A CRM built around how your business actually works

UK bespoke CRM builds start from £15,000 for a focused single-workflow build, rise to £40,000 to £85,000 for a standard full-CRM engagement, and reach £100,000 to £150,000+ for enterprise or multi-entity builds. Regulated sectors (financial services, legal, healthcare) carry a higher floor of around £25,000 because of the compliance scaffolding required. The cost drivers are integration count, data migration complexity, and the scope of compliance requirements. See the pricing page for tier detail.

A Focused Build goes live in 6 to 10 weeks for non-regulated sectors, 10 to 14 weeks for regulated sectors. A Standard Build takes 12 to 22 weeks. An Advanced Build runs 20 to 32 weeks. Data migration from legacy systems typically accounts for 30 to 40 per cent of the total timeline, which is why discovery covers it in detail before build starts.

We default to a production-grade web stack: TypeScript on the frontend (Next.js or Remix), TypeScript or Go on the backend, PostgreSQL for relational data, and cloud infrastructure on AWS, Azure, or GCP depending on your existing stack. Stack decisions are made during discovery based on your integration requirements, internal skills, and hosting preferences, not before.

Yes. The code is delivered to your GitHub or GitLab organisation under a permissive licence, the database runs in your cloud account, and there is no vendor lock-in. We offer ongoing support and enhancement contracts, but you are free to engage any competent development team to maintain the platform after handover.

Salesforce, HubSpot, and Microsoft Dynamics are excellent products for the use cases they were designed for. A bespoke CRM makes sense when your compliance obligations, operational workflow, or data model is the core of your differentiation, and when the cost of forcing your business to fit an off-the-shelf product exceeds the cost of building purpose-fit software. Most firms under 15 users with standard workflows should use off-the-shelf.

Yes. Typical integrations include email (Outlook, Gmail), accounting (Xero, QuickBooks, Sage), document management (SharePoint, Google Workspace, iManage), e-signature (DocuSign, Adobe Sign), telephony, marketing platforms, and sector-specific systems. Integration is a major cost driver, so we scope it in detail during discovery and commit to a fixed price.

We offer rolling monthly support and enhancement contracts with no lock-in. Most clients stay with us because the architecture is designed to make change cheap: workflows, validation rules, and reporting are configuration rather than hard-coded logic, so regulatory and business changes can be implemented in days rather than waiting for a full release cycle.

Every personal data field is tagged with a lawful basis and a retention period. Automated retention schedules purge or archive data on schedule. Subject access requests are fulfilled from a single dashboard that assembles all data for a named individual. Record of processing activities is generated from the data model rather than maintained manually.

Bespoke CRM development is the process of designing and building a customer relationship management system from first principles around a specific organisation's workflows, data model, and regulatory obligations, rather than configuring an off-the-shelf SaaS product. The output is a fully owned codebase running in the client's own cloud account, with no per-seat licence fees and no vendor lock-in. UK firms typically commission a bespoke build when their compliance scope, operational specialisation, or integration surface makes a generic CRM more expensive to adapt than to replace.

A bespoke CRM is the right choice when at least two of the following apply: your workflow is the source of competitive advantage, you operate in a regulated sector where compliance must be enforced at the data layer, you have 15-plus seats and the per-user licence cost compounds materially over five years, or you are paying for SaaS customisation that breaks at every vendor update. If none of those apply, an off-the-shelf platform is usually the better commercial decision and we will tell you so during discovery.

Yes, with a phased migration. We typically run the legacy CRM and the new bespoke system in parallel for two to four weeks, migrate data in a controlled batch, then switch primary use over a defined cutover weekend. Read access to the legacy system is retained for 90 days as a fallback. Detailed cutover planning is part of every bespoke CRM development engagement and is shaped during the discovery and consultation phase.

A complete CRM requirements document covers eight areas: business outcomes and success metrics, current-state workflow maps, target-state user journeys, the entity and data model, integration surface, regulatory and non-functional requirements, prioritised feature list (MoSCoW), and acceptance criteria. We provide a worked template and a step-by-step methodology in our CRM requirements gathering guide, which is the same framework we use to scope every fixed-price engagement.

For most UK SMEs under 10 seats with standard sales workflows, an off-the-shelf CRM is the more sensible investment, and we will recommend that route honestly. Bespoke CRM development becomes the better economic choice once you exceed roughly 15 seats, operate under FCA, SRA, CQC, or ICO obligations that off-the-shelf products handle poorly, or run a workflow no template fits. For sector-specific guidance see our financial services, legal, and recruitment industry pages.

Data migration is treated as a workstream in its own right and typically accounts for 30 to 40 per cent of total project effort. We extract from the source system using its API or a database export, profile the data for quality and completeness, transform it to the new schema, load into a staging environment for client validation, then run a dress-rehearsal migration before the production cutover. Migrations from spreadsheets, Excel, Salesforce, HubSpot, Dynamics, Pipedrive, and bespoke legacy systems are routine. Full detail on our CRM data migration service.

You do, in full. The source code is delivered to your GitHub or GitLab organisation under a permissive licence with all dependencies documented. The PostgreSQL database runs in your AWS, Azure, or GCP account from day one, not ours. There is no escrow arrangement, no licensing fee for continued use, and no contractual restriction on engaging another development team to maintain the platform after handover. Architecture decision records and operational runbooks are delivered alongside the code.