How we build
Technology Stack
The platforms, frameworks, tools and services we use day-to-day to build, test, and ship reliable e-commerce and web projects — chosen for quality, not hype.
Core platforms
E-Commerce & CMS
The platforms we specialise in — open, extensible, and built for serious production workloads.
Adobe Commerce / Magento
Our primary commerce platform. Custom modules, Magento 1 → Adobe Commerce migrations, B2B portals, performance tuning and long-term platform support for merchants of all sizes.
October CMS
Our go-to for content-driven websites and marketing sites. Built on Laravel — clean, developer-friendly, and easy to extend with custom plugins and themes.
Application layer
Application Frameworks
For custom web applications, APIs and SaaS platforms that outgrow off-the-shelf solutions.
Laravel
Our framework of choice for custom web applications, SaaS platforms, internal tools and APIs. From MVPs to high-traffic production systems. Our project Stoar is built on it.
PHP 8.x
The foundation. Modern PHP 8 brings typed properties, match expressions, fibers and a significant performance leap over earlier versions. All our projects target PHP 8.2+ for production.
Interfaces
Frontend
Fast, clean and maintainable UIs — without the bloat of heavyweight JavaScript frameworks where they're not needed.
Tailwind CSS
Our default CSS framework for all new projects. Utility-first, consistent design system, tiny production bundle. This website is built with Tailwind.
Alpine.js
Lightweight reactivity for forms, dropdowns, accordions and UI interactions — without pulling in a full SPA framework. Used on this site and across Hyvä Magento frontends.
Bootstrap & Legacy CSS
For existing projects using Bootstrap or legacy LESS/SASS — we work within your current setup rather than forcing a rewrite. We support Bootstrap 3, 4 and 5.
Quality assurance
Automated Testing
Bugs caught in CI don't reach production. We run a full automated test suite before every deploy — across browsers, devices and user flows.
PHPUnit
Unit and integration tests for PHP business logic — modules, services, custom commands.
Codeception / MFTF
End-to-end acceptance tests for Magento flows — checkout, cart, admin, API endpoints.
BrowserStack
Cross-browser and cross-device testing — real iOS, Android, Chrome, Firefox, Safari.
Google Cloud Run
Ephemeral CI test runners — spin up, test, tear down. No persistent test servers to maintain.
Deployment & ops
Cloud & Infrastructure
Containerised, reproducible deployments — the same image runs in development, CI and production.
Docker
All projects run in Docker containers — PHP-FPM, nginx, MySQL, Redis. Local dev mirrors production exactly, eliminating environment-specific bugs.
Google Cloud Platform
Cloud Run for serverless containers, Cloud Storage for assets, Cloud SQL for managed databases — scalable without managing VMs.
DigitalOcean
App Platform for auto-deploy-on-push workflows — ideal for smaller projects and staging environments that need zero infrastructure overhead.
nginx
Web server and reverse proxy for all projects. We configure caching headers, HTTPS, redirects and rate limiting as standard — not as an afterthought.
GitHub Actions
CI/CD pipelines — automated test runs on pull requests, deployment gates, and release automation. Every push goes through a pipeline before it can merge.
Redis
Used for Magento's full-page cache, session storage and queue backends. Dramatic performance improvements for high-traffic stores without code changes.
Connected systems
AI & Integrations
We connect platforms with the services they need — from payment processing to AI — using well-tested, maintainable integration patterns.
Claude AI (Anthropic)
Used in Stoar for AI-native feature generation — describe a store feature in plain language and it gets built.
Payment Gateways
Stripe, PayPal, Braintree, Afterpay/Clearpay — integrated for Magento and Laravel projects.
ERP & 3PL APIs
Netsuite, MYOB, SAP, Pronto — order, inventory and customer data sync across business systems.
Shipping Providers
StarShipIt, Australia Post, DHL, Shippit — real-time rates, label printing and tracking integration.
We give back
Open-Source Contributions
We publish and maintain open-source Magento modules on Packagist — used by thousands of merchants worldwide. Production-tested and built to Adobe Commerce standards.
Free · No obligation
Let's talk about your project
Tell us what you're building and we'll walk you through how we'd approach it — timeline, stack choices and cost. No sales pitch.