Book an audit

For companies running on FileMaker

Your business runs on a file nobody fully understands anymore.

We read it, we tell you what's really in there, and then we take it as far forward as you want to go — from a single screen rebuilt in JavaScript to a full web application.

Book a Modernization AuditSee the six options

Twenty years of FileMaker depth, plus modern web development. Most shops have one or the other.

Relationship graph — as found

Why people call

Nobody replaces a working system because it feels old.

They call when something forces the question. If one of these has happened, you're already on the clock.

The developer retired.The person who built it is gone, and the documentation was in their head.

Renewal came in higher.Per-seat licensing keeps climbing and finance is asking what the alternative is.

Your team wants it on their phones.Field staff are texting photos to the office because the system won't follow them out the door.

Customers keep calling for status.Every answer requires a person to look something up. There's no portal, so there's a phone.

The interface looks like 2004.New hires won't touch it and demos to customers are embarrassing.

Half the scripts are a mystery.Everyone's afraid to change anything, so nothing changes, so the backlog grows.

What we do

One question decides everything: how much stays in FileMaker?

Every project we take is a point on this line. Most clients start near the top and stop as soon as the pain goes away. Very few need the bottom.

Keeps FileMakerLeaves FileMaker

Option 1 · FileMaker development

Build on the system you already have

Straight FileMaker work. New tables, new layouts, new modules, cleaner scripts, and an interface that doesn't look two decades old. No web technology involved — sometimes the right answer is simply that your solution needs to do more, and do it better.

  • New modules & tables
  • Layout and UI refresh
  • Script cleanup & performance
  • Reporting
  • Security & privilege sets
  • Documentation

$5k – 30k3 weeks – 3 months

Option 2 · Widgets

Real JavaScript running inside your layouts

A modern interface built as a web app, dropped into a FileMaker web viewer. Your data stays in FileMaker — the widget talks to it through your own scripts. Nothing is hosted, nothing is exported, nothing new to secure.

  • Sortable, filterable data tables
  • Charts & dashboards
  • Multi-step forms
  • Calendars & schedulers
  • Barcode & scanner input
  • Drill-down hierarchies

$2k – 8k2–4 weeks

Option 3 · Web layer

A browser front end on the data you already have

A real web application that reads and writes your FileMaker data through the Data API. Customers, vendors, and field staff get access without a client license — and your internal team keeps working exactly the way they do now.

  • Customer portals
  • Mobile field interfaces
  • Public forms & intake
  • QuickBooks, shipping, payments

$15k – 50k1–3 months

Option 4 · Carve-out

Move one module out and keep the rest

We take the highest-volume or most customer-facing part of the system, rebuild it properly, and sync it with FileMaker. You find out whether a full move is worth it by doing a small one first.

  • Two-way sync
  • Reversible
  • Proves the approach on real load

$40k – 100k3–5 months

Option 5 · Replatform

Replace the whole system

A full rebuild that does what your system actually does — not what anyone remembers it doing. Business rules come out of the calculations and get written down before a line of the replacement is built.

  • Privilege sets → database-level security
  • Phased cutover
  • Old system live until you sign off
  • You own the code

$80k – 150k6–12 months

Option 6 · New build

A web application from scratch

For clients who never had FileMaker, or who have moved past it and need the next system. Same approach: understand the operation first, build second. Usually cheaper than a replatform, because there's no twenty years of accumulated logic to excavate.

  • Internal operations tools
  • Client portals
  • Scheduling & dispatch
  • Custom line-of-business apps

$25k – 120k2–8 months

Option 2, up close

Most problems don't need a new system. They need a better screen.

A web viewer widget is the cheapest fix on the list and the one clients underestimate most. Same file, same server, same permissions — an interface that finally matches what your team expects software to feel like.

Data tables

Thousands of rows, instant sort and filter, inline edit. No portal-scroll, no found-set gymnastics.

Dashboards

Live charts driven by your own scripts. The numbers leadership keeps asking for, on the layout they already open.

Forms & capture

Guided multi-step entry with real validation, plus scanner and barcode input that doesn't fight the keyboard.

Where everyone starts

The Modernization Audit

Before you pick an option, you need to know what you're working with. Send us the file. Two weeks later you get a document your leadership team can read and your next developer can act on. Read-only — nothing in your system is modified.

  • Schema inventory. Every table, occurrence, field, and relationship, mapped.
  • Script analysis. Complexity scoring and a call graph showing what depends on what.
  • Dead weight. Orphaned layouts, unused fields, scripts nothing calls anymore.
  • Buried business rules. Logic hidden in calculations, written out in plain English.
  • Security model. Privilege sets and record-level access, documented and assessed.
  • Integration surface. Every external data source, API, plugin, and file dependency.
  • Key-person risk. The parts only one person understands, named and quantified.
  • A recommended option. Which of the six paths fits, what it costs, and why.

After the build

Someone has to keep it running.

The reason your current system became a problem is that it was built once and then orphaned. We don't hand over a repository and disappear.

Hosting

We run it

Infrastructure, backups, monitoring, uptime. You get an invoice, not a server to worry about.

Support

We fix it

Direct line to the person who wrote the code. Not a ticket queue and not a stranger reading it for the first time.

Changes

We keep building

Included hours every month for small changes, so improvements stop requiring a whole new project.

Straight answers

The questions we get first.

Do we have to leave FileMaker?

No, and most clients don't. FileMaker is genuinely good at what it does. The problem is usually the things it was never built for — public access, mobile, modern interfaces, integrations. Options 1 through 3 solve those without replacing what already works.

We just need more out of FileMaker. Is that too small?

That's Option 1 and it's a large share of our work. A new module, a cleaner interface, reports that actually answer the question — none of that requires a strategy conversation. Tell us what's missing and we'll quote it.

Where does our data live if we use a widget?

Exactly where it lives now. A web viewer widget runs inside FileMaker and asks your own scripts for data. Nothing is hosted elsewhere, nothing is copied out, and your existing privilege sets still govern every record.

Will the audit break anything?

It can't. We work from a copy of your file and a Database Design Report export. Nothing is modified, nothing is deployed, and your team keeps working while we read.

What if the report says do nothing?

Then that's the finding, and you've bought certainty for a fraction of what a wrong decision costs. We'd rather tell you your system is fine than sell you a rebuild you don't need.

You didn't build our file. Does that matter?

Inherited files are the work. Reading someone else's twenty-year-old solution and figuring out what it really does is the specific thing we're good at.

We don't use FileMaker at all. Can you still help?

Yes — that's Option 6. Skip the audit and start with a conversation about what the operation needs. Those builds run on Postgres, React, and Next.js, hosted and maintained by us.

Find out what you're sitting on.

Two weeks, one fixed price, and a document you can hand to anyone. The decision gets easier once the system stops being a mystery.

Book a Modernization Audit