Written by the engineers who did the work

Guides

Nine long pieces on the decisions people ask us about before they hire anyone: what things cost, which framework, whether to migrate, and how to brief a team eight thousand miles away. No gated PDFs and no email required.

guides published

behind an email form

Monthly

reviewed for accuracy

Start here BY WHAT YOU ARE DECIDING

Deciding whether to hire offshore at all What a PHP developer actually costs in 2026 → Deciding between two stacks Laravel or WordPress: which, and when → Sitting on a legacy application PHP 8.4 upgrade checklist → About to move platforms The redirect map: why migrations lose rankings →

Every guide names the engineer who wrote it

All nine

Everything we have written

Each one comes out of a real project. Where we got something wrong, the guide says so.

What a PHP developer actually costs in 2026 DECISION A rate-by-rate comparison of India, Eastern Europe, Latin America and a US in-house hire, with the employer costs most comparisons leave out. 15 min Laravel or WordPress: which, and when DECISION The question we are asked most. A content site with a form is WordPress; anything with real business logic usually is not. Here is where the line really sits. 13 min CodeIgniter to Laravel: cost, timeline, and the two things that always break MIGRATION Sessions and the query builder. A module-by-module route that keeps both frameworks live, so the risk never lands on one cutover day. 13 min PHP 8.4 upgrade checklist for a legacy application UPGRADE The deprecations that matter, in the order we work through them, plus the Rector rules that do most of the mechanical work for you. 14 min Headless WordPress with a Laravel API ARCHITECTURE When decoupling is worth it, what it costs your editors, and where the speed actually comes from. Most of it does not need headless at all. 13 min WooCommerce past 40,000 products COMMERCE HPOS, index strategy and the plugin decisions that decide whether a large catalogue is fast or hopeless. 13 min Native blocks vs page builders: the real cost over five years DECISION Licence renewals, markup you cannot take with you, and the Core Web Vitals cost. With the arithmetic rather than the opinion. 12 min How to brief an offshore development team PROCESS What to send, what to leave out, and the half hour a day on your side that determines whether any of it works. 14 min The redirect map: why migrations lose rankings MIGRATION A URL-by-URL method, what to do when there is no equivalent page, and how to rehearse a cutover on a clone. 13 min

Each guide names the engineer who wrote it, and is reviewed when the versions it mentions change.

Why these are free

The best qualification tool we have

A buyer who has read the costing guide arrives knowing our rates and roughly what their project should take. That conversation starts two weeks ahead of one that begins with "so what is your budget?"

Some readers use them to hire someone else, or to do the work themselves. That is a fair trade for the ones who do call.

A question none of these answer?

Email it. We publish the answer rather than saving it for a call.

Published rates

Every band and engagement model, in USD, with no gate.

The engineers

All nine, with what they have shipped and when they come free.