Services
Custom Software Development in Guildford & Surrey
Bespoke software & AI, built twenty minutes from Guildford
Blue Tea builds bespoke software and AI systems for businesses across Guildford, Woking and the wider Surrey area. Projects typically run from £15,000 to £150,000, start with a fixed-price discovery sprint from £750, and are delivered by a UK team working under ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 certification.
We are based at Fairoaks Airport in Chobham, around twenty minutes from Guildford town centre, and we come to you.
What we build for Surrey businesses
Most of our work starts the same way. A business has outgrown its off-the-shelf software. The spreadsheets have multiplied, two systems that should talk to each other do not, and somebody is spending three days a month moving data between them by hand. We build the system that replaces that.
In practice this means one of four things:
Replacing a process that has outgrown its toolsConnecting systems that do not integrateBuilding a productJob scheduling, case management, stock and asset tracking, compliance records. Anything currently held together by spreadsheets, email and a person who knows where everything is. Where systems do not integrate, we build the layer that joins your CRM, your accounts package and your operational software, so the data moves without anyone retyping it.
Adding AI where it does actual work:
Document classification and data extractionTriage, routing and prioritisationPrediction against your own historical dataNot a chatbot bolted onto a website. And if software is the thing you sell rather than the thing you run on, we work as the technical partner from first prototype to live platform.
What custom software actually costs in Surrey
Most agencies will not publish this. We will, because the first question every business owner asks is what it costs, and being made to book a call to find out is a poor start to a relationship.
Discovery Sprint: From £750
Two weeks. Problem definition, requirements mapping, technology recommendation, build roadmap and effort estimate. You receive a scoping document you can take to any provider, including ones that are not us.
AI Workflow Audit: £1,500 to £2,500 fixed
Two days. We identify the three highest-value automation opportunities in your current workflow, prioritise them by return, and hand you an implementation roadmap. No commitment to build.
MVP Build: £15,000 to £40,000 fixed
Fixed scope, three to five core features, eight to sixteen weeks. You own all the code.
Full Platform: £40,000 to £150,000
Custom software with integrations, multi-user access, reporting and a support agreement. Four to nine months.
AI Integration: £10,000 to £60,000
Adding automation, classification, generation or prediction to a system you already run.
Support and Evolution: £500 to £3,000 per month
Ongoing maintenance, hosting, minor enhancements and version updates, priced monthly.
Three things worth knowing about these numbers.
Budget fifteen to twenty percent of the build cost per year for maintenance, hosting and updates. Any provider who does not raise this before you sign is not doing you a favour.
Compliance work costs money and almost nobody prices it.
If you are selling into the NHS, a university, a financial services firm or anyone handling sensitive personal data, you will need security review, penetration testing and often a data protection impact assessment. We price this as a visible line rather than discovering it in month four.
Fixed price is available and we prefer it.
It requires the discovery sprint first, because nobody can fix a price on a problem they have not scoped. That is the entire reason the sprint exists.
Why work with a local team rather than an offshore one
Yes, offshore development can be cheaper per hour and sometimes that is the right trade. It is the wrong trade when the software touches a process only your team fully understands, when the requirements will change as you learn, or when the difference between a good system and a bad one is somebody sitting in your office watching how the work actually gets done.
For those projects, three things matter more than the hourly rate.
We can be with you
Chobham to Guildford is a short drive up the A320. For a discovery sprint we would expect to spend time on site with the people who will use the system, because that is where the requirements actually live.
Оne team, no handoffs
The people who scope your project are the people who build it. We do not white-label the delivery to a third party.
Same working hours, same legal jurisdiction, same contract law
Straightforward when things go well, and considerably more important when they do not.
Proof: the work we have done in Guildford
The clearest example is on our doorstep. We built a secure, encrypted web application for the University of Surrey, implementing equine electrocardiogram analysis algorithms in a system that researchers could use directly. It is a Guildford institution, it is delivered work, and it is publicly documented.
That connection is not incidental. Georgios Michalakidis, our co-founder, holds a PhD in Computing from the University of Surrey and maintains an active research publication record. When we say we understand technical work in this area, that is what we mean by it.
Elsewhere in our published case studies: a dental practice management platform for Turret Orthodontics, national systems for Greyhound Racing UK, a suicide prevention technology platform for Ripple, and operational software for AirisQ.
We are rated 4.8 on Clutch, where our clients have reviewed us directly.
Security & Compliance
Blue Tea holds ISO 9001:2015 for quality management and ISO 27001:2013 for information security, certified by Citation ISO Certification Ltd.
For most projects this is a background detail. For some it is the whole procurement conversation. If you are a practice handling patient records, a firm handling client money, a university handling research data or a supplier being audited by one of the above, certification is usually the first hurdle rather than the last. We are already through it, and we build to those standards by default rather than retrofitting them when a client asks.
Guildford & Surrey: who we work with
We work across Guildford, Woking, Godalming, Farnham, Camberley, Chobham and the surrounding area, and remotely across the UK from our second office in Bristol. Our published case studies cover:
Healthcare and dentistryHigher educationField servicesSports governanceCharity technology
Surrey has one of the highest concentrations of professional, scientific and technical businesses in the country, and Guildford has a business base that skews strongly that way, with professional and scientific firms and the information and communication sector together making up around a third of local businesses (UK Data, 2022 figures).
The Surrey Research Park, owned by the University of Surrey, hosts around 170 businesses generating roughly £620m in gross value added, with productivity per job around twice the national average (BIGGAR Economics study, 2021).
What that means practically is that the businesses we meet here are usually not asking whether custom software is worth it. They are asking what it costs, how long it takes, and whether the supplier will still be answering the phone in two years. Those are better questions, and this page is our attempt to answer the first two before you have to ask.
FAQ
How much does custom software development cost in Guildford?
Most bespoke software projects for Surrey SMEs fall between £15,000 and £150,000, depending on scope. A fixed-scope MVP with three to five core features typically runs £15,000 to £40,000 over eight to sixteen weeks. A full platform with integrations, reporting and multi-user access runs £40,000 to £150,000. Every project starts with a fixed-price Discovery Sprint from £3,000 so that the estimate is based on scoped requirements rather than guesswork.
How long does it take to build bespoke software?
A fixed-scope MVP typically takes eight to sixteen weeks from the end of discovery. A full platform runs four to nine months. The Discovery Sprint itself takes two weeks. Timelines move most often because requirements were not properly scoped at the start, which is what the sprint is designed to prevent.
Are you based in Guildford, and will you meet in person?
Our office is at Fairoaks Airport in Chobham, roughly twenty minutes from Guildford town centre, and we have a second office in Bristol. We work with clients across Guildford, Woking, Godalming, Farnham and the surrounding area, and we expect to be on site during discovery. Seeing how the work actually happens is usually worth more than any amount of remote requirements gathering.
Who owns the code and the intellectual property?
You do, in full. All source code, all intellectual property, transferred on completion. We write custom code rather than reselling a white-labelled platform, so there is no licensing arrangement that keeps you tied to us. If you want to take the system to another developer or bring it in house, you can.
Do you use an in-house team or subcontract offshore?
Our development team is UK based and the people who scope your project are the people who build it. We do not subcontract delivery offshore or hand the work between teams.
How do you handle data security and compliance?
Blue Tea is certified to ISO 27001:2013 for information security and ISO 9001:2015 for quality management. For projects involving personal, clinical or financial data we build to those standards by default and can support security review, penetration testing and data protection impact assessments as a scoped, priced part of the project rather than an afterthought.
What does support cost after launch?
Ongoing support, hosting, minor enhancements and version updates run from £500 to £3,000 per month depending on the size and criticality of the system. As a rule of thumb, budget fifteen to twenty percent of the original build cost per year. Any provider that does not tell you this before you sign is not being straight with you.
Can you replace or modernise an outdated system?
Yes, and it is a large part of what we do. Common cases: a system built by a developer who is no longer available, an application on technology that is no longer supported, or a package that worked at ten users and does not at fifty. We usually start by scoping what the existing system actually does, which is often different from what anyone thinks it does, and then plan migration in stages so the business keeps running throughout.
How to start
The first step is a Discovery Sprint: two weeks, fixed price from £750, ending with a scoping document, a technology recommendation and a realistic estimate. You own the output. If you take it to another developer, that is a legitimate outcome and we would rather you did that than commit to a build nobody has properly scoped.
If you are earlier than that and want to know whether AI could take work off your team, the two-day AI Workflow Audit from £1,500 is the smaller first step.
Call 0800 024 6979 or email [email protected].
