Stuck choosing software or hiring a web agency without anyone in-house who really knows the field?
That's where I come in: I help European organisations make software and web agency choices they won't regret – independent, honest advice with digital sovereignty in mind.
Hello, I'm Colin
I’ve been building for the web since before Google existed. Along the way, I've weathered plenty of hype cycles and paid for my fair share of expensive lessons. Now I'm on a mission to help good organisations avoid bad technology.
What decision are you stuck on right now?
Choosing software
Choosing software isn't a features contest. It's about fit, risk, cost, lock-in and, increasingly, digital sovereignty (that is: who can pull the plug).
Where I come in
- Working out what you actually need, before the comparison spreadsheet is opened.
- Testing tools and vendors properly, not from a 30-minute demo.
- Spotting the lock-in, jurisdiction, and exit costs a vendor won't mention.
You end up with a choice that still makes sense after the renewal, not one that boxes you in.
Hiring a web agency
Most web projects go wrong before a single line of code is written: in the brief, the guesswork, and how proposals get judged.
Where I come in
- Working out what the project actually needs, before the first draft is written.
- Turning that into a brief an agency can't wriggle out of.
- Reading proposals properly: who touches the code, what's outsourced, what's substance and what's sales pitch.
You end up with a sharper brief, a shortlist you can trust, and a project where you control your code, hosting, and domain after launch.
100% Independent. 0% Conflicted.
No commissions, no referral fees, no vendor or agency partnerships – not now, not ever. And nobody pays me to recommend against anyone, either. When I tell you to renew, switch, sign, or walk away, that's the honest answer, not the profitable one.
You might be here because:
- You're about to invest in a new tool and can't tell the good options from the well-marketed ones.
- You're using tools chosen by someone who left three jobs ago, and no one remembers why.
- You need a new website or web app and don't know how to write a brief that actually gets you what you need.
- You've got three agency proposals on the table and can't tell the substance from the sales pitch.
- Your current agency relationship is going sideways and you're not sure if the problem is them, the brief, or both.
- You're planning to move off a major platform and aren't sure where to start.
- You're watching what's happening across the Atlantic and wondering what it means for the data you've got sitting on American servers.
Whichever one brought you here, my job is generally the same: understand the constraints, examine the options, and help you make a choice you won't regret in a year.
How I work
Most projects I work on follow a similar shape:
Understanding how your organisation works.
I spend time with you and your team, ask questions, and find out what's really happening: what's working, what isn't, and what people actually need (not necessarily what the brief says).
Testing realistic options.
Tools and vendors
No half-hour demos but days or weeks of real, actual use. I study the documentation, poke the support team repeatedly, and explore the edge cases you might encounter.
Agencies and proposals
I read between the lines of every pitch: who actually touches the code, what's outsourced, what's template work dressed up as custom. I ask the questions agencies hope you won't.
Mapping the risks and exits before you commit.
I look at vendor lock-in, data jurisdiction, export formats, hidden dependencies, and what migration would really cost – in money, but also in time and lost history. For web projects, that also means who controls your code, your hosting, and your domain after launch.
Along the way, I help with the awkward questions: the ones you might not think to ask, or the ones a vendor or agency has carefully steered you away from.
First time here?
The best place to start is my daily email – short dispatches about making better software decisions, ethics in technology, and digital sovereignty. Practical, no hype, no pitches. Not sure? Browse recent emails
Yes, it really is daily. And yes, people stick around.
No tracking pixels. Unsubscribe any time.When I'm probably not the right fit
- You need someone to build or maintain software.
- You need someone to design or build the website itself.
- You've already made the decision and just want validation.
- Nobody involved can act on what I recommend.
If that's you, an IT services firm, a web agency, or an implementation partner is probably a better starting point. If I can point you somewhere useful, I will.
Most of what you're running was chosen by default, not by design
- An agency set up the website and the analytics tool just came along with it.
- Your CMS is whatever the last agency used, and nobody can change anything without going back to them.
- Email is Gmail or Outlook because that's just what email is now.
- The CRM is whatever someone's last employer used.
- The marketing tool is the one with the chimp because… well, everyone knows the one with the chimp.
- The project management tool is the same one the competition uses because, if it works for them, it should work for us, right?
- Your hosting is with whoever built the site, and you've never checked what moving would actually involve.
These aren't bad decisions per se, but they're decisions that never really got made. One default leads to the next, and over time they just become the stack.
I call this ritual mimicry: going through the motions of choosing without really doing any choosing.
It works fine … until you realise you're paying for three tools that do the same thing, or a vendor changes the rules, or an agency gets acquired and the relationship changes overnight, or a team member says “we need to move” and no one knows where to start.
That's usually when I get the call.
And what happens when someone else controls the off switch?
What looks like a practical question can also be a political one.
It's not just about which tool is best, but who you rely on, where your data lives, and how dependent you've slowly become.
The US president probably isn't going to come for your email account. But the kill switch that made this possible sits in the same infrastructure you're running on.
And it doesn't necessarily take a direct order targeting your organisation. It could be a trade dispute, the EU fining big tech, a law Washington disapproves of…
Under the current administration, the trigger for hitting that switch could change with the weather.
Considering this, it might be worth thinking about bringing your tools closer to home.
Curious where your organisation actually stands?
I built a digital sovereignty scanner. Point it at your own domain and see how European your infrastructure really is.
European alternatives and open-source are no longer a compromise.
- The ICC itself switched to an open-source suite built in Europe.
- Amnesty International Spain moved its file sharing onto infrastructure it controls.
- France is moving its digital government agency (DINUM) onto Linux and sovereign tools.
- The Dutch Central Bank is moving to a European cloud provider.
- A growing number of businesses, NGOs, foundations, and mission-driven organisations are doing the same. Not as a political statement, but as an operational one.
I'm not chasing ideological purity here. Sometimes the right tool isn't European. But, the point is to make that choice knowingly.
A few recent projects
A sustainable packaging company
They were running on a project management platform built for organisations three times their size: overcomplicated, slow, invasive, and hosted outside Europe. We replaced it with something that matched how they actually worked and that was simpler, cheaper, open-source and European-hosted.
A bicycle leasing company
They needed a very specific set of email marketing capabilities. A European option existed – we tried it seriously – but the support was so unresponsive it represented a genuine operational risk. We chose the American alternative knowingly, documented the reasoning, and kept the European option on the list to revisit. Sometimes the honest answer is: not yet.
An ethical travel organisation
New management needed to replace their website but were confused by what the existing agency was offering: different numbers, different scopes, no clear way to compare. I helped them write a brief that cut through the noise and sort through the competing offers. They went with a lower-budget option against my recommendation. Later they told me they regretted it but, by then, switching again wasn't realistic.
A European organisation for natural healthcare ingredients
They needed an analytics setup that didn't contradict their own values around transparency and data privacy. We built a stack that gave them just the insights and funnels they needed, kept everything in Europe, and didn't quietly harvest the data of the people they were trying to serve.
A bit about me
I've been in this world long enough to have co-founded one of the very first internet service providers in Belgium, and I've lived through several waves of certainty about how computing was “definitely going to work from now on”.
For most of that time, clients paid me to build things. What they kept coming back for, though, was the thinking around the build: the right decisions, the vendor claims that didn't hold up, the obscure questions nobody had asked yet.
Eventually it became clear that part was the real work, so that's what I do now.
Have a project in mind?
Tell me what you're dealing with, I'll let you know honestly whether I can help.
And, if I can't, I'll point you somewhere useful.
Not quite ready?
I write a short daily email about making better technology choices: practical, no hype, no pitches.
Yes, it really is daily. And yes, people stick around.