Brighton's ExpressionEngine enquiries mostly split two ways, a site holding up fine but poorly maintained, or one where something's already gone wrong and nobody's fixing it.
Karl's who picks that up, there's no team behind him. Expression 37's sole focus has been ExpressionEngine and Craft CMS since it started in 2007.
He goes through what's actually built into the site first. Depending on what's there, that turns into a fix, an upgrade, or a retainer.
Where this tends to matter:
Businesses whose agency has closed, rebranded, or quietly stopped doing ExpressionEngine work, leaving a site that's technically fine but practically unsupported. Tourism and hospitality sites with sharp seasonal traffic around weekends and the summer months. Firms with integrations, Stripe, Salesforce, a booking system, wired in by a developer no longer contactable. And installs several EE versions behind, where the real work is checking every add-on individually before an upgrade.
How a typical engagement starts:
Karl goes through the templates, add-ons, and any custom functionality before quoting, since Brighton handovers often come from agencies that built things well but documented them poorly, if at all. Most clients get in touch after something specific happens: a busy weekend that exposed fragile hosting, an add-on that stopped working after a routine update, or simply the discovery that nobody can be reached about the site any more. From there it's a scoped project or a retainer, priced upfront.
Common questions Brighton clients ask:
Does it matter that you're not based in Brighton?
Not really, given how much of this work already happens remotely across the industry here. Code review, deployment, testing, all handled the same way regardless of location, and it works well.
Our previous agency has closed down, can you take the site on?
Yes, this happens often enough in Brighton specifically that it's close to routine. Working out what's custom versus a stock add-on takes a proper read of the code, which is the first step regardless of how the previous agency left things.
Our traffic is seasonal around weekends and summer, does that matter?
It changes what gets checked first. Sites with sharp peaks need their hosting and slower pages tested ahead of a busy period, not discovered live when it's already too late to fix quietly.
How old can an ExpressionEngine install get before it's a real problem?
Older than most people assume. The version itself rarely causes issues, it's the add-ons built for it that stop being maintained.
What does ongoing support include?
Priority response when something breaks, proactive checks instead of waiting for a fault, and a developer who already knows the site rather than starting cold each time.
What's this likely to cost?
One-off work like an audit or fix is a fixed quote. Ongoing support runs monthly. Either way, the number's agreed before anything starts.
Ready to get started?
If your website is business-critical and needs a specialist who will take proper long-term ownership of it, get in touch. Karl will respond personally and give you an honest view of how we can help.
