Why re-platforms fail
The code is the easy part.
Most Australian businesses that come to us are not short of software. They have a WordPress site that became a shop that became a subscription business, held together by plugins. Replacing it goes wrong in three predictable places.
Billing breaks quietly
A subscription business lives on the renewal, and a re-platform is the classic moment to lose one. Card tokens tied to the old system, webhooks pointed at the wrong server, a renewal that runs twice or not at all — none of it shows up in a demo, and all of it shows up in the first month's revenue. On FleaMail the answer was to use the same Stripe and PayPal merchant accounts, so every stored reference carried over and no customer had to re-enter a card.
Data goes missing and nobody notices
Migrations are usually checked by counting rows. Ours was too, at first — and the count passed while order line items, addresses and refunds had not come across at all. We found it because we built a reconciliation gate that compares both systems and refuses to pass on any mismatch, then tightened it to check every relationship rather than every table. Now it reconciles to the cent, and it, not anyone's confidence, decides whether cutover happens.
Rankings vanish overnight
Years of articles and product pages rank in Australian search, and a new platform with a tidier URL structure throws them away. Of the 227 FleaMail URLs that had earned traffic in the previous year, 118 would have returned a 404 after the move. Every one now has a redirect to its closest live equivalent, held in a table the team can edit rather than buried in code.
The worked example
Rebuilt from WordPress, reconciled to the cent.
What we would build for you
Custom software development in Australia, in our hands, usually means one of three jobs. The first is the FleaMail job: a business that runs on WordPress, WooCommerce or a no-code tool, has bent it as far as it goes, and needs one system it owns. The second is an internal platform — the booking engine, portal or admin that currently lives across three spreadsheets and a shared inbox. The third is a takeover: an application somebody else started, which now needs finishing or rescuing.
The stack is chosen for the next developer rather than for us. On FleaMail it was Next.js 16, React 19 and TypeScript over MySQL and Prisma, because that is what an Australian hire can pick up on day one. We also build in Laravel, and we will tell you which suits your team rather than which we prefer.
How a migration actually runs
Data first, screens second. We take a read-only copy of your production database and write migration scripts that can be re-run at any time without creating duplicates, so the final sync on cutover day is the same operation we have already run dozens of times. A reconciliation report compares the two systems — records, relationships and recurring revenue — and blocks cutover on any difference. Then a shadow period: the new platform receives the same payment events as the old one and applies them, but sends no email and charges nobody, while a nightly report compares the two subscription by subscription. FleaMail is in that stage now. Only after a sustained clean report do the webhooks and DNS move, and the old system stays read-only for ninety days in case anything needs checking.
That order is slower than building screens first, and it is why the screens on a re-platform are the least risky part. Customers keep their existing passwords, too: the old WordPress hashes are verified on first login and quietly upgraded, so nobody gets a reset email on launch day.
What changes because you are in Australia
Consumer prices must be shown including GST, so tax lives in the pricing model rather than at checkout. Postcodes matter more than people expect — FleaMail's plan tiers are decided by where the pet lives, because paralysis-tick country is not the same as Hobart. Privacy obligations follow the data, so we host the database in a region you choose deliberately. And your working day overlaps ours for two or three hours in the afternoon on the east coast, five in Perth, which suits a build measured in weeks and does not suit a support desk. We say that up front.
How it runs
Data first. Screens second.
Teardown
Free and written, inside 48 hours. What you run on, what it costs you to keep it, and whether it needs replacing at all.
Migration plan and fixed price
Every table, integration, redirect and screen listed, with what is out of scope, priced in Australian dollars.
Build and reconcile
Staging from week one. Migration scripts run repeatedly against a copy of production until the reconciliation report is clean.
Shadow, then cut over
A parallel run with no customer-facing side effects, then the written runbook, with the old system kept as a read-only fallback.
Money
How we quote.
Fixed-scope build or migration
One written scope covering data, integrations, redirects and screens. One price in Australian dollars, which moves only when the scope does.
- ✓Migration plan before any build
- ✓Reconciliation gate included
- ✓Out-of-scope stated explicitly
Takeover
An application someone else started. We read the codebase first and tell you honestly whether to continue it or start again.
- ✓Written assessment
- ✓Continue-or-rebuild answer
- ✓Full credential handover
Ongoing development
Monthly, for the platform you now own — new features, integrations and the upkeep a live system needs.
- ✓Cancel with notice
- ✓Staging for every change
- ✓Your repository, always
There is no rate card on this site, in any currency, and no comparison with local agency rates. What is fixed is the process: free teardown, written scope, one price, agreed before anyone starts.
FAQ
Straight answers.
Built and run by us
Our own products, in production.
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