Cardiff · South Wales
Bilingual software and web development in Cardiff
Cardiff is a capital city with a small-business economy. Welsh Government sits at Cathays Park, the Senedd at Cardiff Bay, Companies House at Crown Way and BBC Cymru Wales at Central Square, and around that institutional core is a base of insurers, agencies, production companies, clinics and independent retailers, most of them small and owner-run. Fugen Services builds web platforms, custom software, eCommerce, mobile apps and AI tools for Cardiff businesses. We are registered in Glasgow at 3/2, 4 Buccleuch Street and work with Cardiff clients remotely, travelling down when a project needs it. There is no Cardiff office. Given how many clients here could check us on Companies House without leaving the city, that would be a poor lie to attempt.
Working with Cardiff businesses
Cardiff's private sector is led by financial services and insurance. Admiral grew in the city and is still headquartered here, alongside Legal & General, Principality Building Society, Atradius, Hodge and a dense broker and claims market. Central Square rebuilt the ground beside Cardiff Central station and put BBC Cymru Wales, professional firms and an HMRC hub into it. Creative production is the other pillar: Roath Lock in Cardiff Bay makes long-running BBC drama, Wolf Studios Wales is at Trident Park, and post-production houses cluster around them. Cardiff University, Cardiff Metropolitan and the University of South Wales all teach here, with Cardiff University's innovation campus on Maindy Road, while IQE's Cardiff base ties the city into the CSconnected compound semiconductor cluster running out through Newport and the Valleys. Public demand is large and distinct, with NHS Wales, Cardiff and Vale University Health Board and the Cardiff Capital Region's councils all buying software under Welsh rules.
Why Cardiff businesses work with us
The distinguishing feature of Cardiff work is bilingual delivery. If your customers or funders sit anywhere near the Welsh public sector, Welsh and English are not a translation task bolted on at the end. The Welsh Language Standards made under the Welsh Language (Wales) Measure 2011 expect the Welsh service to be treated no less favourably than the English one, and that shapes URL structure, content models, form validation, error messages, email templates and search from the first sprint. We build that way when it is needed and say so plainly when it is not. Beyond language, the recurring Cardiff briefs are insurance and claims workflow, production and scheduling tools for Bay studios, and content-managed websites at £9,000–£25,000 for organisations whose communications team must publish in two languages without a developer.
How we work at this distance
Cardiff is the furthest of our locations from Glasgow. There is no direct train, so rail means changing at Birmingham or Crewe and the better part of a day. We are straightforward about what that implies: this is a remote working relationship with occasional planned travel, not a supplier who can be in your office on Thursday because something came up. In practice that suits most Cardiff clients. Video calls with the people who understand the process, a shared board, a repository you own, and a build to click through every two weeks. When we do travel, it is for something earning the trip, such as a discovery workshop, user testing in Welsh and English, or a launch.
The Cardiff market, honestly
Cardiff's technical market is shaped by three universities and a large public sector. Cardiff University, Cardiff Metropolitan and the University of South Wales all produce computing graduates, and the fintech, cyber and startup employers around the city centre and Tramshed Tech absorb many of them, but senior engineers are scarcer than in Bristol, which is close by across the Severn and pays more. Welsh-speaking technical writers and testers are scarcer still, so bilingual delivery is worth planning early. Salary and premises costs sit below Bristol and well below London, which is part of why Cardiff has kept its insurance and production operations.
What Cardiff industries actually need built
Not a list of services — the specific gap we most often find in each of these sectors here.
Insurance, claims and financial services
Motor, household and credit insurance operations here run on workflow: first-notification capture, document handling, supplier allocation and management information. What gets commissioned is internal tools and customer portals with audit trails, consent handling and UK GDPR reporting, integrated with the policy system rather than replacing it.
Film, television and creative production
Studios and facilities companies around Cardiff Bay need scheduling, crew and kit booking, rushes and asset tracking, and rights or clearance records, often bilingual where the funder is Welsh. Off-the-shelf production tools rarely match a facility's own workflow, so the work is a custom application around existing storage.
Public sector and health
NHS Wales bodies, Cardiff Capital Region councils and Welsh Government-funded programmes buy against the Digital Service Standard for Wales and the Welsh Language Standards. That means accessibility testing, bilingual content models, documented security work and a service that can be assessed, not simply a site that looks finished.
Compound semiconductors and engineering
Companies in the CSconnected cluster need process data capture, yield and traceability reporting, and integration between plant equipment and business systems. Much of it is unglamorous internal software whose value is letting an engineer see wafer-level history themselves instead of asking someone to run a query.
Independent retail and hospitality
Traders on Whitchurch Road, Cowbridge Road and the Victorian arcades want tills handling counter, delivery and online stock together. Our point-of-sale line covers retail, cafes and restaurants, fast food, bakery, grocery, fashion, computers and electronics and repairs, and can run bilingual receipts and customer displays.
What we build for Cardiff clients
Every service below is available to Cardiff and South Wales businesses.
Software Engineering
AI & Automation
Design & Experience
Growth & Marketing
Cloud & Infrastructure
Dedicated Teams
Cardiff questions
Including whether we actually have an office here — we do not, and we would rather say so.
No. Our only registered address is 3/2, 4 Buccleuch Street, Glasgow G3 6SL. Cardiff clients are served remotely with planned travel for workshops, testing and launches. It would be a strange city to fake a presence in, given Companies House is on Crown Way, and in any case you deserve to know who is writing your software and where they sit.
Yes, built bilingual rather than translated afterwards. That means parallel content structures, Welsh URLs, language-aware search, validation and error messages in both languages, bilingual notification emails, and an editing experience your team can actually maintain. We work with your translators or a Welsh translation supplier; we do not machine-translate Welsh content and call it done, because readers notice immediately.
Yes, and we build to it: user needs evidenced through research, accessibility tested against WCAG rather than assumed, Welsh language treated as a core requirement, open standards, and technical documentation an assessment panel can read. We can also support the parts of a bid that describe delivery approach, security testing and data handling, since that is usually where a technically capable supplier loses marks.
A marketing website is £4,500–£9,000 and a content-managed website £9,000–£25,000, which is the usual range for a bilingual publishing site. Web applications start from £12,000, mobile apps from £15,000, and cross-platform apps run £22,000–£45,000. Bilingual delivery adds build and testing effort rather than doubling the price, and we set that out in the quote instead of hiding it.
That is the usual shape of the job. We do not replace your storage, editing or media asset management; we build the layer your people are currently doing in spreadsheets, such as scheduling, kit and crew booking, delivery tracking, clearance records and reporting for a broadcaster or funder. It integrates with what you already run, and we keep the data on infrastructure you control.
It can be worth it where enquiries are repetitive and the answers exist in documents you already maintain. An AI chatbot starts from £6,000. Welsh is the harder part: model performance in Welsh is weaker than in English, so we test it properly, keep a clear route to a human, and would advise against a Welsh-language assistant where wrong answers carry real consequences.
Yes, and no promises about positions from us or anyone honest. An SEO audit from £1,200 covers indexing, speed, structure and content, including whether your Welsh pages are correctly declared with hreflang and actually being indexed, which is a common and costly fault. Ongoing programmes are £800–£2,500 per month, and PPC runs alongside where the search demand already exists.
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Building something in Cardiff?
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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