Web & subscription platforms
Multi-user products with logins, plans, billing and a customer dashboard. If your idea needs people to sign up and pay, this is the one.
Software studio · United Kingdom
Software that runs the boring half of your business.
Customer portals, booking systems, internal dashboards, mobile apps. Built in weeks, not quarters — quoted as one fixed number before a line of code is written.
- Fixed price agreed before we start
- You own the code & accounts
The gap
Most small businesses don't need more software. They need the right software.
Off-the-shelf tools make you work their way. Custom quotes come back at twenty thousand and three months. So the work stays manual. We sit in the middle: proper custom software, built in weeks, priced for a business that isn't venture funded.
What we build
Six things that pay for themselves.
Each one replaces a job someone on your team is currently doing by hand.
Customer portals & secure logins
Clients get their own account: documents, invoices, job status, history. Ends the "can you resend that file?" email for good.
Booking, quoting & payments
Take bookings, send quotes, collect the deposit and chase the balance automatically — on your own site, without paying commission per booking.
Mobile apps for iOS & Android
Published under your own developer account. Store submission, privacy declarations and release management handled — you never open the console.
Integrations & data plumbing
Connecting the systems you already pay for — accounting, payments, calendars, messaging, spreadsheets. Data moves once, automatically, in the right shape.
Internal tools & dashboards
The numbers you check every Monday and the reports your accountant asks for — in one place, updated automatically instead of assembled by hand.
Before & after
Four jobs you're probably still doing by hand.
Today
- Customer rings during a job. You miss it.
- You ring back at seven. They don't answer.
- Third attempt lands the booking. Written in a notebook.
- They forget. No-show. That slot earns nothing.
- Two of your slots this week were double-booked.
After
- They book at 11pm from the site, no call needed.
- Deposit taken at the point of booking.
- Your calendar blocks the slot instantly.
- Reminder goes out the day before, automatically.
- Double-booking is impossible — the system won't offer a taken slot.
Twenty bookings a week, six minutes of phone tag each — that's two hours gone. The deposit alone usually covers the no-shows.
Today
- Site visit Tuesday. Notes on your phone.
- Quote written Thursday evening, after dinner.
- Last quote's Word file reopened and edited over.
- Sent Friday. No idea whether they opened it.
- Competitor quoted on Tuesday and won the job.
After
- Photos and measurements go in on site.
- Quote builds itself from your priced templates.
- Sent before you're back in the van.
- You get a notification the moment it's opened.
- They accept and sign on their phone.
The job usually goes to whoever quotes first. Three days becomes twenty minutes, and you stop losing work you'd already won on price.
Today
- Invoice raised when you remember. Sometimes a week late.
- Thirty days pass. Nothing.
- You feel awkward chasing, so you leave it another fortnight.
- Awkward phone call. They say the invoice never arrived.
- Paid at day sixty-five. Your suppliers wanted paying at thirty.
After
- Invoice goes out the moment the job is marked complete.
- Card payment link inside it — they pay in two taps.
- Polite reminder at day seven, firmer at fourteen and twenty-eight.
- Nobody has to make the awkward call. The system does it.
- One screen shows exactly who owes what, and for how long.
Late payment is rarely refusal — it's usually the invoice sitting in a pile. Automatic chasing typically pulls payment weeks forward, and that's cash flow, not extra sales.
Today
- Six calls a day asking where things are up to.
- You stop what you're doing to check and ring back.
- Photos of finished work sit in your camera roll.
- A customer disputes what was agreed. No record either way.
- Every update interrupts something else.
After
- Customer opens their own page and sees the current stage.
- Photos upload from the phone, timestamped and located.
- Sign-off recorded against the job.
- Disputes settle by opening the record.
- The phone stops ringing for status.
Six interruptions a day at five minutes each, plus the twenty minutes it takes to get your head back into the work — that's most of an afternoon.
These are breakdowns of processes we see repeatedly across UK small businesses, not client case studies — we're a young studio and we won't invent a client list. On the call we run the same arithmetic with your actual numbers.
Why it's fast
A small studio that ships at the pace of a large one.
The parts that used to eat the budget — boilerplate, wiring up logins and payments, building admin panels, writing tests — are now largely automated. What's left is the real work: understanding how your business runs. A build an agency quotes as three months runs here in weeks.
How we de-risk it
You shouldn't have to trust a stranger with your money.
Fixed price, in writing
Agreed before any work starts. It doesn't move unless you change what you asked for.
Staged payments
You pay against delivered, working milestones. Not up front, not on promises.
Walk away at week two
If the first working version doesn't convince you, you stop there and owe nothing further.
Everything in your name
Domains, hosting, store accounts, source code — yours from day one. Nothing we could hold hostage.
We'll tell you not to build it
If a thirty-pound-a-month tool already solves your problem, that's what you'll hear on the first call.
No lock-in, ever
No per-seat licence, no retainer you can't cancel, no proprietary format holding your data.
ICO registered ZC179963
Registered with the Information Commissioner's Office. Full documentation on request before you sign anything.
Direct with the developer
No account manager relaying messages. You talk to the person writing the code, start to finish.
What goes in
Everything below is standard. You pick what you need.
120+
ready-made building blocks
Logins, payments, bookings, documents, dispatch, reporting. Assembled to fit your business rather than written from nothing — which is most of why this takes weeks and not months.
- Accounts
- Money
- Bookings
- Documents
- Messaging
- Field work
- Reporting
- Stock
2 sec
Loads on a van's signal
Tested on old Android phones with one bar, because that's where your customers are.
2FA
On every login
Security as standard
GDPR
Built in, not bolted on
Delete-my-data route included
Your accounts, your name, day one
Domains, hosting, store listings and source code. Nothing we could hold hostage, no licence to renew.
No lock-in
A working link every week
You use it as it grows instead of waiting for a reveal at the end. If week two doesn't convince you, you stop there.
Staged payments
Two minutes
Three questions. We'll tell you what we'd build.
No email needed to see the answer.
01 Your trade
02 What eats the time
03 Team size
What's the business?
Pick the closest one
What's eating the most time right now?
Choose up to three
0 of 3 selected
How many people will use it?
Including you
What we'd build
Typical delivery
—
Engagements
Three shapes of project.
Every project is quoted individually — one fixed number, agreed in writing before work starts.
Starter
One clear problem, solved properly.
- Discovery call and written scope
- One tool: portal, booking system, dashboard, or a site that takes payments
- Deployed live on your accounts
- 14 days of post-launch fixes
Typical delivery: 1–2 weeks
Most projects
Pro
A working product, not a feature.
- Everything in Starter
- User accounts, permissions and billing
- Two to three integrations with systems you already use
- Admin panel so you can run it without us
- 30 days of support and iteration
Typical delivery: 3–5 weeks
Full
Idea to live product.
- Everything in Pro
- Mobile app with store submission handled
- Ongoing monthly development
- Priority turnaround on changes
Typical delivery: 6–10 weeks, then continuous
What the price depends on: how many types of user need a login, how many systems it has to talk to, whether money moves through it, and whether it needs to be on the app stores. Nothing else. You get the number in writing within 48 hours of the first call, and it doesn't change unless you change the scope.
How it runs
Five steps, no surprises.
Step 01
Call
Twenty minutes. You describe the problem. We say honestly whether it's worth building.
Step 02
Scope
Fixed price and fixed timeline, written down within 48 hours. No hourly billing.
Step 03
Build
A working link every week. You use it as it grows instead of waiting for a reveal.
Step 04
Launch
Deployed to your accounts, in your name, with a handover walkthrough.
Step 05
After
Support window included. Ongoing work is optional and month-to-month.
Straight answers
The questions people actually ask.
Why isn't there a price list?
Because a booking form and a multi-user platform aren't the same job, and pretending otherwise means either overcharging you or under-scoping the work. You get a fixed written price after a twenty-minute call, usually within 48 hours.
How do you come in under a development agency?
No office, no account managers, no sales team, no project manager billing you to relay messages. You work directly with the person building it, and modern tooling removes a large share of the manual work. That's a structural cost difference, not a discount.
Where are your case studies?
We're a young studio and we're not going to invent a client list. What we do instead is show you working software in week one and take payment in stages against it. You're not asked to trust a portfolio — you're asked to look at the thing we built for you and decide.
Do I own what you build?
Yes. Source code, hosting accounts, domains and app store listings are all in your name from day one. There is no licence to renew and nothing to buy back.
I already have a website. Do I have to start over?
No. Most projects are additions rather than replacements — we build alongside what already works and connect to it.
What happens if you're unavailable?
Everything runs on your own accounts using standard, widely-supported technology, and it's documented at handover. Any competent developer can pick it up. That's a deliberate design decision, not an accident.
Are you registered and insured?
Smart Business Labs is the trading name of Vladislavs Saperins, a UK sole trader, registered with the Information Commissioner's Office under ZC179963. Full documentation on request before you sign anything.
Start here
Tell us what's eating your week.
Twenty minutes, no pitch. You'll leave knowing whether software fixes it, roughly what it costs and how long it takes — even if the answer is "don't build this".