Insights · Written by the people who do the work

The questions clients
ask us first.

What a thing costs, what to build, and when the honest answer is that you do not need it. We have been building software, websites and apps for UK businesses since 2015, and these are the conversations that happen before anyone signs anything.

All insights

  1. Four members of the Flitzen team planning a project around a table
    Booking and scheduling · 4 min read

    Moving a swim school onto new software

    The switch itself is rarely the hard part. What decides whether it goes well is the order you move things in: families and class structure first, active subscriptions second, history last.

  2. Flitzen developers working together on a bespoke software build
    Budgeting a project · 4 min read

    How long does bespoke software take to build?

    A focused system that does one job well takes weeks. A full platform with a customer app, payments and staff tools is typically a few months: a bespoke swim school system, for example, runs eight to sixteen weeks from first call to launch.

  3. Mobile app design and development work at Flitzen
    Choosing what to build · 5 min read

    Do you need an app, or a better website?

    Most businesses that ask us for an app need a faster, clearer website instead.

  4. The London skyline at dusk, with the Thames and the Houses of Parliament
    Working with agencies · 5 min read

    Who actually owns your website?

    A website is five separate things and each one can be owned by a different person: the domain, the hosting, the code, the content and the analytics.

  5. A person using a tablet with connected business services drawn over it
    Booking and scheduling · 5 min read

    What a booking system actually needs to do

    A booking system earns its keep by removing admin, not by taking bookings. Taking the booking is the easy part and every tool does it.

  6. A developer at Flitzen working on a bespoke software build
    Choosing software · 5 min read

    Bespoke software or off the shelf?

    Buy off the shelf when your process is ordinary and the software is cheap enough to be disposable. Build bespoke when the way you work is the thing that earns you money, and nothing on the market will bend to it.

  7. Bespoke website design and development work in progress at Flitzen
    Budgeting a project · 5 min read

    What actually drives the cost of a website

    Two quotes for "a website" can differ by a factor of ten and both be honest, because the word covers everything from five pages to a booking platform.

  8. Two people discussing an AI system shown on a large screen
    Practical AI · 5 min read

    Where AI actually saves a small business time

    AI is good at jobs that are repetitive, text-shaped and currently done by a person reading something and typing somewhere else.

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