Your backend development partner, whichever frontend you're building on

Person holding a phone showing the KickTown app, powered by a backend built by Storm Digital

Most of what makes a product actually work happens away from the screen: the API it talks to, the database holding its data, the server it runs on. We build that layer to be solid and unglamorous in the best sense, so whatever sits on top of it, ours or someone else's, has something reliable to lean on.

Pictured: KickTown, where every player's shot speed and accuracy from their wearable KickBand gets synced live into leaderboards and replays. It's the same engineering underneath every Laravel and React Native project we ship.

What's included

From a new API to picking up infrastructure someone else built, the goal is the same: a backend that's straightforward to reason about, not one that only makes sense to whoever wrote it.

API design & development
Database design & architecture
Cloud hosting & deployment (AWS, DigitalOcean, Hetzner)
Legacy system integration & migration
Authentication & data security
Ongoing support & maintenance

Common questions

Do you only build backends to go with your own frontends?

No. Plenty of our backend work sits behind a frontend built by someone else, an in-house team or another agency. We just need a clear API contract to build against.

What do you build APIs in?

PHP and Laravel by default, since it's what we know best and use daily, but the API itself is JSON over HTTP, so it doesn't lock your frontend into anything.

How do you handle things if traffic grows?

We design with AWS's scaling tools in mind from the start rather than retrofitting them under pressure, so growth tends to be a configuration change, not a rebuild.

Can you take over or audit an existing backend?

Yes. We'll look at it honestly and tell you what state it's actually in before recommending a rebuild over incremental fixes.

What happens after launch?

A backend needs looking after quietly in the background, and monitoring, security patches and scaling adjustments are exactly what we do.