Freelance Developer
Handcrafted Websites. Built for growth
I'm John, a freelance developer who's spent the last 20 years helping businesses across South Africa, the UK and Europe turn manual processes and brittle systems into ones that are fast, integrated, and built to last.
Trusted with the work that has to hold up
- Woolworthsvia Flume
- EasyEquities
- Nimue Skin Technologyvia Flume
- Bayport
- Lulalend
- 41 on Sloane
- Triple E Training
- Novum Intelligence
Why you're here
You already know what the problem is
01
Your systems don’t talk to each other
Someone on your team is re-keying the same data into two or three different portals every day, and everybody has quietly accepted it as the cost of doing business.
02
The quote came back at twelve weeks
An agency scoped it, added a project manager, an account manager and a contingency, and the number that came back made the project not worth doing.
03
The last developer disappeared
There’s no documentation, no handover, and a system running your business that nobody currently employed fully understands.
Selected work
Work that had to survive contact with production
PHP 8.3 · Laravel · MySQL · Redis
Confidential — consumer lending
One form. Seven lenders. Four seconds.
A single loan application that fans out to seven separate lender APIs, normalises seven different sets of nonsense, and returns a ranked list of real offers before the applicant loses interest.
- Lender APIs integrated
- 7
- Median full-panel response
- ~4s
- Uptime since launch
- 99.95%
Will management platform — later acquired
Built it in six months. Maintained it for four years. They sold it.
A full will drafting, storage and executor-handover platform in PHP and Angular. Six months to build, four years under my maintenance, then sold to an insurance consortium as a working asset.
- Concept to production
- 6 months
- Maintained without a rewrite
- 4 years
- Sold to an insurance consortium
- Acquired
Nimue Skin Technology · Flume Digital Agency
A skincare store that has to diagnose before it can sell.
Lead developer on a WooCommerce build with two audiences in one store — a consumer skin-classification journey, and a gated professional and stockist portal. Hand-coded template, no page builder, no premium theme.
- Page builders used
- 0
- Audiences, one codebase
- 2
- Custom template code
- 100%
Woolworths · Flume Digital Agency
A gift card system with one immovable deadline.
A custom PHP gift-carding system built for Woolworths' Mother's Day campaign — high-volume, time-boxed, and impossible to ship late.
- Deadline — Mother's Day
- Fixed
- Downtime during campaign
- 0
- From brief to live
- 1 week
Services
Three things I actually do
No branding, no copywriting, no social media retainers. Development, and the architecture decisions that come before it.
01
API & systems integration
Making the things you already pay for work together.
Payment gateways, lender origination APIs, CRMs, ERPs, courier and stock feeds, internal tools. I build the layer between them — with idempotency, retries, correlation-ID logging and alerts that name the thing that broke, rather than a queue that silently stops one Tuesday.
- Integration design and adapter layer
- Queue, retry and webhook reconciliation
- Structured logging and failure alerting
- Documentation your next developer can use
- Investment
- From R45,000
- Timeline
- Typically 2–5 weeks
02
Custom web applications
Real business logic, not a form that emails you.
Quoting engines, document and case management, client portals, admin systems, internal tooling. Vanilla PHP or Laravel depending on which one costs you less — a framework is a way of saving your money, not a badge.
- Data modelling and system architecture
- Role-based access and audit trails
- Build with weekly working demos
- Handover, documentation, and code you own
- Investment
- From R85,000
- Timeline
- Typically 4–10 weeks
03
WordPress & WooCommerce development
The build an agency hands to its lead developer.
Custom templates, custom functionality, no page builders and no premium theme bloat. Trade pricing, gated portals, product finders, subscription and refill logic — the WooCommerce work that plugins get about eighty percent right and then leave you stranded.
- Hand-coded theme against your design
- Custom WooCommerce functionality
- Performance and Core Web Vitals
- Staging, deployment and rollback
- Investment
- From R55,000
- Timeline
- Typically 3–6 weeks
Why it’s faster now
I build with AI tooling. That’s an economic fact, not a sales pitch.
The parts of this job that used to consume the most time — scaffolding, boilerplate, test fixtures, first-pass integration adapters, documentation — are now substantially automated. The parts that decide whether a system survives contact with production are not, and never will be: data modelling, failure handling, knowing which requirement to argue with.
The practical result is that work an agency scopes at twelve weeks tends to land in three or four, at a lower number, without cutting the parts that matter. I still review and own every line. You are not buying generated code — you are buying twenty years of judgement applied at a speed that wasn’t available in 2019.
- 3–4 weeks
- Typical delivery on work agencies quote at 12
- 1 hour
- Response time on any enquiry, business hours
- 20 years
- Reviewing every line that ships
In their words
What it's like to work with me
“John has been irreplaceable to me and my business! I can’t even explain how helpful he’s been, and what an amazing developer he is.”
“Having had previous bad experiences with both agencies and freelancers, it was refreshing to find John. He is to the point and doesn’t mess about. He gets the job done quickly and goes beyond what you ask him to do. I am so very happy I have found him and he will be my to-go guy for any website issues from now on.”
“It’s been a pleasure working with John on my company’s website. He was sensitive to our requirements for simplicity and ease of use and was always quick and helpful in his responses. I also appreciate his honest input on new features, even if it went against his financial interests, so as to deliver the best solution for my company’s budget and needs.”
“An absolute pleasure to deal with from start to finish! Exactly what I needed in the budget and time frame initially discussed. Cannot recommend Yourdesign enough. Give him a try you won’t regret it. Wish I knew about John when we started our website, wasted a lot of money and time with so-called local “experienced” agencies.”
Process
How it goes, start to finish
01
You send me the details
A few lines about what you’re trying to build or fix. It lands in my inbox and I reply within the business hour — honestly, including whether I’m the right person.
02
A short call, then a fixed price
Twenty minutes to make sure I’ve understood it, then scope, price and delivery date in writing within 48 hours. Fixed — if I’ve estimated badly, that’s my problem, not a variation order.
03
Build, with weekly demos
You see working software every week, on a staging URL you can click. No four-week silences followed by a surprise.
04
Handover and ownership
Code, documentation and credentials are yours. Ongoing support if you want it, and no dependency on me if you don’t.
Clients
Who I work with
Businesses in South Africa
Established SMEs with systems that have outgrown the way they were first put together. I work in your timezone, invoice in rands, and you can phone me.
Businesses in the UK & Europe
Twenty years of delivery for clients two to three hours ahead of me — an overlap that covers your whole working day. Senior development without a London day rate.
Agencies needing a developer
White-label lead development for design and marketing agencies. Flume, Getglow and Kallima have handed me client work for years. I stay behind your brand and I don’t poach.
Agencies: development work has come to me from Flume Digital, Getglow and Kallima Design for years. I stay behind your brand and I don't approach your clients.
Fit
I'm not right for every job
Saying this up front saves us both a call.
A good fit if
- You have an existing system that needs extending, integrating or rescuing
- You need custom logic that plugins and no-code tools have stopped short of
- You want one senior developer accountable, not a team you never meet
- You’d rather have a fixed price than an hourly rate and a running meter
- You have a real deadline and a real budget
Not a fit if
- You need branding, logo design or copywriting — I don’t do those
- You want the cheapest possible five-page template site
- You want to pay in equity
- You need someone on-site five days a week
- You want a rewrite of something that works fine because it’s old
FAQ
Questions worth asking
What does a project actually cost?
Integration work generally starts around R45,000. Custom applications start around R85,000. WooCommerce development starts around R55,000. Those are starting points, not averages — the honest answer needs twenty minutes of conversation. What I will commit to is a fixed price in writing within 48 hours of that call, so you never see a variation order.
How long does it take?
Integration work is typically two to five weeks. Applications are four to ten. WooCommerce builds are three to six. If an agency has quoted you twelve weeks for something in that range, the difference is that you are not paying for a project manager, an account manager and a contingency buffer.
How are you delivering faster than an agency?
Two reasons, and neither is that I cut corners. There is no agency overhead — no account layer, no internal handoffs, no weekly status meeting billed to you. And I build with AI tooling, which has genuinely collapsed the time that scaffolding, boilerplate and first-pass integration code used to take. The judgement work is unchanged and still mine. I review and own every line that ships.
Are you still taking on client work?
Yes. My work has shifted more toward systems and integration than brochure websites, but I am actively taking on projects and have been throughout.
Where are you based, and does that matter?
South Africa. I work with clients across South Africa, the UK and Europe. The UK is one to two hours ahead of me, which means our working days overlap almost entirely — in practice clients find me more responsive than local suppliers, not less.
Who owns the code?
You do. Completely, from the first commit, including the repository, the documentation and every credential. I do not hold hosting, domains or source code as leverage. If you want to move to another developer afterwards, I will help with the handover.
What happens to my existing site or system?
It keeps running. I build on staging, you approve on staging, and we cut over when it is genuinely ready. I have never taken a client offline to build a replacement, and I would not start now.
What if you disappear, or get hit by a bus?
A fair question to ask a solo developer, and one you should ask all of us. The answer is that the code is in your repository, the documentation is written for a developer who has never met me, and I do not use proprietary tooling that only I can operate. The Will Management System I built ran for four years and was then sold to another company — it survived the handover, which is the only real test of this.
Do you do design, branding or copywriting?
No. I am a developer. I work extremely well from a designer’s files — that is most of what agencies contract me for — and I can recommend people. But if you need a brand created, I am the wrong call.
Do you work with agencies on a white-label basis?
Regularly. Flume Digital, Getglow and Kallima Design have handed me client development work for years. I stay behind your brand, I work to your process, and I do not approach your clients. Ever.
How quickly do you reply?
Within one business hour, and usually much faster. Evenings, weekends and public holidays are slower, but you will still hear from me inside 24 hours.
Tell me what’s broken.
A few lines about what you’re trying to build or fix is enough. It lands in my inbox and I reply within the business hour — honestly, including whether I’m the right person. If I’m not, I’ll say so and point you at someone who is.
I reply to every enquiry within one business hour.
Prefer email? support@yourdesign.co.za· (+27) 079 177 1970