Most businesses reach the same point. The website is fine. The one thing that would actually save time is the thing no plugin handles. Here is what that usually looks like.
None of these existed as a product you could buy. Every one was written for a specific New Zealand business that had run out of options. These are working systems, not concepts.
Daily supplier feed into a live catalogue
The gapSuppliers send files every day covering thousands of products. Nobody can type that in. Generic importers happily wipe out a catalogue when a file arrives half finished.
The pluginReads each supplier file, creates and updates products with pricing, stock and images, and adds delivery lead time based on which branch holds the stock. If a file arrives short or corrupted it is quarantined and you get an email, and the catalogue is left exactly as it was.
Ticketing with real profit and loss
The gapAdvance tickets sold online, door sales taken on the night, and profitability tracked in a set of spreadsheets built by someone else that the team could not follow.
The pluginAdvance and door sales in one system, exports that show the source of every sale, and a ledger that reports profit per event and across the financial year. The spreadsheets are gone.
Delivery marketplace
The gapA marketplace matching customers with delivery operators. Nothing off the shelf covers vendors, jobs and money moving three ways.
The pluginThe whole marketplace, built and running in production, and still being extended as the business grows.
Shipping priced by distance
The gapDelivery cost depends on how far the truck goes. The map drawing shipping plugin they were using kept failing, and quoting by hand was costing sales.
The pluginDistance bands measured from the yard, so the checkout prices delivery correctly for every address without anyone drawing a zone on a map.
Hire booking with stock limits
The gapOne machine can run several attachments, so a booking is never a simple one item to one customer sum. Standard hire plugins cannot express that.
The pluginBookings that take multiple attachments against real stock levels, customers extending a hire themselves, and invoices produced automatically for the extension.
Appointments that follow clinic rules
The gapBooking plugins make customers choose a practitioner and a time slot of fixed length. This clinic needed treatments of different lengths, paid in full at booking, with staff assigned behind the scenes.
The pluginCustomers book a treatment, not a person. The system assigns a practitioner qualified for that treatment, holds the right amount of time, and takes payment at the point of booking.
B2B ordering with head office approval
The gapFranchise networks ordering print. Branches request, head office approves and gets billed, and nothing must reach production before approval. No ecommerce plugin has that shape.
The pluginEach company gets its own catalogue and its own approval chain. Branches order, head office signs off, on account and card paid items sit in the same order, and production only starts once approval is given.
Paid listings with verification and billing
The gapA directory where advertisers pay for their own page. Accounts, identity checks, moderation, invoicing and payment matching, all in one place.
The pluginAdvertiser accounts with verification before a listing goes live, a full audit trail on every change, invoicing reconciled against the bank statement, and moderation tools for the operator.
Every lead in one place
The gapJobs arriving from the website, from a booking platform and direct from trade customers. Three inboxes, no shared list, and work slipping through.
The pluginOne board fed by all three sources with no retyping, and quoting and invoicing built into the same screen.
Quoting and careers on one site
The gapA contact form could not collect enough detail to price a job, so every enquiry turned into a chain of emails. Vacancies were handled the same way, by hand.
The pluginTwo custom builds on the one site. A quote tool that asks for what the team needs before they can price the work, and a careers section the client manages themselves.
Courses run by the people who teach them
The gapCourses were managed by whoever had the website login. The tutors running them had no way to update their own course without full admin access to the site.
The pluginCourse management with a dedicated course manager role, so staff handle their own courses and nothing else on the website is exposed to them.
Course delivery that marks itself
The gapLearning plugins deliver lessons and stop there. An exam preparation course has to mark the work, convert raw results into the exam's own scoring, and handle spoken assessment.
The pluginDelivers the course, marks the tests, calculates official band scores and handles speaking assessment. It runs our own international exam preparation business.
Billing and invoicing for 300 accounts
The gapWe were paying over $100 a month for a commercial billing system that suspended client accounts we had never asked it to suspend, and renewed domains that were already paid years ahead.
The pluginWe wrote our own. Clients, hosting plans, domains, invoicing and payments reconciled against Xero, all in one system we control. The commercial one is switched off.
MRI Palace rentals synced into WordPress
The gapEvery available rental already lived in MRI Palace. Getting those listings onto the agency website meant retyping them by hand, or paying a monthly subscription to a third party relay service that sat in the middle of the agency's own data.
The pluginCalls the Palace advertising API directly from the agency's own server, so no outside service and no ongoing subscription sits in the middle. Listings and photos sync on a schedule, properties are marked leased or withdrawn automatically, addresses format the New Zealand way including unit numbers, and the listings are styled to match the site rather than dropped in as someone else's widget. If you run MRI Palace and want your rentals on your own website, this is already built.
We run our own business on the software we write.
Every website we host runs ClientDesk, our own plugin, so owners can edit their site, check their SEO and see their visitor numbers in one place. Across the whole fleet, MasterDesk handles rank tracking, reporting and site monitoring.
Both were written here, are maintained here, and run on more than 300 live New Zealand websites every day. When we build a plugin for you, it is built to the same standard as the tools our own business depends on.
A custom plugin is quoted once, built once, and then it is yours to use. There is no subscription, no per site licence, and no annual renewal to keep it switched on. What happens after go live depends on where your site is hosted.
Hosted with Impact Websites
Hosted somewhere else
We talk it through
You describe the job as you do it now. We ask the awkward questions early, because that is where the cost hides.
You get a fixed quote
Written scope, one price. If we think the job is not worth doing, or an existing plugin already does it, we tell you that instead.
We build it away from your site
Development happens on a private copy, so nothing half finished ever touches your live website.
You test it properly
You use it with your own data before it goes anywhere near your customers, and tell us what needs changing.
It goes live
We install it, watch the first live runs, and stay on hand while your team gets used to it.
What does a custom plugin cost?
It depends entirely on the job, so every plugin is quoted on scope. Small single purpose tools are a fraction of what people expect. Larger systems with accounts, billing and approvals cost more. Either way you get one fixed figure before any work starts.
What happens when WordPress updates and it breaks?
If your site is hosted with us, we fix it. That is part of your hosting and there is nothing more to pay. If you host elsewhere, we quote the fix when it comes up. Nobody gets left with orphaned code either way.
Do I have to move my website to you?
No. We build plugins for sites we do not host. Hosting with us simply means breakages are covered rather than quoted.
How long does it take?
A focused tool can be a matter of days. A full system with accounts, approvals and billing is measured in weeks. You get a realistic timeframe with the quote, not an optimistic one.
Will it work with WooCommerce and what we already use?
Yes. Most of what we build sits on top of WooCommerce and connects to the things around it, including payment gateways, Google services, supplier files and email. If something needs to talk to another system, say so at the start.
What if I want changes later?
Expected, and normal. Every plugin we have built has grown as the business changed. New features are quoted as you ask for them, with no retainer and no obligation.
Describe the problem.
We will tell you if it can be built.