Business automation and custom software in Cornwall.
Based in St Austell. Built by someone who spent forty years in UK construction and trades before writing any software — which is why these tools work with no signal, on a phone, in the rain.
Fixed price. Roughly four weeks. You own the code.
Autaimate is a software studio based in St Austell, building business automation and custom software for businesses across Cornwall. Commissions start with a £750 scoping session, then run at a fixed price from £8,500, typically live in about four weeks. The client owns the code.
Why Cornish businesses get served badly by software
Cornwall has one of the highest proportions of small businesses of anywhere in England, and one of the lowest densities of the kind of software firm that would normally serve them. The result is that most tools sold into the county were designed for a market that looks nothing like it.
The assumptions baked into that software are the problem. It assumes a head office. It assumes a reliable connection. It assumes enough seats to make per-user pricing sensible, and enough people that somebody’s whole job can be operations. In a firm of six, with vans out past Bodmin Moor and no signal, none of those hold.
So businesses pay for the platform and keep the real record in a spreadsheet on the side. That is not a failure of discipline — it is a rational response to a tool that does not fit. The fix is not more training on the platform. It is building the thing that actually matches how the work happens.
Four problems that come up everywhere here
Software written for somewhere else
Priced per seat, shaped around a head office, and assuming a reliable connection. Cornish businesses end up paying for a platform and still keeping the real record in a spreadsheet on the side, because the platform never fitted in the first place.
Connectivity that cannot be assumed
Large parts of the county still have patchy mobile coverage. Anything that only works online is not a tool here, it is a liability. Our inspection apps work fully offline and sync when a signal returns, because that is the actual operating condition.
Seasonal peaks with a fixed team
Trade triples between May and September and the same number of people handle it. That is the point at which enquiries go unanswered and paperwork slides — and the point where automation earns back its cost in one season.
Everyone wearing several hats
In a firm of six there is no operations department. The person doing the writing-up is answering the phone and chasing invoices. Every hour of admin removed is an hour returned to work that actually earns.
What we build
Inspection and compliance reporting
Voice-first apps that turn a site visit into a finished, standards-referenced PDF before you leave, working fully offline. Cornwall Play Safety Ltd use ours for BS EN 1176 playground inspections across the county.
Construction and trades tools
BS 7671 calculators for cable sizing and voltage drop, voice-first certification, plant and job costing. Built by someone who spent forty years on the tools before writing software.
Enquiry capture and front of house
An assistant that greets every website visitor, scopes the job in around thirty seconds and texts the enquiry to your phone. It answers only from your own confirmed material, so it cannot invent a price you do not charge.
Platforms and portals
Multi-tenant systems where each customer or member organisation gets their own branded, properly isolated view. Logins, dashboards, admin and reporting, built to a standard that feels finished rather than prototyped.
Across the county
Every town here has a different mix of businesses and a different set of problems. Pick the one nearest you.
St Austell
Where we are based. Clay country, construction and plant.
Truro
The county’s professional and administrative centre.
Newquay
Tourism, hospitality and seasonal staffing.
Falmouth
Marine, docks and the university.
Penzance
The far west — fishing, tourism and the Scillies route.
Camborne & Redruth
Engineering and industrial estates.
Bodmin
The A30 corridor and light industry.
Liskeard
Market town, agriculture and the moor.
Launceston
The gateway town and its farming base.
Bude
The north coast — remote, rural and poorly connected.
Who you are actually dealing with
Autaimate is a one-person studio run from St Austell. Mick Stevenson spent four decades in UK construction and trades before writing any software. The failure mode in this work is a developer who has never done the job designing a tool for people who do it daily — knowing what paperwork an inspection actually generates is why these builds get used rather than opened twice and abandoned.
Cornwall Play Safety Ltd use our voice-first inspection app to produce BS EN 1176 playground reports — spoken on site, finished before leaving, working with no signal.
One person also means the person you talk to is the person who writes the code. No account manager, no handover between a salesperson and a delivery team, and no discovering after signature that the people who scoped it are not the people building it.
Frequently asked questions
Do you actually work in Cornwall, or is this a landing page? +
Autaimate is based in St Austell and run by one person. There is no national agency behind it and no call centre in a business park somewhere else. Cornwall Play Safety Ltd are a Cornish customer using our inspection app for BS EN 1176 playground reports across the county.
How much does business automation cost for a Cornish business? +
Commissions start with a £750 scoping session, then run at a fixed price from £8,500. The scoping session produces a written scope that is yours whether or not you go ahead. Fixed price means the number agreed at the start is the number you pay — no hourly meter.
Which parts of Cornwall do you cover? +
All of it. We have pages for St Austell, Truro, Newquay, Falmouth, Penzance, Camborne and Redruth, Bodmin, Liskeard, Launceston and Bude, but the county is small enough that anywhere is reachable. Most work happens remotely regardless.
Will the software work where there is no mobile signal? +
That is one of the first things we ask about, and it changes how a build is designed. Our inspection apps work fully offline and sync when a connection returns. Anywhere west of Bodmin that assumption matters more than almost any other technical decision.
Can you meet in person? +
Yes, and for most Cornish commissions it is the better way to start. Half an hour watching the actual process usually tells us more than an hour of somebody describing it.
How long does a build take? +
Typically about four weeks from kick-off to a live, working product. Fixed scope is what makes that possible — it forces both sides to decide what actually matters before anything gets built.
Do I own the software? +
Yes. The repository is transferred to you on delivery, with documentation and deployment configuration. No licence we can revoke and no platform dependency — you can take it to any other developer.
What if an off-the-shelf product would do the job? +
We will tell you at the scoping session and point you at it. Accounting, payroll and general project management are solved problems; buying the product is the cheaper answer and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.
Do you only work with construction and trades? +
No. That is the founder’s background and it shows in the products, but the common thread is a process specific enough that generic software fits it badly. That describes hospitality, professional practices, care providers and plenty else besides.
Is my data held in the UK? +
UK and EU infrastructure, with encryption in transit and at rest, row-level security on every tenant table and audit logging on every state-changing operation. UK data residency is available on request for regulated sectors.
What does a scoping session involve? +
A paid session where we work out what actually happens in your business — who touches the work, how often, where it stalls, what the workaround is. You get a written scope and a fixed price out of it, and an honest answer about whether building anything is worth it.
How do I start? +
Book a scoping session, or ring and describe the problem. Bring the process rather than a solution you have already designed — the most useful conversations start from what actually happens.
Got a process eating a day a week?
Tell us what it is and you will get a straight answer on whether it is worth building something for. If it is not, you will hear that too.