Are we living in the past? This is a question I ask myself from time to time.
We've often toyed with the idea of building a platform, we can offer things like LocalGov Drupal, Matomo, Mautic and Nextcloud on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model.
But the thing about platforms is they work for 90% of the people, 90% of the time. If you're in the other 10%, what do you do?
That's where we come in. If you want to choose:
- where you host your platform
- which development and testing tools you use
- where you keep your code
- what sort of CI you use
- which AI tools you integrate
- whether you want to use containers, servers, some other serverless solution
For organisations with straightforward requirements, platforms make sense. But for teams with complex infrastructure, compliance requirements or specialised tooling, standardisation can become a limitation.
The problem with platforms
On most platforms, most of those decisions are already made. But you can do it all with us.
- Want to run a LiteLLM instance for AI management? No problem, we can run that up and manage it for you.
- Want to use a particular test suite or APM product? No problem, we can install all you need.
- Want to keep your source code on your own Forgejo server? Sure, just tell us where you want it.
You get the idea.
With a platform, you have to understand how it works, the whole stack, and decide whether that fits you - or perhaps more likely, whether you think you can bend to fit it. And if the stack changes, well, it changes! You don't get asked.
Hosting with us starts with a conversation about how you currently work and what you actually need.
That's the fundamental difference.
Portability and ownership
And what about portability? If you're running a fairly standard Drupal site, exporting it with drush and moving elsewhere might be straightforward.
But what if it isn't a standard site? What if it's a custom application with integrations, workflows and tooling built around the platform?
Suddenly portability becomes more complicated. It's not just the application you need to move. The CI/CD processes, deployment workflows and operational tooling may all need to be rebuilt as well.
If you decided to stop working with us, everything is yours, ring-fenced in an environment we made especially for you. There's no need to port anything!
We just back out and you carry on, whether that's with your internal team who have up-skilled or another provider.
Support from people who know your stack
Although why would you stop working with us? As a Code Enigma client you have:
- a dedicated account manager
- monthly touch point calls with meaningful satisfaction checks aimed at technical staff as well as managers
- direct access to our systems administrators and PHP experts, no first line
- live chat with real people
The feedback from our existing customer base is almost always 5-star, and when it isn't our ISO 9001 certified quality process ensures it gets immediately escalated to senior management for resolution.
Rackspace used to say they have "fanatical support", but I'd say we have them beat these days.
Data sovereignty and vendor independence
Then there's data sovereignty. Our entire stack is made up of free and open source software, it cannot be taken away from you, you cannot be held to ransom.
Our design decisions ensure we are provider agnostic, we don't do things that will only work with one provider or another, we push to keep everything generic.
Your engineers have full administrator access to absolutely everything, nothing is hidden from you and everything belongs to you.
And you can choose where it sits, if you're not comfortable with using a US Big Tech firm to underpin your services, don't - we have plenty of options for you, or you can choose your own.
Is bespoke hosting more expensive?
All this must be really expensive, right? Well, you do get what you pay for. But it's surprising the places we can save you money. Our services are competitively priced and our customers agree that if there is a little extra, it's well worth it for the:
- lower operational risk
- reduced management overhead
- improved developer productivity
We're not a black box, you are engaging with an active partner, not just buying a product.
What you get as standard
And of course we do all the things you'd expect from an enterprise hosting and support partner:
- 24/7/365 incident management
- netsec management
- backup management
- self-service user management for your teams
- full access to a suite of monitoring and security tools
Why organisations still choose bespoke hosting
Don't take our word for it. “We were using a different integrator that also specialised in Drupal, but we weren't really happy there. We wanted a little bit more flexibility, so that's also the reason why we picked Code Enigma instead of the standard hosting platforms and their fixed stacks.” Go and listen to what else Klaus Purer at Jobiqo, the Austrian job board specialists, has to say about working with Code Enigma.
All of the above is why we, Code Enigma, still believe in custom hosting delivery.
We know it's a niche, but we have some big clients whose web estates would be very much harder to manage if they had to use a platform.
If you're struggling with platform limitations, or you're worried a platform might not quite fit, please drop us a line, either via the contact form on this website or by dropping Greg a message on LinkedIn. We're always happy to discuss an interesting solution.
Government buyers can find us on both the G-Cloud and Digital Outcomes and Specialists frameworks.