons from building software.

Practical guides, cost breakdowns and lessons from the projects we build and support, to help you make better technical decisions.

Start a project

Latest: Laravel Cloud vs Forge + Hetzner vs a Bare VPS: 60 Days of Real Bills

48
articles published: 10
featured topics: Free
to read: 2015
building since

Latest articles

Laravel

Laravel Cloud vs Forge + Hetzner vs a Bare VPS: 60 Days of Real Bills

One production Laravel app run in parallel on Laravel Cloud, Forge + Hetzner, and a bare VPS for 60 days: the real bills, ops hours, and EMB, SZS, OHM metrics.

22 Sept 2026 · 20 min readread the article →

Jev

Replacing OpenAI/Anthropic Apps with Jev: What to Swap, What to Keep

20 Sept 2026 · 12 min read

Jev

7 Things You Can Actually Build with Jev

20 Sept 2026 · 11 min read

What we write about

UK Business 6
Shopify 6
SEO 4
AI 4
WordPress 4
React Native 4
Jev 2
Supabase 2
Laravel 1
LMS 1

UK Business

Which Stripe Payment Methods Should a UK Business Enable?

A decision model for UK cards, wallets, PayPal, Klarna and Bacs Direct Debit, grounded in a real subscription billing boundary and practical checkout implementation.

17 Sept 2026read →

Shopify

Bulk-Edit a Shopify Catalogue with the Admin API and AI

Change thousands of Shopify products safely: bulk price, metafield, tag and redirect edits via the Admin API and AI, with a dry run, a JSONL snapshot and rollback.

16 Sept 2026read →

SEO

We Tracked Programmatic Pages Through the March 2026 Core Update: What Survived

We tracked 1,842 programmatic pages across 14 SaaS sites through the March 2026 core update. Survival curves by data uniqueness, with USR, DUS and AICR metrics.

15 Sept 2026read →

Shopify

Give an AI Agent Safe Write Access to Shopify

Scoped custom apps, Theme Access passwords, 24-hour tokens and rotation: how to let Claude or another agent change a UK Shopify store without handing over a staff login.

15 Sept 2026read →

Shopify

Connect a Shopify Theme to Git and an AI Coding Agent: The Appycodes Workflow

Put a premade or custom Shopify theme under Git, connect the branch to Shopify, and let an AI agent ship features, bug fixes, SEO and GEO through reviewed, reversible pull requests.

14 Sept 2026read →

UK Business

Royal Mail Click & Drop with WooCommerce: A Reliable UK Setup

Connect Click & Drop reliably with an eligibility checklist, an original handoff score, operational monitoring and a real multi-store failure pattern.

13 Sept 2026read →

UK Business

Cookie Consent and Google Consent Mode for UK Sites

PECR and UK GDPR cookie consent, Google Consent Mode v2 and certified CMPs, a Consent Debt Score, and the production failures that switch UK ads off.

10 Sept 2026read →

UK Business

UK GDPR When Your Development Team Works Outside the UK

A practical model for restricted transfers, processor contracts, IDTA or Addendum decisions and least-privilege production access for overseas software teams.

9 Sept 2026read →

LMS

Build vs Buy LMS: The Seat-Count Break-Even Model From a Decade Running One

Year one vs year ten of the same Moodle LMS, then the seat-count model: where TalentLMS and Docebo pricing crosses a custom build. SBEC, PLCC, UMH inside.

8 Sept 2026read →

UK Business

Postcodes.io vs Ideal Postcodes: Which UK Address Lookup Should You Use?

Choose postcode geography or complete delivery-point addresses with a practical scoring model, a real UK cover-funnel boundary and a resilient Next.js integration pattern.

5 Sept 2026read →

Memberships

The 90-Day Cliff: Subscription Churn Math That Decides Build vs Rent for Your Membership Platform

Membership platform costs, renewal reliability and customer retention, with a model for comparing platform fees against a custom build.

1 Sept 2026read →

UK Business

Using the Companies House API for UK Customer Onboarding and KYC

A practical UK guide to matching the right company, understanding the KYC boundary and safely synchronising Companies House data.

1 Sept 2026read →

Marketplace

Anatomy of a B2B Marketplace MVP: The 9 Features That Eat 80% of the Budget

Opens with one quarter of net-terms decisions at CREOATE scale, then breaks a B2B marketplace MVP into per-feature engineering hours. FCS, NRE, TTFT included.

25 Aug 2026read →

Ticketing

The Break-Even Ticket Volume: When Building Your Own Ticketing Beats Eventbrite's Fees

Compare ticketing platform fees with the cost of an owned Stripe-based platform, using the Ontick case study and a break-even model.

18 Aug 2026read →

Internal Tools

Retool at 5, 25, and 100 Users vs a Custom Admin Panel: The 3-Year TCO Model

A 3-year TCO model for Retool, Appsmith and a custom Next.js + Supabase admin panel at 5, 25 and 100 users. The 2026 repricing moved the break-even to 22 seats.

11 Aug 2026read →

Automation

The Real Cost of 10,000 Workflow Runs: Zapier vs Make vs n8n vs Custom Code

Opens with one ops team's $540 Zapier month, then bills three real workflows on Zapier, Make, self-hosted n8n and custom Node at 1K to 100K runs. EC10K, MTV, FRO.

4 Aug 2026read →

Vendor Says 76%, Reality Says 41%: Support Bot Deflection Rates We Actually Measured

We measured deflection on 14 production support bots: median 41.2% against an advertised 76%. Query-class rates, per-resolution cost maths, escalation design.

28 Jul 2026read →

Tally

Integrating with Tally: Getting Data In and Out with TDL and the XML Gateway

Tally has no REST API. The mental model for real Tally integrations: the XML/HTTP gateway (port 9000) and TDL, how to read vouchers and ledgers out, import vouchers in, the version gotchas that break TDLs, and which surface to use per use case, Zoho, dashboards, Excel, e-commerce, CRM.

26 Jul 2026read →

Supabase

We Audited 25 AI-Generated Supabase Databases: RLS Holes, Missing Indexes, Billing Bombs

We audited 25 Supabase databases generated by Lovable, Bolt, Cursor and v0. Only 5 had correct RLS. The holes, the index debt, and the billing bombs.

21 Jul 2026read →

WordPress

WordPress to headless Next.js: a faster site with a protected WordPress backend

Convert a WordPress news or blog site into a headless Next.js front end: read content through the REST API or WPGraphQL, serve cached pages at the edge, and restrict access to the WordPress origin.

2 Jun 2026read →

React Native

Vibe-Coded to Native: Converting a Lovable Web App into iOS + Android Apps (One Engagement, 14 Weeks)

How we converted GravityOne, a Lovable-built web app with a working Supabase backend, into native iOS and Android apps in 14 weeks. Code-sharing matrix, App Store rejection patterns, OTA strategy, and the per-phase engineering hours from one full engagement.

22 May 2026read →

WordPress

Cloudflare R2 as the WordPress Media Library: SDK-Free SigV4 in Pure PHP

Replacing the local wp-content/uploads with Cloudflare R2 from a 200-line PHP MU-plugin, no AWS SDK, no Composer, with a custom SigV4 signer and the WP hooks that make it transparent.

18 May 2026read →

Next.js

SSR on Next.js App Router for SEO: What to Render Where, with Measurements

Server Components, Client Components, Streaming SSR, and SSG: what each one does for indexability, TTFB and LCP, with measurements across six pages we migrated.

17 May 2026read →

Stripe

Stripe Webhooks End-to-End: Signature Verification, Idempotency, Replay, Dead-Letter

The five guarantees a production Stripe webhook handler has to give you: verification, idempotency, ordering, replay, observability, with TypeScript code and the SQL schema we ship.

16 May 2026read →

React Native

Push Notifications on Expo + FCM + APNs: The Setup That Actually Delivers

End-to-end push setup for React Native apps on Expo, FCM and APNs: token registration, delivery measurement, and the 12 failure modes we see most often when delivery rates drop.

15 May 2026read →

RAG

Building a Production RAG Pipeline: Chunking, Embeddings, Retrieval, Caching

Stage-by-stage architecture for a RAG pipeline running in production: chunk size choices, embedding model tradeoffs, retrieval, reranking, semantic cache, and the cost per 1M queries.

14 May 2026read →

Shopify

Shopify Functions for Custom Pricing: B2B Tiers, Volume Discounts, Member Rates

Three production patterns for custom pricing built on Shopify Functions: Rust source, metafield design, checkout integration, and the gotchas Scripts users hit.

13 May 2026read →

DevOps

Zero-Downtime Push-to-Deploy on DigitalOcean App Platform vs Vercel, Render and Fly

Anatomy of one deploy, side by side, on four PaaS platforms: timings, traffic-shift mechanics, rollback paths, and the real cost of zero-downtime at 100 RPS.

12 May 2026read →

MVP

What an MVP Actually Costs in 2026: Three Founder Stories + 31 Engagements of Data

Three founder stories of 2026 MVP builds, fintech, AI SaaS, marketplace, followed by aggregate cost and bandwidth data across 31 engagements.

8 May 2026read →

React Native

OTA Updates in Production: EAS vs CodePush vs Manual, 47 App Cost & Latency Study

OTA cost, adoption-after-release curves, and rollback cost across EAS, CodePush, and manual update strategies on 47 production RN apps.

4 May 2026read →

WordPress

WordPress Performance Optimization: What Actually Works (Data-Backed Study)

We analysed 100 WordPress websites: 78% failed Core Web Vitals. A data-backed study of what actually slows WordPress down (page builders, plugins, hosting) and which fixes deliver real ROI.

3 May 2026read →

Research

Tech stacks clients pay for vs what developers actually want, 2026 data report

12 web stacks compared across usage, developer preference, admiration, client demand, and freelance rate, with four original metrics (DPGI, SMS, HRR, Legacy Lock-in) computed from Stack Overflow, State of JS, W3Techs and salary data.

2 May 2026read →

React Native

41 React Native App Submissions, Three Rejection War Stories

Three specific rejection narratives from the App Store and Google Play, plus the aggregate rejection-reason data behind 41 RN submissions.

30 Apr 2026read →

Shopify

Replatforming to Shopify: Anatomy of One Magento Migration + 23 Engagements of Data

A Magento 2 to Shopify Plus migration, with the data, integration, SEO and operational work that determine replatforming cost.

27 Apr 2026read →

Shopify

Shopify Plus vs Advanced: A Cost-Per-Order Analysis at 7 Revenue Tiers

Real CPO math for Shopify Plus vs Advanced across $500k to $50M GMV, and the GMV at which the upgrade pays back. 24 audited merchants.

22 Apr 2026read →

Per-Token Economics: What an AI Feature Actually Costs in Production

Estimate AI feature costs by usage, model choice, caching and gross margin before committing to a pricing plan.

17 Apr 2026read →

SEO

Schema.org for SaaS: JSON-LD, Rich Results and Measuring SEO Impact

Choose suitable structured data, check current search-feature support and measure impact against your own baseline.

13 Apr 2026read →

SaaS

The Multi-Tenant SaaS Architecture Decision: Cost & Engineering Hours Across 4 Patterns

Per-pattern cost, isolation, and onboarding eng-hours for the four common multi-tenancy approaches. TIC, AOC, BCM metrics.

8 Apr 2026read →

Lovable / Bolt to Production: The Real Cost & Timeline (20 Engagements, 1 Anatomy)

An AI-prototype-to-production project, with the scope, cost and timeline decisions behind the handover to an engineering team.

2 Apr 2026read →

SEO

Indexing Decay: A 217-Page, 12-Month Panel on When Google Drops Stale Content

We tracked 217 pages across four content types for a year. Decay curves, half-lives, and the refresh cadence that recovers traffic.

29 Mar 2026read →

SEO

JavaScript SEO Reality Check: We Crawled 103 Funded SaaS Marketing Sites

41% of funded SaaS marketing sites are not reliably indexable. Original metrics RDI, CBE, JSC quantify the gap, and how to close it.

24 Mar 2026read →

WordPress

WordPress Plugin Vulnerability Risk: A 217-Plugin Security Audit

A practical review of plugin security and incident response. 217 plugins audited across 14 categories with PVR / MFI / RAI scoring.

19 Mar 2026read →

Engineering

Series A Code Audit: Inside 23 Funded SaaS Codebases

Patterns from 23 SaaS codebase audits: opens with one anonymised takeover, then aggregates the rubric findings. TDS, KPC, MTS.

14 Mar 2026read →

We Audited 31 Lovable / Bolt / v0 / Cursor Codebases. Here's What Survives Production.

A code-level teardown of 31 AI-generated SaaS prototypes: three proprietary metrics (PSR, TDR, RCM) and a 10-mode failure taxonomy.

10 Mar 2026read →

Supabase

Jio Supabase Issue: Why Apps Break on Jio and How to Fix It Properly

Supabase apps work on Airtel and office WiFi but fail on JioFiber and Jio mobile data: Failed to Fetch, WebSocket timeouts, broken auth. Diagnosed as ISP-level DNS / routing filtering, with four production-grade fixes.

12 Sept 2025read →

Our clients

UK · Europe · Worldwide