custom development

Off-the-shelf doesn't fit every business.
Yours might be one of them.

At some point, every growing business hits a wall. The plugin almost does what you need. The page builder gets you 80% of the way there. The workaround works — until it doesn't. When you've outgrown what's available, the answer isn't another plugin. It's something built specifically for the way you actually operate. We build custom WordPress functionality, client portals, booking systems, API int

{ HVAC } { HVAC } { HVAC }

the honest truth

"Just use a plugin" is great advice — until it isn't.

Plugins are genuinely useful. We use them. We recommend them. But the advice to "find a plugin for that" has a shelf life, and a lot of business owners discover the expiration date the hard way.

The moment usually looks like this: your business has a process that's a little bit different from everyone else's. Maybe it's how you qualify leads before they book. Maybe it's how your membership tiers work, or how you need to connect your scheduling tool to your CRM to your invoicing software. You go looking for a plugin that does exactly that thing. You find one that almost does it. You buy it, configure it, realize it's missing two key features, buy a second plugin to patch the gap, discover they conflict, hire someone to fix the conflict, and end up with a Frankenstein setup that nobody fully understands and everybody's afraid to touch.

That's the cost of workarounds. Not just the money — the time, the fragility, the fact that your whole operation is now balanced on top of three plugins built by strangers who may or may not release updates next year.

Custom development solves a different problem than "I need a feature." It solves "I need this to work exactly like my business works, reliably, without me holding my breath every time WordPress updates." When you build something custom, it does one thing: what you actually need it to do. Nothing more, nothing less, no compromise baked into the architecture.

what you actually get

Custom-built tools for the way your business actually works.

Every project we take on starts with a real conversation about what you're trying to accomplish — not what category of software you're looking for. Here's the range of what we build.

{ custom wordpress plugins }

WordPress can do more than you think — when it's built right.

WordPress is the platform we work in, and it's more powerful than most people realize. But that power only shows up when someone builds for your specific use case instead of for everyone at once.

We write clean, documented, custom WordPress plugins that extend your site in exactly the ways you need — without pulling in a bloated third-party solution that brings twelve features you'll never touch. Custom post types, admin interfaces, role-based permissions, custom fields, workflows — if it belongs in WordPress, we can build it.

What you get is functionality that feels native to your site, not bolted on from the outside. It loads fast, it doesn't break when core updates, and you're not dependent on a plugin vendor's roadmap or pricing decisions.

{ client portals & member areas }

Give your clients a place that's actually built for them.

A lot of coaches, consultants, and service businesses piece together a "client portal" out of a membership plugin, a Google Drive folder, a Notion page, and a prayer. It technically works. But it doesn't feel like a professional experience — for you or for your clients.

We build client-facing portals directly into your WordPress site: secure login areas where clients can access deliverables, track project status, complete intake forms, download documents, or consume course content. Designed around your actual service model, not around what a generic membership plugin assumes your service model is.

The result is something your clients notice. It signals that you've put real thought into their experience — and that kind of credibility tends to pay for itself.

{ booking systems }

A booking flow built around your actual process, not someone else's.

Most booking tools give you a calendar and a form and call it done. That works fine if your scheduling is simple. But if your process involves qualifying questions before someone can book, multi-step intake, tiered service options, staff assignment logic, deposit collection, or conditional availability — you've probably already discovered that Calendly and Acuity have hard limits.

We build booking systems that match the real complexity of how you take on new clients or customers. Qualification logic, intake sequences, conditional scheduling rules, payment collection, confirmation emails, back-end admin views — all of it designed around your workflow instead of against it.

When a customer books through your site, the experience should feel seamless. When you look at your dashboard the next morning, it should show you exactly what you need to know. We build toward both ends.

{ api integrations }

Connecting the tools that were never designed to talk to each other.

Your CRM is over here. Your scheduling tool is over there. Your invoicing is somewhere else. None of them share data automatically, so someone on your team is manually copying information between systems — or things are falling through the cracks.

We build API integrations that make your tools work together: passing data between platforms, triggering actions when conditions are met, syncing records in real time, and surfacing the right information in the right place. Whether you're connecting Salesforce and your WordPress site, pushing form submissions into a project management tool, or syncing customer records between two platforms that never talked before — we've done it.

The goal is to eliminate the manual handoffs that eat your team's time and introduce errors. When your systems talk to each other, your operation gets tighter without adding headcount.

{ e-commerce customizations }

Beyond what WooCommerce does out of the box.

WooCommerce is solid. But "solid out of the box" and "exactly what your store needs" are two different things. If your product is configurable, your pricing is dynamic, your checkout has unusual requirements, or your fulfillment workflow doesn't map to a standard setup — the default WooCommerce experience will frustrate you and your customers.

We build on top of WooCommerce to give you exactly the store behavior you need. Custom product configurators, dynamic pricing rules, wholesale and tiered pricing structures, custom checkout flows, integration with external inventory or fulfillment systems, subscription models with unusual billing logic — if your e-commerce operation has complexity, we know how to build for it cleanly.

No third-party e-commerce platform does everything for every business. We fill the gaps with code that's built specifically for yours.

how it works

From "here's what I need" to "here's what we built you."

Custom development has a reputation for going sideways — scope creep, missed deadlines, developers who ghost mid-project. We've heard the horror stories. Here's exactly how we run things differently.

  1. { Phase 1 }

    Discovery & scoping — we learn the problem before we talk solutions

    Before we talk about code, we talk about your business. What are you trying to accomplish? What's the workflow you're working around? What does success actually look like when this is built? We ask until we understand the whole picture — not just the surface request.

    This phase ends with a clear scope document: what we're building, what it will do, what's explicitly out of scope, and what the project will cost. No vague estimates, no "we'll figure that out later."

  2. { Phase 2 }

    Technical spec — you approve it before we write a line of code

    Once we understand the scope, we write a technical specification: the architecture decisions, the data structure, how the pieces fit together, what edge cases we're accounting for. It's written in plain language, not developer shorthand.

    You review it. You ask questions. You push back on anything that doesn't match your vision. We revise until it's right. Only then do we open a code editor. This step is the single biggest reason our projects land on time and on budget — because we make the decisions before the work starts, not during it.

  3. { Phase 3 }

    Development sprints — you see progress, not silence

    We build in focused sprints with regular check-ins, not in a black box that goes quiet for six weeks and surfaces a finished product. You'll see working previews on a staging environment as pieces come together. If something looks different than you imagined, we'd rather know now than after everything's built.

    Sprints also mean we can catch issues early, before they compound. Clean code is easier to write in layers than to untangle after the fact.

  4. { Phase 4 }

    Testing & your review — we break it before your customers do

    When the build is complete, we run it through a full testing round: functional testing of every workflow, cross-browser and mobile checks, edge case scenarios, load behavior, and anything specific to your use case. We find the problems ourselves so you don't find them in production.

    Then you get dedicated review time. You use the thing. You put it through its paces with real data and real scenarios. You send us your list. We fix every item before anything goes live.

  5. { Phase 5 }

    Handoff + documentation — you're not left holding a mystery

    Launch isn't the end of our job — it's the beginning of yours. We deliver clean, documented code and a plain-language explanation of how everything works, where it lives, and what to do if something needs to change down the road.

    If there's an admin interface, we walk you through it. If your team will be managing anything on the back end, we train them. You should never feel like you're the steward of a system you don't understand. That's not a handoff — that's a hostage situation.

what's in the box

No mystery scope. No surprise invoices. Here's what every custom project includes.

One of the most common complaints we hear from people who've worked with other developers: "I thought it was going to cost X, and by the end it was two and a half times that." Scope creep is real, and it's usually a process problem — not a coincidence. Every custom development project at Red Cedar includes these from the start:

  • Scoping document — a clear, written record of what's being built and what's not
  • Technical specification — architecture and design decisions approved by you before development begins
  • Clean, documented code — readable, commented, and not written to be opaque on purpose
  • Staging environment — you review everything before it touches your live site
  • Cross-browser & mobile testing — we verify it works where your users actually are
  • Admin interface — if applicable, a back-end UI so you can manage things without touching code
  • Training walkthrough — we show you (and your team) how to use what we built
  • 60-day bug warranty — if something breaks because of our code, we fix it. No invoice.
  • Ongoing support available — we're here after launch, not just before it