Brighton · East Sussex
Software development for Brighton and Hove businesses
Brighton and Hove holds one of the densest concentrations of freelancers, micro-businesses and small agencies in the country, and that shapes the software work here. Plenty of firms in the North Laine, around New England House and at Plus X on Lewes Road already know what good code looks like; they want a development partner, not an explanation of what an API is. Others are visitor-economy operators on the seafront, spin-outs from Falmer or Moulsecoomb, or operations teams supporting large finance employers such as American Express on John Street. We are registered in Glasgow and work with Brighton clients remotely, travelling down for meetings when a project warrants it.
Working with Brighton businesses
The city's economy runs on several distinct engines. Digital and creative work is the best known, with agencies, studios, games and product teams clustered behind the station and through the New England Quarter, and The FuseBox at New England House and Plus X covering the early-stage end. Financial services operations sit alongside it, American Express's Brighton office being the most visible. Two universities anchor research and graduate supply: Sussex at Falmer on the edge of the South Downs, and the University of Brighton across its city campuses. Then there is the visitor economy, the Brighton Centre's conference trade, hotels, restaurants, festivals and the independent retail of the Lanes, which is genuinely seasonal in a way most UK cities are not. Along the coast, Shoreham Port and Newhaven add marine, freight and energy activity, and the Greater Brighton area reaches out to Worthing and Lewes.
Why Brighton businesses work with us
Brighton clients tend to arrive for one of two reasons. Either they are an agency or studio that has won work beyond its own capacity and needs extra back-end, mobile or AI capability behind their own brand, or they are an operator whose business has outgrown spreadsheets and off-the-shelf tools: a hospitality group with four sites, a subscription retailer, a clinic, a training provider. Agency rates in Brighton are not far below London's, and the freelance market here is deep but awkward to scale. One excellent contractor is easy to find; a team of five who have shipped together is not. We provide the second at a predictable monthly cost, with dedicated developers at £3,200–£6,500 per developer per month.
How we work at this distance
Nothing about this arrangement requires us to be on the seafront. Work runs through your tools, whether that is Slack or Teams, a shared board and a repository you own, with a weekly call and a working build you can click through rather than a status report. When a workshop deserves a room, at your office, at Plus X, or somewhere near Brighton station, we travel: Gatwick is half an hour up the Brighton Main Line and reaches Glasgow in well under two hours, so a day trip is straightforward. Discovery, design review and launch planning are the sessions usually worth the journey. The rest is better asynchronous.
The Brighton market, honestly
Hiring developers in Brighton means competing with London. Victoria and London Bridge are around an hour from Brighton station, so local salaries are pulled up by employers a commute away, while office space in the centre and the New England Quarter is not cheap for a small team. That is partly why so much of the city's technical capacity sits in freelancers and small studios rather than in-house teams. Our model avoids those fixed costs: a marketing website at £4,500–£9,000, a web application from £12,000, or server management from £250 per month if you only need the infrastructure looked after. No recruitment fees, no desks, no notice periods.
What Brighton industries actually need built
Not a list of services — the specific gap we most often find in each of these sectors here.
Digital, creative and games studios
Overflow engineering behind an existing brand: APIs, back-end systems, app builds and QA that a design-led studio does not staff internally. Usually white-label, working in the studio's repository and release process, with clear ownership of what is ours to maintain and what is theirs.
Tourism, hospitality and events
Booking and availability systems that survive a festival weekend, integrations with channel managers and card processors, EPOS for multi-site venues in the Lanes and on the seafront, plus rota and stock tooling for a workforce that doubles in summer and shrinks by November.
Higher education and student services
Applicant and student portals, timetabling and placement tools, accessibility work to public sector standards, and single sign-on against institutional identity systems. Spin-outs need research prototypes rebuilt as maintainable products with proper data handling and a licence model.
Financial services operations
Internal tooling around large platforms rather than replacements for them: workflow systems, reconciliation and reporting, secure integrations, audit trails that satisfy a compliance team, and automation of manual back-office processes. Security review and penetration testing are part of the work, not an extra.
Marine, port and coastal logistics
Cargo, berth and haulage scheduling, customs and documentation flows, driver and yard apps that work offline in a dockside signal shadow, and integration between weighbridge or terminal systems and back-office finance so paperwork stops being retyped.
What we build for Brighton clients
Every service below is available to Brighton and East Sussex businesses.
Software Engineering
AI & Automation
Design & Experience
Growth & Marketing
Cloud & Infrastructure
Dedicated Teams
Brighton questions
Including whether we actually have an office here — we do not, and we would rather say so.
No. Our registered address is 3/2, 4 Buccleuch Street, Glasgow G3 6SL, and that is the only office we have. Brighton clients are served remotely, with travel down for meetings where it makes sense: kick-off workshops, design reviews, launch planning. We would rather say that plainly than list a virtual address on London Road and hope nobody checks Companies House.
Yes, and it is a common arrangement given how many small studios operate in the city. You keep the client relationship and the brand; we supply back-end, mobile, DevOps or AI capacity behind it. That can be a fixed-scope build or a dedicated developer at £3,200–£6,500 per developer per month. We work to your standards, your repository and your release process, and we do not approach your clients.
Yes, and it needs planning rather than optimism. A hospitality or retail business here can be quiet in February and overwhelmed across Pride weekend, festival season and Brighton Centre conference dates. That affects hosting and queue design, booking and refund logic, staff rota tooling and how you handle payment spikes. We load-test against your own worst weekend, not an average, and size infrastructure so you are not paying peak rates in January.
Yes. Research code and product code are different things, and the usual job is turning a working prototype into software other people can run without the researcher present. We would normally start with an AI feasibility assessment at £3,000–£6,000 if machine learning is central, or go straight to a defined build from £12,000 for a web application. Grant timelines and reporting requirements are workable if you tell us about them early.
A marketing website is £4,500–£9,000 and a content-managed website £9,000–£25,000. Web applications start from £12,000, mobile apps from £15,000, and cross-platform apps run £22,000–£45,000. An AI chatbot starts from £6,000. On the marketing side, an SEO audit starts from £1,200 and an ongoing SEO programme is £800–£2,500 per month. Server management is from £250 per month. We quote a fixed scope after discovery, not a day-rate guess.
You own the code and the intellectual property on completion, in the repository under your account, not ours. Data location is decided with you: UK or EU hosting regions by default, with UK GDPR obligations written into the contract, a data processing agreement, and documented retention and deletion. If you handle card payments or health data, we design for the relevant standard rather than adding it afterwards.
Discovery can usually begin within two to three weeks, sooner for smaller pieces. After launch you can take the code and run it yourself, keep us on server management from £250 per month, or retain a dedicated developer for continuing work. We hand over documentation, environment setup notes and access to everything, so leaving us is a decision rather than a technical problem.
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Building something in Brighton?
Tell us the problem. We will tell you what would fix it, roughly what it costs, and whether we are the right people for it.
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