Edinburgh's ExpressionEngine enquiries generally fall into one of two camps: a site that's stable but hasn't had proper attention in years, or one that's already causing problems with nobody left to fix it.
Karl's who you'd work with, and only Karl. He's built Expression 37 around ExpressionEngine and Craft CMS exclusively since 2007. You go straight to him, never an account manager.
He reviews the actual build before recommending anything. Depending on what's there, that's a fix, a version upgrade, or an ongoing retainer.
Where we typically come in:
- Financial and professional services firms where the website carries real compliance weight, not just brand presence.
- Sites left behind after a rebrand or agency change, where the old ExpressionEngine install is still live but nobody's actively responsible for it.
- Organisations running festival or seasonal booking systems that need to hold up under a short, sharp spike in traffic once a year.
- Businesses with Salesforce or HubSpot feeding lead data out of the site, where the integration is often more fragile than the CMS itself.
- Teams tired of routing every small fix through an account manager who then has to ask a developer somewhere else entirely.
How a typical engagement starts:
Most Edinburgh enquiries land after something specific has gone wrong or is clearly about to: an EE2 install flagged by a security scan, a booking form that fails under festival-week traffic, or simply the realisation that nobody currently understands how a key part of the site works. Karl audits the actual install before quoting, and a lot of that first piece of work becomes an ongoing retainer once the immediate risk is dealt with.
Common questions Edinburgh clients ask:
Since you're not based in Edinburgh, how does support actually work?
Entirely remotely, and that's true for the vast majority of clients regardless of location. Code review, deployments, and fixes all happen without needing anyone on site, and Edinburgh is easy enough to reach for the rare exception.
Can you take over support from an agency that's no longer engaged?
Yes, and it's one of the more common ways people find us. The first step is always understanding what's actually been built, custom functionality versus stock add-ons, before any changes are made.
Our traffic spikes hard around the festival, does that need special handling?
It changes what gets checked before the busy period rather than what's built. Booking flows, hosting capacity, and a support arrangement with a fast response time all matter more in the weeks running up to August than the rest of the year.
What if our EE version is genuinely ancient, EE2 or older?
Not unusual for Edinburgh, plenty of financial and public sector sites were built early and never revisited. Upgrading is routine work, the real effort is usually auditing which add-ons still function.
We have strict data handling requirements, does that complicate things?
It shapes how work gets done more than it complicates it. Anything involving personal or financial data gets handled with that in mind from the start, rather than as an afterthought.
How do you charge for this kind of work?
Fixed cost for defined project work, a monthly retainer for anything ongoing. The number is agreed upfront in both cases.
What's the right first step?
A short conversation about the current site, what's built into it, and what's prompting the enquiry now. That's enough to give a clear, honest view of what's involved.
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.
