a software company, london
We build the software a business actually runs on.
Web software, mobile apps and the unglamorous internal tools that hold a company together. Some of it we build for clients. Some of it we build, run and licence ourselves — starting with The Desk.
london · global hosting, your choice of jurisdiction · part of grant & graham holding oü
what we build
Software that has to work on a Friday night.
We are not a design studio that also writes code. We build systems that carry real money, real contracts and real deadlines, and then we keep them running.
Web software
The system your team signs into every morning. Records, roles, documents, money and history in one place, in a browser, with nothing to install and nothing to keep updated.
Apps
Mobile apps for the people who are not at a desk — on the road, on site, in the room. Built against the same data as everything else, so there is one version of the truth rather than two.
Client portals
The page your customer sees. Quotes to approve, contracts to sign, invoices to pay, files to collect — under your name, on your domain, without asking anyone to create an account.
Internal tools
The spreadsheet that grew teeth. Rota, stock, jobs, approvals, whatever the shape of it is — replaced with something that does not break when the person who built it goes on holiday.
Integrations
Getting your accounting, payments, calendars, mail and website to speak to each other, so the same figure is not typed in by hand three times and wrong once.
Hosting and care
We host globally and keep your data where you need it kept — the UK, the EU, or wherever your own rules point. Isolated data stores, backups, updates and someone to write to when something is wrong.
our software
Products we build, run and licence ourselves.
Each one started as a job that had to be done properly, in a working business, before it was ever sold to anyone else.
product one · live
The Desk
Booking and back-office software for businesses that sell dates rather than hours. Enquiries, quotes, contracts, invoices, contacts and newsletters in one record, branded as the client's own business.
- In daily use at Emberlight Artists, our first client
- Licensed per seat to agencies, management and production companies
- Fully white-labelled — the client's name, not ours
in build
The next ones
There is more in the workshop, and it is being used in anger by the businesses it was written for before it carries a name on this page.
We do not publish a roadmap, because a roadmap is a list of things that do not exist yet. When the next product ships, it will appear here already working, with somebody's real business running on it.
clients
Businesses that run on what we built.
Four businesses, four different problems. A public website is the easy half — what matters is the admin behind it that somebody has to use every day.
Emberlight Artists
Artist management, London. The reason The Desk exists. Their roster runs on it — every enquiry, quote, contract and invoice the company takes goes through the same screens we licence to everyone else.
- Website and booking form
- The Desk, in daily use
- Client portal and contract signing
Grant & Graham
Interim management and strategy consultancy, working across London, Amsterdam and Tallinn. A website that carries case studies, press and long-form writing in more than one language, with the admin tools to keep all of it current without a developer in the loop.
- Multi-language website
- Admin tools for articles and case studies
- Enquiry routing by office and region
Hostcol
UK real estate, acting for private and institutional owners from acquisition through to running the asset day to day. Their website, and the admin behind it — tenancies, rent and arrears, repairs, compliance dates and the owner reporting that used to be assembled by hand each quarter.
- Website
- Property and portfolio admin tools
- Owner reporting in one format, on a cadence
Jennifer Ewbank
A recording artist managed by Emberlight, and the clearest example of what we mean by white label. We built her site across three territories, then put The Desk inside it — so a booking enquiry from her own booking page lands in her management's desk without anybody copying anything out of an inbox.
- Website across UK, Netherlands and global domains
- The Desk integrated behind her own booking and contact forms
- Shop, mailing list and press kit on the same system
- Nothing on the site carries our name, or the software's
This was not built to be sold. It was built because we needed it. Which means when something is broken, it is broken for us too, and it gets fixed.
Andrew Collins · Emberlight Artistshosting
Your data sits where you say it sits.
We host in data centres around the world, so the question of where a client's records live is a decision you make rather than one you inherit. Tell us the jurisdiction and we will run it there.
Choose the country
The UK, the EU, or further afield. If your regulator, your board or your own clients require the data to stay inside a border, that is where we put it — and we will tell you exactly which facility it is in.
Kept apart
Each client has their own data store, unreachable from any web address, with nothing shared between one business and the next. Backed up, patched and monitored as part of the arrangement rather than as an extra.
Yours to take
Export everything to a spreadsheet whenever you ask, without a conversation about it first. Hosting with us should be a decision you keep making, not one you cannot reverse.
how we work
Short conversations, working software.
We would rather show you something running in three weeks than send you a specification in three weeks. You see it early, you tell us where it is wrong, and it changes while changing it is still cheap.
- One conversation to understand what the business actually does
- A working slice of it in front of you before anything is signed off
- Built, hosted and looked after by the people who wrote it
- Your data exported to a spreadsheet whenever you ask for it
- No lock-in, no modules to unlock, nothing held back
Tell us what is not working.
Whether it is a product to licence or a system to build, the first conversation is half an hour and costs nothing.