Dorset Tech began as a mission-driven social enterprise aiming to challenge industry norms with transparency and community-focused solutions. In this exclusive
Website Planet interview, the founder,
Chris Ryu, delves into the company’s evolution, its innovative work in WooCommerce and app development, and the unique values that continue to shape its success.
What is the founding story behind Dorset Tech?
Dorset Tech was previously part of a tech group that was split up last year. The Honest Tech Group was founded out of frustration when the team of another agency were told at Christmas that we wouldn’t be paid. A few of the team put their heads together and discussed all the problems they’d seen working in agencies, working freelance, and hiring agencies in the past.
As creatives, we were frustrated that often the end-product would be rushed out the door with quality issues. As customers, we were annoyed at how much even simple changes cost and at how many lies we were told. We’d be forced to switch agencies multiple times as they lose interest once they were paid unless we agreed to expensive retainers that offered little to no value.
We wanted to flip all of this on its head and greed seemed to be the biggest problem, so we set up as a social enterprise, giving our profits back to the community through a number of projects. The biggest was our 2,600 sqft STEM education centre. Our team taught kids science, coding, video editing, and engineering, paid for with the profits of our website and app development work. Unfortunately, Covid-19 put a stop to almost all of our STEM activity and the centre has been closed down, but we do still volunteer time for coding & robotics sessions.
To tackle the cost and support issues we vowed to never charge a monthly fee to get access to us. Customers would only ever be charged for the exact time they used. This initiative alone is probably key to our rapid growth. Recently we have introduced monthly support packages for those that prefer fixed monthly fees, but we’re very transparent that our “Pay as you go” method is the best value in the country.
For those unfamiliar with it, can you explain what WooCommerce Development is and tell me more about that part of your work?
WooCommerce is a free open-source e-commerce platform built on WordPress, allowing businesses to easily set up and manage online stores. It’s incredibly flexible, making it an excellent choice for businesses of all shapes and sizes. From simple shops to complex multi-vendor marketplaces, WooCommerce can be adapted to meet almost any requirement.
The most exciting thing about WooCommerce is that it’s Open Source. Other popular providers such as Shopify, Wix, and Weebly are Closed Source which has a lot of restrictions. With WooCommerce you and your developers, have full access to the code. You can make the site work exactly how you want or need to get the best conversion rates. Often this can be done completely free with the huge library of 3rd party plugins that WordPress has. You can also host the shop with any provider you like. This is a stark contrast to the closed source providers that tie you into their hosting. The hosting is typically shared hosting too which has a negative impact on your Search Engine Optimisation, site speed and has even had security issues in the past.
WooCommerce development is where we customise WooCommerce by writing code. Sometimes it’s to tweak layouts to improve conversion rates, other times it can be integrating the online store with the customer’s internal systems. This is where the freedom of WooCommerce really comes in handy. Being so modular and well documented, we can hand our code over to any other WordPress developer and they’ll understand exactly how we’ve done it and easily maintain the code.
While we work with shops of all sizes, we typically specialise in multi-vendor stores – think Etsy and Ebay style sites. These are the most complicated, so have the biggest savings when comparing our pricing to other providers.
What is your approach to mobile app development and what sets you apart from your competitors in that regard?
We’ve always specialised in “hybrid app development”. In short, we build the Android, IOS and other apps, all at the same time with mostly the same codebase. This hybrid approach can save around 70-80% of the development costs in my experience. It’s important to note that hybrid app development has come on a long way since early solutions.
We build in most frameworks, so can always use the right tool for the job. In recent years this has typically meant using either React Native or Flutter. The latter being the most popular for us in 2024. While Flutter is owned by Google, it’s kept open source and already has 50,000 packages in their library, ready to speed up development.
One of the other things we like to do differently is content management. We have a number of approaches depending on the app’s requirements, but in most cases, the app can be updated in multiple ways without updating in the app stores. App store updates take time to do, face delays, and often don’t get processed by the end-user. Our approach eliminates most of this, with app store updates normally only happening when there’s new features being added.
Unlike many competitors, we don’t just hand over the finished product and disappear. We offer ongoing support, with no monthly fee, to help our clients get the most from their apps.
What other services do you offer?
Beyond website and app development, Dorset Tech offers a full suite of digital services to help businesses grow. Our offerings include:
- SEO & Digital Marketing: We help businesses increase their visibility online and attract more customers through strategic SEO, PPC campaigns, and social media marketing.
- Custom Software Development: For businesses with unique needs, we create bespoke software solutions to streamline operations and improve efficiency.
- Branding & Design: From logo design to full brand identities, we ensure businesses stand out with cohesive and memorable branding.
- CRM Integration: We assist businesses in implementing and optimising customer relationship management systems to enhance customer engagement and retention. We partner with leading CRM suppliers and also have our own solution for those on a tight budget.
- Support & Maintenance: We provide ongoing support to ensure our clients’ websites, apps, and systems continue to perform at their best. We even take over websites and apps built by other agencies.
- Website & Email Hosting: Working with our partners and sister company, we can help with hosting everything from a little hobby site, all the way up to a multi-national site. We will never offer shared hosting though, so you will see our prices a little higher than some of the value providers.
We’re always looking for ways to innovate and expand our services, ensuring that we remain a one-stop shop for our clients’ digital needs.
What pricing plans do you offer?
This is where our approach really differs from almost all our competition. When it comes to design and development, we start with the customer’s budget first. We’ll then come up with a plan for getting the maximum return on that investment. Of course, some customers aren’t used to our honesty yet, so they don’t feel like they can share their budget with us. They fear that we’ll just give them a quote that hits that figure. However, that’s the point. If that is the budget then we want to maximise what the customer can get for that budget and with our pricing, you get exactly what you pay for. With that hesitation in mind, we have an instant price calculator on our site. It lets the customer play around with some options until they hit the price they need. It even gives them an option for a payment plan.
We’ve recently added an all-inclusive option to the calculator. This alternative option replaced the one-off cost of a custom website, with an affordable monthly fee. The monthly fee also includes optimised hosting, maintenance, support and unlimited monthly amends.
For support, we don’t charge a monthly fee at all and so look after around 2,000 active customers. Some will speak to us daily, others once or twice a year. It’s just nice to have us “on standby” for when something comes up. Our standard rate was selected at £60/hour to be exactly half what most of our white-label customers charge our time out at. We’re well aware that our rate is much lower than the industry average and that we’re “under-selling”, but we want to spend our time doing the best work for the best people and not having to hunt for customers. Each month the customers just pay for the exact minutes they use with no minimum.
If that wasn’t enough, we also have a reduced hourly rate of £40/hour. Anyone can apply for this rate, but typically it’s given to non-profits, start-ups, or businesses in one of our target niches.
To get an instant price for a website, you can visit:
dorset.tech/pricing/instant-web-design-pricing-calculator
