UK software consultancy
Software that fits the business you actually run.
We design, build and run bespoke systems, integrations and automation for established UK businesses. When the connection you need doesn’t exist off the shelf, we build it.
£100M platform — Technical leadership on a greenfield commerce system at The Hut Group, from first commit to live operation.
25 years — From repairing machines on a shop counter to distributed, fault-tolerant systems handling serious volume.
PCI-DSS regulated — Insurance software built to compliance, including a system penetration tested annually for four years.
What we do
Five disciplines, one engineering team.
Most engagements use more than one. The problem rarely respects the boundaries between them.
Engineering
Bespoke software
Systems built for how your business actually works, not how a vendor assumed it would.
Read moreApplied AI
AI & automation
Automating the repetitive work — including the conversations — with something that measurably holds up.
Read moreInteroperability
Systems integration
Connecting the systems you already pay for — including the ones with no integration to buy.
Read morePlatform
Cloud & infrastructure
Infrastructure that is understood, documented and owned — by you, not by a supplier.
Read moreProduct
Web applications
Customer portals, internal tools and the interfaces your business runs through every day.
Read moreNot sure which of these you need? That’s a normal place to start — describing the problem is enough.
Talk it throughWhy IR4
We build the part everyone else says is impossible.
When the integration doesn't exist, we write it
Most suppliers assemble off-the-shelf connectors and stop where the catalogue ends. That boundary is usually exactly where your competitive advantage sits. We carry on past it.
We run our own infrastructure
IR4 operates its own Kubernetes cluster, CI/CD and databases in production. We are not reselling someone else's platform with a margin — we run the same discipline we'd ask of you.
Engineering built at scale, applied at your size
Our background is high-availability, fault-tolerant systems handling serious volume and serious money. That rigour does not stop being useful when the system is smaller.
We will tell you not to build it
If an off-the-shelf product would do the job, that is what we will say — including when it costs us the work. A supplier who has never talked you out of anything is not advising you.
The obvious question
“What happens if you disappear?”
It is the right question to ask a small supplier, and most dodge it. We are deliberately small — that is what lets the person who scopes your work also build it — so the answer has to be structural rather than reassuring noises.
Everything below is a design decision, not a promise. It means that if we vanished tomorrow, another competent engineer could pick your system up from the repository and carry on.
The code is yours from day one
Work is committed to a repository your company owns, not to ours. There is no version of this where the software sits somewhere you cannot reach it.
The infrastructure is written down, not remembered
Servers and services are defined as code and held with the source. Another competent engineer can stand the whole thing up from the repository without ever speaking to us.
Documentation is a deliverable, not a favour
Architecture notes, runbooks and the reasoning behind the awkward decisions are written as we go, and handed over as part of the work.
Support is a written agreement
Response times, out-of-hours cover and escalation are agreed explicitly before we start, so what happens when something breaks is a document rather than a hope.
What it costs
Enough of a number to know whether to call.
We can’t quote a build we haven’t seen, and anyone who does is guessing. But you should be able to work out whether you’re the right size of client before spending a phone call finding out.
Discovery
£2,500 – £4,000A fixed-price, fixed-scope piece of work. We map how the business actually runs, agree what should be built, and produce a written specification with a firm price for the build. Yours to keep, and to take to another supplier if you would rather.
Where almost everyone starts
Integration & automation
£8,000 – £25,000Where most projects land: connecting systems, removing double entry, automating a process that currently depends on someone remembering it. Priced firmly once discovery has told us what is actually involved.
Bespoke systems
From £30,000Larger builds are delivered and priced in phases, so you are never committing to the whole thing on the strength of an estimate. Each phase produces something you can use.
Ongoing support
Monthly retainerOptional, and agreed in writing rather than assumed. Includes response times and what happens out of hours, so there are no surprises on either side.
Discovery is deliberately separable. If you take the specification it produces and have somebody else build it, that is a legitimate outcome and we will hand it over without argument.
AvailabilityWe usually start new work within two to three weeks of agreeing scope.
Selected work
Onramp
A conversational AI that answers enquiries, qualifies them and books work for service businesses — over WhatsApp, where their customers already are. Designed, built and operated by IR4 on our own infrastructure.
It is a complete product rather than a proof of concept: live on a real number, handling real traffic, with the monitoring, failure handling and cost control that implies. Because we own it, we can show you the inside of it — architecture, decisions and the mistakes — in as much detail as you want.
How it was builtTell us what isn’t working.
You don’t need a specification or a budget to start a conversation. A clear description of the problem is enough for us to tell you whether we can help — and we will say if we can’t.
Start a conversation