A typical Nottingham enquiry about ExpressionEngine support is one of two things: a site that's ageing quietly without incident, or one that's actively broken with the previous developer no longer answering.
Karl's the person you'd deal with, start to finish. He's worked only in ExpressionEngine and Craft CMS since starting the company in 2007. There's no account manager standing in between.
He reviews the actual build before saying what it needs. That's typically a fix, a version upgrade, or an ongoing retainer.
Where we typically come in:
- Retailers running ecommerce on ExpressionEngine who need someone available around peak trading periods, not just during office hours.
- Businesses whose previous agency has gone quiet or stopped taking on ExpressionEngine work, leaving the site technically live but practically unsupported.
- Sites several major versions behind current ExpressionEngine, where add-ons have stopped being updated and every plugin needs auditing before an upgrade is safe.
- Firms with Stripe, Salesforce, HubSpot, or other integrations bolted onto the CMS that need a developer who can see the whole picture, not just the template layer.
- Owners who want one developer who knows the site properly, rather than a rotating cast of account managers at an agency.
How a typical engagement starts:
Most Nottingham clients get in touch after a specific incident: a checkout that broke during a sale weekend, an upgrade quote from an agency that never materialised, or simply the realisation that nobody could explain how part of the site actually worked. Karl reviews the codebase directly before quoting anything, and most engagements move from a one-off fix into an ongoing retainer once the immediate problem is resolved.
Common questions Nottingham clients ask:
Is it a problem that you're not based in Nottingham?
Not in practice. Every part of ExpressionEngine support, from code review to deployment, happens remotely, and Nottingham is well within reach for the rare occasion an in-person meeting is genuinely useful. Most clients find working directly with the developer, rather than through an agency's account management chain, gets things fixed faster.
We inherited this site from an agency who's no longer around, can you pick it up?
Yes, this is the single most common starting point. Taking over an unfamiliar ExpressionEngine codebase, working out what's custom-built versus stock add-on, and documenting it properly as we go, is routine work. It typically takes a short discovery phase before any changes are made.
Our site handles a lot of traffic during sales periods, does that change anything?
It changes what gets prioritised. Retail sites under seasonal load need stable hosting, tested checkout flows, and a support arrangement where someone answers quickly if something goes wrong during a peak weekend, not a ticket queue with a two-day response time.
What if our ExpressionEngine version is years out of date?
That's normal, not a special case. Upgrades from EE2 or EE3 through to the current release are common work, and the real effort is usually in auditing which add-ons still function and which need replacing, not the core upgrade itself.
Do you handle the third-party integrations too, or just the CMS?
Both. Payment gateways, CRM syncs, and marketing platform connections are usually wired into the ExpressionEngine templates directly, so treating the CMS and its integrations as separate problems tends to miss where things actually break.
How is pricing structured?
One-off work like audits and upgrades is quoted as a fixed project cost. Ongoing support runs as a monthly retainer. Either way, the cost is agreed before work starts, no open-ended hourly billing.
What happens if something breaks outside office hours?
Retainer clients get priority response for urgent issues. Without a retainer, we still respond as quickly as possible, but guaranteed priority is one of the things a retainer specifically buys.
What does the first step actually look like?
A short call about the site, its current EE version, and what's currently going wrong or worrying you. That's enough for an honest view on what's involved, before anything is agreed.
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.
