Straight answers, including the ones about money, ownership, and what happens if we disappear. If your question is not here, ask us and we will add it.
36 questions
Nothing matches that. Try a shorter word, or ask us directly and we will answer it and add it here.
We build custom software for small businesses. Most of the time that means replacing a stack of spreadsheets, shared documents and manual steps with one system that matches how the work already moves. We also build internal tools, connections between systems you already pay for, and small utilities that remove a repetitive job.
Small ones, from sole traders up to companies of around fifty people. We are often the first software supplier a business has commissioned, so we explain as we go. Larger organisations usually need a supplier with an account management layer, which is not us.
Send us your requirements. A plain written description of the problem is enough, in whatever form you already have it. We read it, ask anything we need to, and come back with a fixed quote. If you accept, we build it, then hand it over.
No. Describe the job, not the software: what comes in, who touches it, where it currently goes wrong, and what you wish happened instead. Turning that into a technical specification is our work, not yours.
Chat, on this site. It reaches us directly, not a call centre. We do not run a sales line and we will not book you onto a discovery call. If we are the wrong fit for what you need, we will say so rather than sell you something.
Websites are a separate part of the business, run on our own hosting platform. If a website is what you need rather than a system, start there: webdesign.lightmorphic.com.
It depends entirely on what it has to do, so we do not publish price bands. A published figure would either be low enough to mislead or wide enough to tell you nothing. Every job is quoted on its own once we have read your requirements.
Fixed. You get one price for the work described, agreed before anything starts. If you later ask for something outside that description, we quote that separately and you decide. Nothing gets added to your bill without you agreeing to it first.
No. Reading your requirements, asking questions and pricing the work costs you nothing, and you are under no obligation once you have the number.
Only where something genuinely costs money to run, such as hosting, and that is set out in the quote rather than appearing later. There is no licence fee for software we built for you, because it is yours.
The quote carries a date the work will be finished by. We do not advertise a turnaround time across the board, because a two-screen tool and a system that runs a whole operation are not the same job.
Yes, and it is often the sensible route. Build the part that hurts most, run it for a while, then decide what the next piece should be from experience rather than guesswork. Each stage is quoted on its own.
Yes. The code and the data are yours, handed over in full at the end of the job. You are not licensing it from us and you do not need our permission to keep using it, change it, or give it to somebody else.
There is an export for everything. Not a support ticket, not a fee, not a courtesy we might extend: a working export built into the system, so your records can be read without us and without the software.
You can. You already have the code, the data and the documentation, so another developer can pick it up without asking us for anything. We would rather you stayed because the work is good than because leaving is difficult.
Your system keeps running and you keep everything needed to maintain it. That is the point of handing over the code and the data rather than keeping them on our side. A supplier disappearing should be an inconvenience, not the end of your operations.
Only the people who need to. During a build we see what we must see to do the work; afterwards, access is yours to grant. We do not sell, share or mine anything, and we do not put third-party tracking into systems we build for you.
Wherever suits the job and your obligations, agreed with you before we build rather than decided quietly. If your sector requires data to stay in a particular place, tell us at the requirements stage and it becomes part of the specification.
Anything that does not do what we said it would is fixed free for thirty days after handover. That is a warranty on our work, separate from new features, which are quoted as new work.
A live system that people cannot use goes to the front of the queue, ahead of whatever we are building that day. Nobody should wait behind a feature request while their business is stopped.
Daily, on systems we host. Backups you cannot restore from are not backups, so restoring is something we test rather than assume.
Sometimes. It depends on what state it is in and whether we can get at the code. Send us what you have and we will tell you honestly whether taking it on is sensible or whether replacing the worst part of it would cost you less.
Handover includes showing the people who will use it how it works, and written documentation they can go back to. Software that needs a training course to be usable is usually badly designed, so we treat that as our problem to fix, not yours to sit through.
We answer on working days, and a live system that has stopped jumps the queue ahead of everything else. It is not a round-the-clock operations desk, and we will not pretend otherwise.
Yes. Card processing runs through an established payment provider, so card details never sit in your system and the compliance burden stays with the people equipped to carry it. You get the payment status you need without holding anything you should not.
Accessibility is standard, not an extra line on the quote. Keyboard use, readable contrast, real labels and screen-reader support are part of building it properly, and retrofitting them later always costs more than doing them first.
Yes. Systems we build can import from the spreadsheets you already keep and produce the office files and PDFs you already send out, so the switch does not force everyone around you to change how they work.
Yes, where that makes sense for the job. Anything used away from a desk, on site, in a van, on a shop floor, is built to be usable on a phone rather than shrunk down from a desktop screen and left awkward.
Usually. If a system you rely on offers a way in, we can connect to it and stop the double entry between them. Where it does not, we will tell you what is genuinely possible instead of promising an integration that cannot exist.
If something off the shelf fits, use it, and we will say so. Custom work earns its keep when the ready-made options force you to change how the business runs, when you are paying per seat for features nobody touches, or when the gaps are being filled by a spreadsheet one person maintains.
Lightmorphic Ltd, a software company registered in England and Wales, company number 17423646, with a registered office at 82A James Carter Road, Mildenhall, IP28 7DE.
We do. The work is not subcontracted or passed to an offshore team after the quote is signed, so the people you talk to are the people writing the software.
Anywhere. We build and support remotely, so where your business is matters far less than whether we understand the problem you want solved.
Several things, and they are all live. Built lists the products you can go and use yourself, which tells you more about how we work than a testimonial does.
Anything we do not think we would do well, and anything where off-the-shelf software would clearly serve you better. Saying so early costs us a job and saves you considerably more.
Ask it in the chat and we will answer properly. If it is a question other people are likely to have, it ends up on this page.
Send us the problem in plain words. We will tell you whether software is the answer, and if it is, what it would cost.
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