Bespoke applications
Software designed around your business. Built for the way you work.
Client portals, internal dashboards, CRM interfaces, case and job management, booking and intake. Most established businesses are held together by a product that nearly fits, two spreadsheets nobody will admit to, and one person who knows where everything is.
Werehouse Media builds bespoke CRM systems, client portals, internal tools and the integrations between them for UK businesses, as an independent studio based in Sussex. A bespoke CRM is a system built around how one business actually works, rather than an off-the-shelf product the business has to reshape itself to fit. Custom software development here starts with a process audit, normally £495 and free for a limited time, which establishes what should be built and what should not.
Bespoke applications such as portals, dashboards and internal tools start from £4,500 for a system with its own data model and interface, and run into five figures for multi-module or heavily integrated work. CRM and ERP builds are quoted after the audit, because what the system has to hold and connect decides the price.
Simpler connected systems that join two or three tools you already pay for start from £1,950. Every price is fixed in writing before work starts. The system runs on accounts you own and can cancel, the data is yours and exportable, and the code and documentation are handed over, so nothing is locked to us.
What one of these actually looks like
Two we built, and what they replaced.
Neither of these is a template with a logo dropped into it. Both were drawn around one business's own process, which is why the words on the screens are that business's words and not a CRM vendor's.
A lettings business, on one screen
Rent arrears, maintenance jobs, expiring safety certificates and the short-let turnarounds were in four places: an inbox, a spreadsheet, a calendar and somebody's head. The four numbers at the top are the four things that cost money when they are missed, and they are the first thing anybody sees in the morning.
Underneath it is ordinary software doing ordinary work: properties, tenancies, contractors, bills and compliance dates, with the jobs and the money attached to the property they belong to rather than to the email they arrived in.
Built for a client we are not naming. The workspace name and the tenant rows in this screenshot have been replaced.
ShopR, one of our own
A shopping list that knows the shop. You add what you need, it sorts it into the aisles of the branch you are standing in, and then it routes you: next item, which aisle, how far, tick it off, next. The middle screen is the whole product in one card.
It is here because it is ours and we can show all of it. The same three things are true of it as of any client build: it models one specific job, it was drawn before it was coded, and the interesting work is the data underneath rather than the buttons on top.
Our own product, built to find out how far a small team can get in a fortnight.
The honest version
Most businesses should not commission bespoke software.
That is an odd sentence on a page selling it, and it is the most useful thing here. Off-the-shelf software is one of the great bargains of running a business. Somebody else spent millions building it, a team maintains it, and you pay £40 a month. If a product covers most of what you need, buy the product.
Bespoke earns its cost in three specific situations, and we would rather you recognise yourself in one of them than be talked into it.
One: the product does not model your work
Every off-the-shelf CRM assumes contacts, deals and pipeline stages. That is a superb fit for a business that sells a thing to a person once. It is a poor fit for a firm whose real objects are sites, surveys, certificates, engineers and recurring visits, none of which are a "deal". When people say their CRM is a mess, this is usually why: they have been filing their actual work inside somebody else's idea of what work is.
Two: you are paying per seat for people who use one screen
Twenty five staff on a £60-a-month platform is £18,000 a year, and often twenty of those people only ever need to see today's jobs and tick them off. A bespoke system with an internal tool for the twenty and a full view for the five pays for itself on the subscription line alone, before you count the time saved.
Three: the thing you need to connect cannot be connected
A depot system that only exports a CSV. An accounts package with an API from 2014. A supplier who sends a spreadsheet by email every Tuesday. The work here is not glamorous and it is usually the highest-return thing on the list, because it removes the retyping that quietly employs somebody half a day a week.
When we will tell you not to
If a mainstream product covers most of it and the gap is a preference rather than an obstacle, buy the product. If the process the software would encode is one nobody has agreed on yet, fix the process first. Software makes an unagreed process permanent. And if the whole thing exists to avoid one awkward conversation between two departments, have the conversation. Those three answers come out of the audit regularly, and producing them is most of what the audit is for.
Where this comes from
The first business we built these for was our own.
We ran an e-commerce brand of our own, a sustainable kitchenware label selling mostly into Oceania, and for about two years we built and ran the systems behind it, because the alternative was doing the admin ourselves every evening: a CRM holding customers and orders around how that business actually worked rather than around a generic contacts-and-deals model, automated email handling for the enquiries that arrived the same shape every time, and an order flow that moved a sale from paid to picked to shipped to reviewed without anybody retyping it into a second system.
We maintained them ourselves for the whole of that time, which is the part that matters here. Every failure mode on this page is one we have already hit on a business where the cost of getting it wrong came out of our own margin. We know what a bespoke CRM costs to keep alive two years after launch, what breaks when a supplier changes a spreadsheet column, and which automations are worth building against which are worth leaving alone. That is the whole reason the audit is allowed to conclude that you should buy an off-the-shelf product instead.
What gets built
Four shapes, and what each one is for.
Bespoke CRM
A customer and job system built around the objects your business actually has. Custom CRM development is the largest part of this work and the one most often described to us as "we know what we need, nobody sells it". Typically: a record shape that matches the real job, a pipeline with your stage names, documents generated rather than retyped, and reporting that answers the question you ask on a Monday morning rather than twelve you never asked.
Client and customer portals
A logged-in area where customers see their own information and do their own admin: documents, job status, certificates, invoices, bookings, approvals. Client portal software sold as a product tends to be either enormous or generic. Built to fit, a portal is usually modest and removes a specific stack of inbound email. It works best where you can name the ten questions customers ask you by phone every week.
Internal tools
The screens your own team needs and no customer ever sees. A dispatcher's board. A stock count that a warehouse can do on a phone. An approval queue. These are the cheapest builds and often the ones with the fastest payback, because they replace a spreadsheet that three people are editing at once.
Integration and data work
Making two systems agree. API integration between a CRM, an accounts package, a booking system and whatever the industry-specific product is. Where there is no API, there is usually still a file, a feed or a scheduled export, and a reliable bridge can be built on that. This is also where a lot of automation work starts: once the data is in one shape, most of the manual chasing stops being necessary.
All of it as a web application
A bespoke web application is any of the above delivered in a browser rather than as a desktop install, which is nearly always the right answer now. If your people are on a mixture of laptops, iPads and phones in vans, the browser is the only thing they all have. Custom web application development also means the thing updates for everyone at once, works from a customer site as well as an office, and needs no IT department to roll out.
Where an application is the front of a wider chain, with the enquiry captured on the website, qualified automatically, worked in the application and chased on its own, the whole thing is covered on business systems.
Pricing
Published, like everything else here.
Custom software is the part of this industry where nobody publishes a number. These are starting points for the work described, and every project is fixed in writing before it begins.
| What | Price | Right when |
|---|---|---|
| Process audit | Normally £495, free for a limited time | Always first. Establishes what should be built, what should be bought, and what should be left alone. |
| Single automation | From £650 | One job, one path, and the data already lives in one place. |
| Connected system | From £1,950 | Several workflows sharing data across two or three tools you already pay for. |
| Bespoke application Portal, dashboard, internal tool | From £4,500 | A system with its own data model and its own interface. |
| CRM or ERP build Your records, stages and reporting | Quoted after the audit | No product fits the way the work runs, and the audit has said so. |
| Complex | Five figures, occasionally | Multi-module, regulated, or heavy integration with systems that resist it. |
| Care | From £49/month | Anything live that needs watching, backing up and occasionally fixing. |
Why the audit comes first
The audit comes first because it decides whether anything should be built at all, before there is a quote to defend. An audit is only worth having if "do not build this" is one of the answers it can give, and that answer is one of the more valuable things it produces. It is normally £495 and free for a limited time, and the verdict is the same either way. If it says buy a product instead, that is the audit having done its job, and we will tell you which product. When an audit is paid for, the fee is credited in full against builds totalling over £2,000.
Where this sits against the market
Agencies that build bespoke CRMs advertise from around £15,000, and that figure is not greed: a designer, a developer, an account manager and a project manager have to be paid before a line of code exists. A general freelancer will quote less and frequently cannot deliver a system with a real data model behind it. We have no account-manager layer, which is why a bespoke application here can start at £4,500. CRM and ERP builds are quoted after the audit, on the same fixed-price terms. The trade-off is written out plainly in our comparison of who to hire: a studio this size means a queue.
Before the build
Why the data comes first on an application build.
Most applications, whether a client portal, a job system or an internal dashboard, sit on top of data the business already holds. If that data is spread across four tools, duplicated, or defined differently by each team, the application inherits the problem on its first day. So before the data model is designed, we need three answers.
- Where the data lives now. Every system and spreadsheet that holds the records the application will use, and which copy is right when two disagree.
- What has to migrate. How many records, how many duplicates, what is missing and which history matters, because that sets the size of the migration inside the build.
- What reporting the application must produce. The figures people check and the decisions they make with them, each defined once, so the data model is built to answer them.
The data audit answers all three in a written report with a fixed quote. It is £495, and when an audit is paid for, the fee is credited in full against builds totalling over £2,000. It sits alongside the free process audit: that one decides whether anything should be built at all, and this one makes sure the data is ready for what is.
How it runs
Audit, then a fixed quote, then a build in stages.
The process audit. A twenty-minute interview with the people who actually do the work, a look at the systems as they are used rather than as they are described, and a written document at the end: what happens now, where the time goes, what should be built, what should be bought, what should be dropped, and what each option costs. It costs the same as the SEO audit: normally £495, and free for a limited time.
A fixed quote. Scope, price and timeline in writing before anything starts. Not an estimate and not a day rate with a meter running.
Built in stages you can see. The first usable version lands early and you use it. Software that is shown for the first time at the end is software that gets rejected at the end.
Handover that means something. Documentation of what exists and why, the accounts in your name, the data exportable, and the code yours. Same principle as the terms for a website: you own it outright.
What you end up owning
The system runs on accounts you hold and pay for directly and can cancel without asking us. The data is yours and can be exported in a usable form on any day, not just the day you leave. You are given the software itself and the written documentation for it. Nothing is licensed back to you and nothing stops working if you stop working with us. Where a build is large enough for it to matter, a source code escrow arrangement can be added, which is what larger buyers and public-sector procurement usually ask for. That and the rest of the due-diligence answers sit on the capabilities page.
Alongside this
The rest of the systems work.
- Business automation. The hub for this whole line: what can be automated, what should not be, and how the work is priced.
- Enquiry and document automation. Quotes, proposals, contracts, onboarding packs and invoices generated, sent and chased without retyping.
- AI receptionist. The phone answered when you cannot, and booked into the same calendar or CRM where that system allows it.
- Bespoke web design. Frequently the same conversation: a portal and a public website are one system with two audiences, and the public half only earns its keep if people can find it, which is what our SEO services are for.
Industry-specific versions of this work, including CRM for tradesmen, membership CRM for charities and contract automation for legal firms, are set out on the industries pages.
Straight answers
Common questions.
What is custom web application development?
Custom web application development means building software that runs in the browser and is designed around one business’s own workflow, rather than configuring a product designed around everybody’s. In practice that is a client or customer portal, an internal or operational dashboard, a job, case or enquiry management system, a booking or intake flow, a calculator or a reporting screen.
Because it runs in the browser there is nothing to install and the same system works on a laptop, a tablet and a phone. It is the right answer when the thing your business tracks does not fit the contacts-and-deals model every off-the-shelf CRM assumes, and the wrong answer when it does. Builds start at £4,500 and reach five figures for multi-module or regulated work.
What is a bespoke CRM?
A bespoke CRM is a customer relationship management system built around one business's actual process rather than a general-purpose product that business has to adapt to. Off-the-shelf CRMs assume a sales pipeline with stages, contacts and deals. That fits a software company well and a groundworks contractor badly. A bespoke CRM models what the business really tracks (sites, surveys, certificates, engineers, recurring visits) and nothing it does not. The trade-off is honest: it costs more upfront than a subscription and there is no vendor roadmap adding features you did not ask for.
How much does a bespoke CRM cost in the UK?
In our own reading of published UK prices, a genuinely simple single-pipeline bespoke CRM costs £2,000 to £5,000, a mid-tier build £8,000 to £25,000, and a multi-module MVP £25,000 upwards. Agencies that build bespoke CRMs usually advertise from £15,000, because an account manager and a project manager have to be paid before any code is written. Werehouse Media quotes each CRM build after the process audit, which is normally £495 and free for a limited time, because the record types, users and integrations decide the price. The quote is fixed in writing before anything is built.
Should I buy an off-the-shelf CRM instead?
Very often, yes, and the audit will say so. If HubSpot, Pipedrive, Monday or a good vertical product covers eighty per cent of what you need and you can live with the rest, buy it. A subscription is cheaper, supported by a team, and updated without you. Bespoke earns its cost in three situations: the off-the-shelf options genuinely do not model your work, you are paying per seat for a large team who each use one screen, or the product you would buy cannot connect to something you depend on. Anything else and a bespoke build is an expensive way to end up where you started.
What happens if you disappear?
A fair question to ask a studio this size, and it is better answered than avoided. Everything is built on mainstream, documented technology rather than anything invented here. The system runs on accounts in the client's name, hosted where the client can see it. The software and its written documentation are handed over at completion, so anybody else could pick it up and carry on. For larger engagements a source code escrow arrangement can be put in place, which is a standard requirement in public-sector and enterprise procurement and one this practice will meet rather than argue with.
How long does a bespoke system take?
The audit is a twenty-minute interview, with the written document back within a few working days. A connected system joining tools you already pay for is typically two to three weeks. A bespoke build with its own data model is six to twelve weeks depending on how many distinct jobs it has to do. We work on a small number of projects at once, so there is a queue, and a start date usually sits two to three weeks out. That is stated at quote stage rather than discovered later.
Do you work with an existing development team?
Yes. Some of this work is joining things that already exist rather than building something new: an integration between a CRM and an accounts package, a client portal on top of a system somebody else maintains, or a data model that finally lets two departments see the same record. Where there is an in-house developer or an incumbent agency, the sensible arrangement is usually a defined piece of work with a clean interface between us, agreed in writing at the start.
Before you commission a build
What a bespoke CRM costs to build
What moves the price, and the running costs nobody quotes.
Job management software or a bespoke CRM?
The buy-versus-build question, answered for field service specifically.
Who actually builds business automation?
Five kinds of supplier, what each charges, and which one your problem needs.
Job management software or a CRM?
Which one your problem actually is, before you buy either.
Bespoke software & CRM
What if the thing you need doesn't exist yet?
Automation connects things that already exist. Sometimes the thing that should exist never got built, and the business is being held together by a spreadsheet doing a job it was never meant to do.
Bespoke CRM
A customer and job system built around the objects your business really has (sites, surveys, certificates, engineers, visits) rather than the contacts, deals and pipeline stages every off-the-shelf CRM assumes. Quoted after the audit.
Client portals and internal tools
A logged-in area where customers self-serve instead of emailing you, or the screen your own team needs and no customer ever sees. Often the cheapest build with the fastest payback.
Integration work
Making two systems agree, so nobody keys the same order twice. Unglamorous, and usually the highest-return item on the list.
And the answer is often "buy the product instead"
A process audit comes first, normally £495 and free for a limited time, and it is allowed to conclude that a mainstream product covers eighty per cent of this, in which case you will be told which one.
Next step
What is the spreadsheet?
Nearly every one of these projects starts with a spreadsheet doing a job it was never meant to do. Tell us about yours and we will tell you whether it needs software or a decision.