← ServicesBack-End development

Backends built to stay simple

Custom PHP services, Craft CMS modules and the third-party integrations that make platforms feel like one system instead of five — designed to remain maintainable as your product grows.

Systems we have actually connected

Every chip below comes from a shipped project — no logo-wall padding. The pattern is always the same: one source of truth, automated sync, no manual re-entry.

CRM & Marketing

  • HubSpot
  • Google Tag Manager
  • Meta Pixel

Commerce & ERP

  • BigCommerce
  • Epicore ERP
  • Directus
  • Craft Commerce

Search & Reviews

  • Algolia
  • Doofinder
  • Reviews.io

HR & Ops

  • Greenhouse
  • Formie
  • Spreadsheet-driven content

Platforms bridged

  • Craft CMS ↔ WordPress
  • Member database & auth
  • Video & streaming

Integration engineering — the unglamorous patterns that work

The difference between an integration and a liability is what happens when things fail. These are the patterns we build by, with sources.

01

PHP is not legacy — unpatched PHP is

PHP runs 70.6% of the server-side web (W3Techs), with a formal release cycle: each version gets two years of fixes plus two of security patches. The risk is never the language — it is running an end-of-life version. Annual upgrades are planned into every retainer.

02

Retries that never duplicate

Every write carries an idempotency key — the pattern Stripe documents and enforces — and syncs upsert on external IDs. A retried job updates the same record; it never creates a second order, lead or charge.

03

Webhooks lie

We verify signatures, acknowledge fast, process asynchronously — and still run scheduled reconciliation against the provider’s API, because the event that never arrived is the one that costs you a customer.

04

Failures must be loud

Queued jobs with exponential backoff, dead-letter queues for persistent failures, alerts on failure rate. A sync that silently drops leads for three weeks is worse than one that visibly breaks.

05

The #1 API hole is authorization

Broken Object Level Authorization has topped the OWASP API Security list since 2019: any endpoint that accepts an ID must check who is asking, every time. Scoped least-privilege tokens per integration limit the blast radius of any leak.

06

Integration debt is the industry norm

The average enterprise runs ~897 applications with only 29% integrated, at an estimated $6.8M/year cost (MuleSoft 2025). Deliberate sync architecture — not another point-to-point connection — is what breaks that pattern.

Sources: W3Techs language stats · PHP supported versions · OWASP API Security Top 10 · MuleSoft Connectivity Benchmark 2025

How an integration project runs

01

Systems & data-flow audit

What talks to what, which system owns which field, where the volume is, what breaks today. The map comes before any wiring.

02

Sync architecture design

Field mappings, direction of truth, conflict rules, failure behavior — written down and signed off before code, because these decisions are expensive to reverse.

03

Build with contract tests

Integrations built against pinned API versions with sandbox test suites — provider changes surface in CI, not in your order flow.

04

Failure drills

We deliberately break it: kill the API mid-sync, replay duplicate webhooks, flood the queue — and verify recovery does what the design promised.

05

Observability & handover

Dashboards, alerts on failure rates and queue depth, runbooks for the 2 a.m. scenarios — in your accounts, documented for your team.

Honest answers

Our data lives in five systems. Where do you start?

By declaring one of them the source of truth and making every other system subscribe to it. That is the architecture behind the Tempo bridge: Craft CMS as master, WordPress storefront synced automatically.

Do you take over existing backends or only greenfield?

Mostly existing ones. Reading someone else’s PHP honestly — then simplifying instead of rewriting from scratch — is a core skill here.

How do you keep heavy syncs from slowing the site?

Background queues, batched API requests and off-peak scheduling. The Tempo sync moves thousands of products without users ever noticing.

What happens when HubSpot, our ERP or a payment provider changes its API?

They will — providers sunset endpoints on their own schedule. We integrate against pinned versions, watch changelogs and deprecation notices, and keep contract tests running against sandboxes so breakage surfaces before production. Whether adapting is retainer work or a new scope is agreed up front, not discovered in an invoice.

Do we even need custom code — why not Zapier or an existing plugin?

Sometimes you do not, and we say so: for simple, low-volume, standard-field syncs, off-the-shelf tools are genuinely enough. Custom modules earn their cost with volume, complex field mapping, multiple systems — or when per-task pricing quietly grows past the cost of owning the code.

If a sync fails at 2 a.m., do we silently lose leads?

No — that is the failure architecture’s whole job: retries with backoff, a dead-letter queue for anything persistent, alerts on failure rates, and scheduled reconciliation that backfills whatever a webhook missed. At-least-once delivery plus idempotency means nothing is lost and nothing is duplicated.

Two systems that refuse to talk?

Describe the data flow you wish existed — we will map the bridge.

Get in touch

Or explore all services.