Cloud & Infrastructure
Move to the cloud in stages, with a way back at every step
Migrations go wrong in predictable ways: a DNS change made before the data finished copying, a cron job nobody knew existed, a hardcoded IP in a config file, an SSL certificate that only existed on the old box. None of these are clever problems. They are inventory problems, and inventory is where this work starts.
Indicative
From £4,000
Fixed price agreed in writing before any build starts.
Get a quote+44 7488 265083The problem this solves
Two failure modes dominate. The big-bang weekend migration, where everything moves at once and any single surprise becomes an outage with no way back. And the migration that quietly never finishes, leaving you paying for two environments while depending on both.
What you get
A complete inventory first
Every service, scheduled job, queue worker, certificate, DNS record, integration and credential. The things that break migrations are almost always the ones nobody remembered to list.
A target design with costs
What the new environment looks like and what it will cost per month, before committing. A cloud bill three times the old hosting invoice is a common and avoidable surprise.
Rehearsed cutover
The whole migration run end to end against a copy, timed, at least once before the real one. The rehearsal is what turns an unknown duration into a known one.
Tested rollback
A documented way back at each phase, exercised during the rehearsal. A rollback plan nobody has run is a paragraph, not a plan.
SEO-safe URL handling
Where the migration touches URLs, every indexed path is inventoried and either preserved or 301-redirected to its exact equivalent. Losing rankings in a server move is entirely self-inflicted.
Decommissioning
The old environment kept read-only for an agreed window, then shut down deliberately. Migrations that skip this step keep billing for years.
How we work
Discovery
Inventory the current environment and find the dependencies nobody documented.
Design and estimate
Target architecture, monthly cost projection, and the phase order.
Build the target
New environment created from code, running alongside the old one.
Rehearse
Full data copy and cutover against a clone, timed and reviewed.
Cutover
Lowered DNS TTLs, final sync, switch, verify. Scheduled for your quietest window, with the rollback ready.
Stabilise and decommission
Watch closely for a fortnight, then retire the old environment.
What you should expect
- Cutover completed inside a planned window, with a rehearsed timing
- A rollback that has been executed at least once before it was needed
- Indexed URLs preserved or redirected exactly, so rankings hold
- The old environment shut down instead of quietly billing
Built with
- AWS
- Azure
- DigitalOcean
- Hetzner
- Terraform
- Docker
- rsync
- MySQL
- PostgreSQL
- Redis
- Cloudflare
- Route 53
Mainstream, well-supported technology — chosen so you can hire for it and so another team could take the project over.
Cloud Migration — your questions
Including the ones about cost, which most agencies leave off the page.
A single application with its database typically runs £4,000 to £12,000 depending on how much undocumented behaviour turns up in discovery. Larger estates are quoted per phase, so you approve each one against what the previous phase actually taught us.
For a straightforward web application, no — DNS TTLs are lowered in advance and the final sync happens with the old environment still serving. Where a database has to stop accepting writes there is a short read-only window, and we tell you its rehearsed duration before you agree to it.
Not if URLs are handled properly, and that is a deliberate workstream rather than an afterthought. Every indexed path is inventoried before the move and either kept identical or given a single-hop 301 to its exact equivalent. Ranking loss in migrations comes from URLs quietly changing or 404ing.
Often not, and we will say so. Cloud buys elasticity, managed services and resilience; for a steady predictable workload a well-specified server can be cheaper. You get the monthly projection before committing, and if the honest answer is to stay put, that is the advice.
Region selection is part of the design. For UK GDPR purposes we default to UK or EU regions, document where data and backups reside, and note any sub-processor involved — because that is what a customer or auditor will eventually ask about.
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Read moreTalk to someone who has built this before
A short call is usually enough to tell you whether this is the right service for your situation — including when it is not.