How we work with you
Most Lighthouse engagements follow a simple pattern: understand, stabilise, then improve. We try very hard to avoid the kind of "big bang" work that leaves everyone exhausted and nervous about touching the system afterwards.
1. Discovery & mapping
Before we change anything, we want to know what already exists and what you're actually trying to achieve.
- Short interviews with the people who currently keep things running.
- Review of existing servers, services, backups and monitoring.
- Simple diagrams of "what talks to what" and where data lives.
- Capture of known pain points, constraints and deadlines.
This phase usually results in a short written summary you can share internally.
2. Stabilise the essentials
Once we understand the landscape, we prioritise boring reliability over shiny changes.
- Ensuring you have working, tested backups before major changes.
- Fixing obviously fragile or undocumented parts of the stack.
- Removing obsolete components that nobody remembers owning.
- Turning repeated manual chores into documented scripts or timers.
The goal is to make "business as usual" feel calmer long before we add anything new.
3. Improve, extend, migrate
Only when the basics are boring again do we move on to larger improvements.
- Platform migrations (e.g. to new servers, storage or providers).
- Introducing additional services such as Forgejo or MinIO.
- Refining monitoring, logging and incident response.
- Helping internal teams become confident owning the new setup.
We like phased rollouts with clear rollback points and minimal surprises.
4. Ongoing support & review
Some clients want a defined end; others prefer a longer relationship with light-touch ongoing support.
- Regular health checks and configuration reviews.
- Being "on call" for major changes or upgrades.
- Assisting with audits, board questions or due diligence requests.
- Helping with handover when internal teams change.
We are deliberately small and selective. If we commit to looking after you, it's because we believe we can do it properly.
What's in scope – and what isn't
In scope:
- Linux-based infrastructure (with a strong bias towards open-source tooling).
- European VPS and dedicated server providers.
- Self-hosted platforms, automation, backups and related glue.
- Technical input into privacy, data handling and hosting decisions.
Out of scope:
- Acting as your Data Protection Officer or legal counsel.
- Building full custom applications from scratch.
- Marketing, social media management or creative agency work.
- Anything that needs an emergency "fix it now at any price" response with no context.
If something sits on the edge of this list, we'll say so up-front and decide together.
Engagement styles
We generally work in one of three ways:
- Fixed-scope projects – clearly defined outcomes, agreed fees, time-boxed.
- Retained support – a reserved slice of time each month for ongoing work.
- Advisory only – help for your internal team as they implement the work.
Pricing, SLAs and formal terms are agreed before we touch production systems. A typical first engagement begins with a small, contained project rather than a sweeping rebuild.
For specifics, the next step is simple: tell us what you're trying to achieve →