Frequently Asked
Questions

A website is primarily informational — it displays content for visitors to read. A custom web application is interactive software that lets users perform tasks, manage data, automate workflows, and process transactions. Think of it as the difference between a brochure and a tool. Onliware specialises in building web applications that replace manual processes and multiple SaaS subscriptions.

Templates create generic experiences identical to your competitors, load slowly due to bloated code, and limit your ability to customise functionality. They also rely on third-party plugins that introduce security vulnerabilities. A bespoke platform is faster, more secure, fully tailored to your business processes, and becomes a digital asset you own outright.

Custom web application development in Ireland typically ranges from €5,000 for focused single-purpose applications to €30,000+ for comprehensive enterprise platforms with complex integrations. Onliware provides detailed, transparent quotes after a free discovery call where we assess your specific requirements and scope.

A Progressive Web App (PWA) is a website that behaves like a native mobile app. It can be installed on phones, works offline, sends push notifications, and loads instantly. If your customers primarily interact with your business on mobile devices, a PWA dramatically improves engagement without the friction of app store downloads.

Most custom web applications are delivered within 6 to 12 weeks depending on complexity. Onliware uses agile development with weekly progress demos, so you see working software from the very first sprint. Complex enterprise platforms with multiple integrations may require 12 to 16 weeks.

AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) ensures your business appears in AI-powered search results from tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Bing Copilot. While traditional SEO focuses on ranking in link-based search results, AEO structures your content with schemas and direct answers so AI engines cite your business as an authority.

Onliware is based in Wexford and serves businesses across all of Ireland. We have clients in Dublin, Cork, Galway, Waterford, Limerick, Kilkenny, Kildare, Meath, Wicklow, Kerry, Clare, Belfast, Tipperary, Sligo, and Drogheda. Our remote-first workflow ensures consistent quality regardless of location.

We primarily build with Next.js and React for web applications, React Native for cross-platform mobile apps, Node.js and Python for backend services, and PostgreSQL for databases. We also leverage TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, Supabase, Docker, and AWS for infrastructure. Every choice is driven by performance, security, and scalability.

Absolutely. One of our clients, Nebula Agency, replaced three separate SaaS subscriptions with a single custom platform we built, cutting their admin time in half. A unified bespoke system eliminates data silos, reduces monthly costs, and provides exactly the features your business needs without paying for ones it doesn't.

We partner with businesses of all sizes, from ambitious startups needing a scalable MVP to established enterprises requiring complex digital transformation. Our engineering principles remain the same whether you need a simple Google Workspace setup or a full custom web application.

Yes. While our roots are in Wexford, we operate entirely remotely and successfully collaborate with businesses across the UK and internationally. Our digital-first workflow, including async communication and detailed project boards, ensures seamless delivery regardless of location.

Yes, we frequently audit and rescue existing digital projects. We will review your current codebase to determine if it can be salvaged and improved, or if a rebuild is more cost-effective in the long run. We focus on stabilizing, securing, and scaling your digital assets.

Absolutely. We offer flexible post-launch support and maintenance retainers to ensure your platform remains secure, performant, and up-to-date. We proactively monitor performance and are always available for feature iterations as your business evolves.

A general chatbot knows everything except your business. AI development means grounding a model in your own data — your documents, your records, your history — and giving it a defined set of actions it is allowed to take. The result answers questions about your contracts and your policies rather than the internet at large, and it can be held to account when it is wrong.

Three ways. Retrieval grounds every answer in a real source from your own data, so the model quotes rather than invents. Guardrails constrain what it is permitted to say and do. Evals run automatically against a test set on every change, so a regression is caught before it reaches your customers rather than after. Where the system is not confident, it is designed to say so and hand off to a person.

Running costs depend on usage and model choice, and they are usually far smaller than people expect — often tens of euro a month rather than hundreds. We build cost and usage monitoring in from day one so you can see exactly what each feature is spending, and we design around caching and smaller models wherever they do the job just as well.

No. Providers sit behind an abstraction layer we control, so switching between Claude, GPT or an open model is a configuration change rather than a rewrite. Given how quickly the model landscape moves, being able to change provider in an afternoon is worth designing for.

Yes, completely — exactly as with everything else we build. You get full source code, documentation and deployment credentials. The prompts, the retrieval pipeline, the evals and the tooling are all yours. What you cannot own is the underlying model itself, which is licensed from the provider on standard commercial API terms.

A written report containing a process map of the repetitive work across your business, a scored shortlist of AI opportunities ranked on effort against return, specific tool recommendations with real monthly costs, and a 90-day roadmap in a sensible order of work. It is written so you can hand it to your own team or another developer if you would rather not build with us.

Two to three weeks end to end. That covers a half-day discovery session with the people actually doing the work, follow-up conversations where a process needs unpicking, the analysis itself, and a walkthrough of the finished report where you can push back on any of it.

Then that is what the report says, with the reasoning behind it. Some processes are too varied, too high-stakes, or simply cheaper to keep doing by hand. An audit that recommends AI for everything is a sales document, not an audit — and knowing where not to spend is worth the fee on its own.

Yes. If you go ahead with a development or automation project with us, the audit fee is credited against it. The audit is priced to be an easy decision rather than a profit centre — its job is to make sure that whatever gets built afterwards is the right thing.

Not for the audit itself. It is based on conversations, process walkthroughs and sample documents you are comfortable sharing. Where we do look at real data we will sign an NDA first and work from anonymised or redacted samples wherever that is possible without weakening the findings.

No, and that is rather the point. Automation sits alongside your existing inbox, CRM and accounts package and connects them through APIs. Your team carries on working in the same tools they already know — the difference is that the repetitive half of the job has already been done by the time they open them.

High-volume, rule-shaped work where being slightly wrong is cheap and recoverable. Sorting an inbox, extracting fields from invoices and forms, drafting first-pass replies, moving data between two systems, flagging exceptions for review. Low-volume or high-stakes judgement calls are usually better left with a person, and we will tell you which is which.

It routes to a person rather than failing quietly. Every workflow ships with logging, retries and alerting, and we set confidence thresholds below which the task is handed to a human instead of guessed at. For anything touching money, legal deadlines or outbound customer contact, we build an explicit approval step so a person keeps the final click.

Commercial API tiers from the major providers do not train on your data, and we can restrict processing to specific regions where that matters for GDPR. Where data is genuinely sensitive we can redact before sending, or run smaller open models on infrastructure you control. We will always tell you exactly what leaves your systems and where it goes.

Most automation projects run two to six weeks, and we deliberately start with one workflow rather than ten. Getting a single painful process working end to end proves the value quickly, and it teaches us both a great deal about how your business actually operates before we build the rest.

Any business whose operations have outgrown spreadsheets, generic SaaS tools, or template websites benefits from custom web applications. This includes companies needing internal dashboards, customer portals, booking systems, CRM platforms, inventory management, or any workflow automation that off-the-shelf software cannot adequately handle.

Custom web applications have a dramatically smaller attack surface because they contain only the code your business needs — no vulnerable third-party plugins, no outdated frameworks, and no shared hosting environments. We implement role-based access control, input validation, encryption, and regular security audits as standard.

Yes. We build custom APIs that connect your web application to any third-party service including payment gateways, CRMs, accounting software, email platforms, and logistics providers. Seamless integration eliminates manual data entry and keeps all your systems synchronised in real time.

Yes, completely. Every line of code we write is your intellectual property. You receive full source code access, documentation, and deployment credentials. There are no licence fees, no vendor lock-in, and you are free to host, modify, or extend the application as you see fit.

We follow an agile methodology: discovery and scoping, UX/UI design, iterative development with weekly demos, quality assurance testing, deployment, and post-launch support. You are involved at every stage with full visibility into progress through shared project boards and regular video calls.

For most businesses, cross-platform development using React Native is the best choice. It delivers native performance on both iOS and Android from a single codebase, halving development time and cost. We recommend native development only when your app requires deep hardware integration or extremely specialised platform features.

Mobile app development costs range from €8,000 for a focused single-purpose app to €30,000+ for complex applications with backend systems, real-time features, and third-party integrations. We provide detailed estimates after understanding your specific requirements during a free discovery call.

Yes. We handle the entire process including app store asset creation, submission, review process management, and launch. We also optimise your listing for App Store search (ASO) to maximise discoverability once published.

Yes. Mobile apps require regular updates for OS compatibility, security patches, and feature enhancements. We offer flexible maintenance packages that keep your app performant, secure, and aligned with the latest iOS and Android guidelines.

A PWA is a web application that feels like a native app — installable, offline-capable, and fast. A native app is built specifically for iOS or Android and distributed through app stores. PWAs are faster and cheaper to build; native apps offer deeper hardware access. We help you choose the right approach.

Modern websites are built as web applications using frameworks like Next.js rather than WordPress or page builders. They are server-rendered for instant load times, score 100 on Lighthouse, include structured data for AI search engines, and provide interactive, app-like experiences rather than static pages.

Google Lighthouse measures website performance, accessibility, SEO, and best practices on a 0-100 scale. A score of 100 means your site is technically perfect. Higher scores directly correlate with better search rankings, lower bounce rates, and higher conversion rates. Every Onliware website targets a perfect 100.

We implement comprehensive JSON-LD structured data, FAQPage schemas, direct-answer content formatting, and semantic HTML hierarchy. This structured approach helps AI engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews understand, cite, and recommend your business content.

Yes. We frequently migrate businesses from WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, and other template platforms to high-performance Next.js applications. The migration preserves your content and SEO equity while dramatically improving speed, security, and functionality.

Full-stack development covers the entire technology layer: frontend interfaces users interact with, backend servers processing business logic, databases storing your data, and infrastructure hosting everything reliably. Onliware handles all layers in-house, ensuring seamless integration and eliminating the friction of coordinating multiple vendors.

When separate teams build your frontend, backend, and infrastructure, critical details get lost in handoffs. A single full-stack team ensures architectural decisions are coherent, performance is optimised end-to-end, and there is one point of accountability for your entire platform.

We deploy on edge-optimised platforms like Vercel and AWS, with PostgreSQL databases hosted on Supabase or AWS RDS. We use CDN distribution, serverless functions, and container orchestration to ensure your application is fast, resilient, and cost-effective at any scale.

Yes. Our architecture for the Fleadh Cheoil platform handled 500,000 concurrent visitors with zero downtime. We achieve this through edge caching, static generation, database connection pooling, and serverless architecture that scales automatically based on demand.

An API (Application Programming Interface) allows different software systems to communicate automatically. If your CRM, website, mobile app, or accounting software need to share data, APIs make that happen instantly and securely without manual data entry or CSV exports.

We build both. REST APIs are ideal for straightforward integrations with predictable data requirements. GraphQL APIs excel when clients need flexible, efficient data queries. We recommend the best approach based on your specific use case and performance requirements.

We implement multiple security layers including OAuth 2.0 authentication, JWT token management, rate limiting, input validation, CORS policies, and encrypted transport via HTTPS. Every API endpoint is designed with the principle of least privilege and undergoes thorough security testing.

Yes. We integrate with payment processors (Stripe, PayPal), accounting platforms (Xero, QuickBooks), CRMs (HubSpot, Salesforce), communication tools (Twilio, SendGrid), and virtually any service that exposes an API. Custom integrations eliminate manual workflows between your systems.

Your database is the foundation of your application. A well-designed database ensures fast query performance, data integrity, and scalability as your business grows. A poorly designed one causes slow applications, data inconsistencies, and eventual system failures that are expensive to fix.

We primarily use PostgreSQL (SQL) for applications requiring strict data integrity, complex relationships, and transactional consistency. We use MongoDB (NoSQL) when flexibility and horizontal scaling are priorities. Many projects benefit from a hybrid approach using both database types.

Yes. We perform database audits that identify slow queries, missing indexes, inefficient schema design, and resource bottlenecks. Our optimisation work typically results in dramatic performance improvements — often reducing query times from seconds to milliseconds.

We manage data migrations carefully with comprehensive testing, rollback procedures, and zero-downtime deployment strategies. Whether you are moving from spreadsheets, legacy databases, or other platforms, we ensure every record is transferred accurately and securely.