Bristol software development: who does what, and how to choose

Search for a software company in Bristol and you get product companies, consultancies, digital agencies, recruiters and job boards, all mixed together. They do genuinely different jobs. Working out which sort you need takes about ten minutes and saves a great deal of money.

The four sorts you will meet

Product companies. They build and sell their own software. Some of Bristol's best known names are here, and they are not looking for client work. Useful to know because they dominate the search results and will not answer your enquiry.

Consultancies. Larger teams, often working with enterprises and public bodies, typically strongest on complex or regulated programmes. Higher day rates, more process, and generally the right answer when the risk of getting it wrong is measured in millions.

Development agencies. Small to mid-sized teams building custom systems for businesses. This is where most commercial projects between a few thousand pounds and a few hundred thousand land. Kodie is one of these.

Digital and web agencies. Strongest on marketing sites, brand and campaigns, often with some development capability alongside. Excellent for a website. Less often the right home for a system your operations depend on.

Contractors and freelancers. Frequently the best value for a well-defined piece of work, and a genuine risk for anything you need supported for years, because continuity depends on one person.

How to tell which you need

Ask what happens to the thing after it is built. If the answer is "not much", a freelancer or a web agency is likely fine. If the answer is "our business runs on it", you want somebody who will still be answering the phone in three years, and you should be choosing on that rather than on the quote.

The other useful test is whether the work is mostly a website or mostly a system. A website presents information. A system holds state, has users with different permissions, and goes wrong in ways that stop people working. They need different skills and different aftercare, even though both arrive in a browser.

What it costs here

Bristol generally sits below London rates and above the offshore end, which is roughly where you would expect for a city with a deep technical hiring pool and lower overheads than the capital.

More useful than a market rate is the shape of your own project. Simple work starts from around £1,500, and above that the price follows how many kinds of user there are, how much it has to connect to, and how much existing data has to come with you. We set that out properly in what bespoke software actually costs.

Questions worth asking any Bristol firm

• Show me something you built that you still support. Not a portfolio piece, a system in daily use.
• Who owns the code and the hosting when we are finished?
• What would you talk me out of?
• Who exactly will do the work, and will I meet them?

The third question is the revealing one. Anybody willing to sell you everything you ask for is not applying judgement, and judgement is most of what you are paying for.

What being local is actually worth

Less than it used to be for the work itself, and more than you would think for everything around it. Requirements get settled faster in a room than over email, and being able to sit with the people using the software is worth a great deal in the first weeks.

We are in Ashton Gate, and we work with businesses across Bristol and the South West as well as further afield, in logistics, freight, care, tax and compliance, and cleaning. You can see what that has meant in practice across our work, and if you want a straight opinion on your own project, tell us what you are trying to build.