Common questions, answered.

BrandPipe in a nutshell

We are a UK-tax paying, founder/employee-owned, debt-free group of software and technology companies trading since 2013. Our specialism is creating and operating strategically-important custom systems, and we turn our hand to diverse needs all the time.

In addition, BrandPipe has a growing portfolio of its own software products and intellectual property which it licences to clients.

What should your level of confidence be?

BrandPipe is trusted to:

• handle over £200m of our client's customer transactions every year
• process sensitive personal, financial and medical data

Are we a suitable supplier for your business?

BrandPipe operates in a fairly unique space, so there's no simple answer. Our scale makes us efficient, cost-attractive, agile and personally accountable; but if you're averse to working with a tight team (that delivers big results) we might not be for you.

Do I need the full picture of what I want before you start?

Fear not, we begin many projects where the pressure of available time means we have to work some things out on the fly. It's not ideal, and it will almost certainly cost more than a fixed-priced quote (if we've agreed one) but we can, and frequently do it.

I don't want to talk budgets upfront

Talking budgets at the beginnning saves a lot of time for everyone; if you have £20k to spend but it's realistically a £100k job there's really no point in spending all the effort in delivering a formal quote. If that helps you decide quickly, we'll put our "lived-experience finger" in the air but it won't be the benchmark against which to set price negotiation; that's only possible after a full quote. BrandPipe is an open-book and if you come to us in the same spirit you'll save money over the lifetime of the project vs. any perceived "win" over the first order you place.

We'll sign a 2-way NDA so you can be certain that we'll respect your confidentiality if you choose not to go ahead, and we're happy you test our pricing with a like-for-like offering (that's onshore, highly-skilled and quality-focused).

How much?

Kindly allow us to examine your length of string please. The key drivers of cost are as follows:

• Available time (ours and yours)
• Complexity
• The maturity of your instructions (i.e. are they fully defined, or need work)
• Flexibility of delivery (are all your technical needs prescriptive/restrictive, or is it for us to decide)
• Bureaucracy (how many check-ins, meetings, sign-off points, forms to fill in etc)

Can we strip out requirements to fit our budget?

If we're having that conversation the budget probably wasn't right and correcting that will deliver a better outcome than the alternative. It's often possible to simplify things if you can offer any ready-made elements (designs, templates etc) else the greatest gains can come from empowering us to focus on the work itself, reducing the "bureaucratic overhead" rather than feature-stripping. We want to give you all the things you need, anything less could risk you being less satisfied with the finished work.

Can you justify all of your charges individually

To the extent that doing the the whole job costs £X, and not doing it at all costs £0, yes. Seriously though, a breakdown is possible if we're working in phases of aggregate features but asking for an encyclopedic itemisation is to ignore the primary cost drivers of technical projects.

Will changes mid-project be included?

That depends. If you remove a feature and replace it with another of equal effort we might be ok, but important decisions are taken early in a project setting us on a course that may require more time to unpick than pressing ahead (to stay within budget). We'll be as generous and flexible as we possibly can be where you as the client seek to behave in the same way.

You're small and we're massive so we call all the shots right?

If you're talking to us it's because you're aware that we do exceptional work and of our proven track record of working with enterprise-scale clients. If your first thoughts are about asserting and retaining power over the relationship then it's simply best that we don't start one.

I need something next week can you do it?

No, sorry. We reserve all of our energy and capacity to handle an emergency (for that's what you have based on that timeline) for long-term contracted clients.

I need a website, can you do it?

Also no. BrandPipe builds web applications meaning complex feature-rich software that's accessed via a web browser. Exceptions apply for retained customers, naturally.

I need a Wordpress site...

Wordpress is a great product and there's an entire universe of agencies that specialise in it, but we are not one of them.