Service · Web development

Custom digital platform development.

A custom digital platform where multiple types of users come together, collaborate and do business. Multi-user, multi-feature, often multi-tenant: comparable to a SaaS product, but built around your industry, your flows and your brand.

Multi-tenantAPI-firstCIAMReal-timeEU residency

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A platform is not a website or a web app.

A website is about content: visitors read, download and convert. A web app solves one clear problem for one type of user: a dashboard, a customer portal, a quote tool, a planning module. A digital platform is something different in scope, architecture and maintenance: multiple types of users work on the same data, often with several features at once, and increasingly with multiple client organisations (multi-tenant) within the same codebase.

Think of a marketplace connecting supply and demand, a sector community where members, suppliers and the umbrella organisation come together, an education platform with students, teachers and institutions, a healthcare platform where patients, doctors and hospitals consult the same records, or a B2B portal where customers, suppliers and your own team run workflows. For this type of product, a standard SaaS tool is rarely sufficient. The value lies in the specific division of roles, the sector-specific workflow, or the combination of features that no single off-the-shelf vendor offers in that way.

We build platforms for SaaS companies with their own proposition, industry organisations with a multi-stakeholder community, marketplace operators, education and healthcare platforms, government platforms where citizens, civil servants and service providers come together, and B2B portals where customers, suppliers and administrators collaborate. Each design is different, but the pattern recurs: multiple roles, shared data, branding tailored to each client or community, and integrations that touch the core of the value proposition.

The critical question at the start is almost never "which tech stack" but "who is involved and what do they do". A good platform design begins with an honest stakeholder overview: which roles we have, which data they see, which actions they may perform, and how that changes as the platform grows from five to five hundred organisations. Only then come the architectural choices: multi-tenant or single-tenant, API-first or monolith, a proprietary identity layer or an external identity provider. We help you keep to that sequence, even when there is pressure to simply "start building".

Three flavours of digital platform.

Depending on the type of stakeholders, the complexity of the flows and the degree of multi-tenancy. In the initial conversation, we advise which direction suits your needs.

Compact project · fixed sprint budget

Community or stakeholder platform

A closed environment in which members, partners or stakeholders can connect, share knowledge and carry out straightforward actions. Single sign-on, role-based access, content management and notifications. Suited to trade associations, professional bodies and public programmes that want to give their membership a dedicated environment instead of scattered email threads and shared drives.

SSORole managementHeadless CMSNotifications

Mid-sized project · fixed sprint budget

Multi-stakeholder work platform

For flows where several external parties contribute to the same file or project. Workspaces, document versions, tasks, real-time updates and integrations with your internal systems. Well suited to care, education and B2B portal challenges where collaboration is central, and where audit trails and compliance matter as much as the user experience itself.

WorkspacesReal-timeWorkflow engineWebhooks

Larger project · fixed sprint budget

SaaS or marketplace platform

A production platform with multi-tenant architecture, per-customer branding, payment flows, reporting and deep integrations. Suited to SaaS companies with their own proposition, organisations building a marketplace platform, and organisations that want to offer their product to third parties as a platform. This is where tenant isolation, billing, onboarding flows and self-service admin come together — topics we address early in the design, because they are costly to change later.

Multi-tenantPaymentAnalyticsMobile component

What a platform project delivers.

A production-ready digital platform, plus everything around it needed to develop it further yourself or have your own IT team manage it.

The platform itselfProduction and staging environments, running in your cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP) or with us. EU data residency as standard.
Multi-tenant architectureOne codebase, multiple client environments with their own branding, data isolation and feature flags. Also read about multi-tenant platform development.
Complete codebase and documentationSource code, build pipeline, architecture overview, API documentation and an incident runbook.
Onboarding and trainingSessions for your management team and key users, plus a short tutorial series for external users.
Management and further development (optional)Monitoring, backups, security patches and feature sprints on a fixed schedule. For platforms, clients almost always choose this.

Platform components we almost always build.

Nearly every digital platform comes back to the same building blocks. We don't include all of them in every project, but these are the layers we encounter on almost every platform project. The more complex the platform, the more of these layers come together at once.

Identity

Multi-user account management

Single sign-on, social login, magic links, MFA, role-based access and delegated administration. For B2B platforms, often also organisational hierarchies, teams and data-level permissions. Our CIAM approach describes how we lay this foundation.

Tenancy

Multi-tenant architecture

One codebase, multiple client environments. Branding, configuration, feature flags and data isolation per tenant: decisions you need to make early in the project, because they are irreversible later. See also our page on multi-tenant platform development.

Integrations

API-first and integrations

A platform rarely stands alone. ERP, CRM, invoicing, marketing automation, industry databases, payment providers. We design API-first, with version management and a webhook layer so that external parties can connect securely. More detail on smart API integrations.

Content

Headless content management

Marketing pages, knowledge base content, email templates, in-app text — everything you or your editorial team need to be able to change without a developer. We almost always connect a headless CMS. Read about our approach to headless CMS development.

Payments

Payments and invoicing

Recurring subscriptions, marketplace payouts, customer invoicing, cost allocation between tenants. We work with Stripe, Mollie, Adyen or sector-specific providers, and handle change, VAT rules and SEPA where relevant.

Real-time

Notifications and live updates

WebSocket-based updates for dashboards, in-app notifications, email and push channels, and outbound webhook events. Essential for platforms where users depend on up-to-the-minute data, such as marketplaces, scheduling tools and collaboration flows.

Reporting

Analytics and exports

A platform produces data. You want dashboards for yourself, dashboards for your customers, and exports for financial and compliance purposes. As standard, we build the reporting layer with data access scoped by role and by tenant.

Mobile

Mobile components

Alongside the web environment, many platforms need a mobile app for specific flows, such as field staff, customers on the go or engineers. We build these as native or cross-platform apps, using the same API and authentication as the web.

The tech stack we use for platforms.

We are stack-agnostic. The choice depends on your existing landscape, the team that will manage the platform after handover, and your specific scalability and compliance requirements. Here are a few combinations we often use.

Backend

Spring Boot for enterprise platforms with Java teams, Django for data-intensive Python environments, Node.js (NestJS) for real-time platforms, and .NET for customers on the Microsoft stack. The database is usually PostgreSQL for predominantly relational data, and MongoDB where document models are more logical.

Frontend

React with Next.js for complex interactive platforms, Vue with Nuxt for teams that prefer Vue, and Astro for platforms where large parts are content-driven. We choose based on performance requirements, the team that will manage it and any need for server-side rendering.

Cloud

AWS, Azure or GCP, depending on where your existing workloads run and which compliance requirements apply. EU data residency is standard. For healthcare platforms, we almost always choose cloud regions with explicit NEN 7510 support.

Authentication

Auth0 or Okta for SaaS platforms that need to move quickly, Keycloak for customers with their own identity provider preference or strict data residency requirements, and a custom JWT layer where complexity is limited. For public platforms, we integrate DigiD, eHerkenning or iDIN where relevant.

Real-time and messaging

WebSocket via Socket.IO or native Spring/Django Channels, Phoenix Channels for Elixir projects, or Pusher as a managed service for smaller platforms. For event-driven architectures, we often place a message bus (Kafka, RabbitMQ or cloud-native equivalents) beneath the integration layer.

AI components

Integrations with Anthropic Claude, OpenAI GPT and open-source models for specific flows: classification, summarisation, conversational interfaces, and agent-style assistants within dashboards. We build in guardrails, audit logging and a fallback for when models are unavailable.

When to build custom and when to choose SaaS.

Building a platform is a serious investment. We are candid about this: not every question calls for custom software, and sometimes an off-the-shelf SaaS product is simply the smarter choice. Here are four patterns where custom development is justifiable.

Industry-specific

Generic tools fall short

Your workflow differs so much from the norm that, even after customisation, an out-of-the-box SaaS CRM, PMS or HRIS still fails to cover 60% of your process. In that case, custom development is often cheaper in the long run than endlessly building workarounds.

Multi-tenant with custom branding

You deliver to your own customers

You want to offer one platform to multiple customers or franchise branches, each with its own branding, data and feature set. Multi-tenancy is then built into the architecture from day one, not added as an afterthought.

Deep system integrations

Your landscape is complex

You integrate with ERP, CRM, invoicing systems, identity providers, payment providers and industry-specific datasets. A SaaS product can take you part of the way, but when integrations sit at the heart of your value proposition, custom development usually makes better sense.

AI-augmented flows

AI is a feature, not a bolt-on

You want AI components, such as classification, summaries or agent-like assistants, integrated into the core of the platform rather than added as a standalone chatbot. That calls for your own prompts, your own guardrails and a data layer in which AI can work safely.

How a platform project runs.

Discovery and stakeholder mapping

Conversations with your team and interviews with the different types of users. We map out roles, flows and data ownership. A platform almost never fails on technology; it nearly always fails on misunderstood stakeholder dynamics. We want to know which users spend the most time in the platform each day, which decisions get made there, and where the current flow gets stuck.

Architecture and scope

A workshop on multi-tenancy choices, authentication, integration strategy and data model. We map out the domain model, identify the external systems that need to connect, and decide what is in scope for version one and what goes on the roadmap for later phases. At the end you have a concrete scope, a phase plan and the first screen flow for the most important user.

Building in sprints

Every two weeks, a working build you can test. You are involved in prioritising each sprint, and external users give feedback on the screen flows. We work towards a first live tier, so you can gather feedback from real users before adding the next layers. We would rather go live small and early than big and late.

Rollout, management and further development

Phased go-live, training sessions and ongoing management. For platforms, the first live version is the beginning, not the end. We usually plan a continuous sprint cadence for features, performance and compliance updates. Many clients choose to keep that cadence with us; others bring it in-house using our documentation and knowledge transfer.

Compliance and security in a platform.

The further a platform reaches into an organisation, the more relevant compliance becomes. Which rules apply depends on your sector and the data flowing through the platform, but these are the frameworks we routinely take into account.

GDPR (AVG)Data minimisation, data subject rights (access, correction, erasure), audit logging, data processing agreements and a DPIA where the risk impact requires one. For multi-tenant platforms, we help with the legal separation of tenant data.
NEN 7510 for healthcareFor healthcare platforms we work to NEN 7510 controls: role-based access, BSN (Dutch citizen service number) processing, audit trails, and integrations with EHR systems where needed.
DORA for financial platformsOperational resilience, incident reporting, third-party risk management and testing. We build platforms for the financial sector with DORA-ready monitoring, audit logging and incident response designed in from the outset.
EU AI ActFor platforms with AI components, we take into account the risk classification under the AI Act, transparency requirements and logging of model input and output. This matters for both high-risk applications and consumer-facing flows.
WCAG 2.2 and EAA for public platformsPublic and semi-public platforms must comply with the European Accessibility Act from June 2025. We build accessibility in from the design stage, with WCAG 2.2 AA as the minimum standard.
Security practiceEncryption in transit and at rest, secret management via Vault or cloud-native KMS, dependency scanning in the CI/CD pipeline, and a penetration test in the final sprints before go-live. Thereafter annually or with major releases.

Frequently asked questions.

What clients typically want to know before starting a platform project.

What is the difference between a digital platform and a web app?

A web app usually solves one clear problem for one type of user: a customer portal, a dashboard, a quoting tool. A digital platform revolves around multiple user types who work together on the same data and share several features. Multi-tenancy often comes into play as well, meaning multiple customer organisations run on a single codebase. In terms of scope, architecture and management, a platform is a fundamentally different product.

What does multi-tenant mean, and do we need it?

Multi-tenant means that one platform serves multiple customer organisations, each with its own data, its own branding and sometimes its own feature set. You need it if you are building a SaaS proposition, running a marketplace, or offering a platform to several franchise locations or B2B clients. We have a separate piece on multi-tenant platform development where we explore the architectural choices in more depth.

What determines the cost of a digital platform?

Mainly the number of distinct user roles, the complexity of the workflows, the number of integrations and the degree of multi-tenancy. A community platform with three roles and one integration is fundamentally different from a marketplace with payment flows, KYC and twenty external integrations. We always work with fixed sprint budgets so you can steer along the way and choose which features genuinely stay in scope.

Which tech stack do you build platforms with?

We choose the back end case by case: Spring Boot, Django, Node.js or .NET, depending on your team and existing landscape. We build front ends in React, Vue or Astro. The database is usually PostgreSQL or MongoDB. Hosting runs on AWS, Azure or GCP, with EU data residency as the default. For authentication we work with Auth0, Keycloak or a custom JWT layer; our CIAM approach covers this in more detail.

What does a typical engagement look like?

Discovery and stakeholder interviews, followed by architecture and scope workshops, then building in two-week sprints with working builds throughout. We almost always roll out in phases: first one role and one flow go live, then the rest follows step by step. For most platform projects we are talking about several sprints, followed by an ongoing cadence of maintenance and further development.

Can you integrate AI components?

Yes, and increasingly that is part of the core. We integrate models from Anthropic, OpenAI or open-source alternatives into workflows: classification, summarisation, conversational interfaces or agent-style assistants. It is important that AI operates safely within your data layer, with the right guardrails, audit logging and a fallback in case the model is unavailable. AI is a feature of the platform, not a separate chat window.

What about security and compliance?

Encryption in transit and at rest as standard, audit logs on sensitive actions, GDPR-compliant data processing and a DPIA where relevant. For healthcare platforms we work with NEN 7510, for financial platforms with DORA, and for public-sector platforms with the WCAG and EAA accessibility requirements. A penetration test in the final sprint before go-live is standard.

Do you work together with our IT department?

Almost always. We carry out knowledge transfer in the final sprints, deliver a runbook, and agree clear responsibilities for management. For some clients we run the platform after go-live in their own cloud environment with their in-house DevOps team at the helm; for others we continue to handle management and further development.

Talk to us about your digital platform.

A free, no-obligation half-hour introductory call. We listen to your process, ask the sharp questions about stakeholders and multi-tenancy, and give direction you can use — including when the advice is that a SaaS tool or a lighter enterprise software route will do. Many of our projects start with "we think we need a platform" and end with a sharper picture: sometimes it is indeed a platform, sometimes it is a focused web app with a few integrations, sometimes it is a combination of existing tools that we connect in a new way. We would rather say upfront what we wouldn't build than have to cut scope back afterwards.

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