Sandbanks DigitalcarFlippy: a SaaS web app, concept to live in six weeks
carFlippy is a self-serve SaaS product we designed, built and now manage end to end. Read a number plate against the MOT record, price a car against the market, or paste a used-car advert and rebuild its margin after every cost that follows the asking price. It is the kind of bespoke web application we build for founders and businesses.
Checking a car properly takes a dozen tabs
Buying a car, at any price, is underneath it all a data problem. Is the asking price fair? What has this specific car been through? Is there margin left once tax, an MOT risk, the travel to collect it and the fees to sell it are all paid? Doing that properly means an MOT history in one tab, AutoTrader and Gumtree in five more, and a calculator app for the rest. Slow, repetitive, and easy to get wrong when a good car needs a fast decision.
The goal for carFlippy was to collapse that into three fast answers instead of one vague one: what the record says about this car, what it is realistically worth, and what is actually left after the costs. An owner, a buyer and a flipper are asking different questions, so the app stopped pretending they were the same one.
What we built
A complete, multi-user SaaS product, not a prototype, designed and engineered end to end.
Three tools, three decisions
A registration check that reads the MOT chronology, a valuation calculator that ranges from quick-sale to patient asking price, and a listing checker that rebuilds an advert's margin. Each answers one question rather than pretending a plate, a value and an advert are the same job.
Advert analysis across four marketplaces
Paste an AutoTrader, Gumtree, eBay Motors or Facebook advert and the app pulls it apart, then deducts MOT exposure, a repair allowance, collection travel, tax, insurance and selling fees to turn a headline price gap into a net result.
Evidence kept apart from estimates
Results are split into what is recorded (identity, MOT dates, mileage entries), what is observed (condition, service history, seller claims) and what is calculated. Showing the working is what stops an estimate reading as a guarantee.
Accounts, Garage and subscriptions
A free tier with a three-vehicle Garage and MOT reminders, then paid plans that add AI condition analysis, full MOT history and an automated discovery engine. Billing, plan limits and entitlements are all part of the build.
Custom data pipeline
A bespoke pipeline gathers, cleans and normalises vehicle and listing data from several sources so figures are consistent and comparable. It is the hardest and most valuable part of the build.
Built in Next.js
A fast, modern Next.js application, hosted and fully managed by us, so it stays quick, secure and online without anyone touching infrastructure.
Concept to live in around six weeks
The hard part of carFlippy isn't the interface, it's the data behind it. Reading official vehicle and MOT records, pulling adverts from four marketplaces that each describe a car differently, normalising all of it so two listings can be compared fairly, and turning that into a cost breakdown a user can argue with took a custom data pipeline built from scratch. On top of that sits a fast Next.js application with proper user accounts, a Garage, saved analyses and subscription billing.
We took it from concept to a live, production product in around six weeks, and we host and manage all of it, so it stays fast, secure and online without anyone touching a server. It has kept moving since: what launched as one listing analyser is now three separate tools on a free-and-paid plan ladder. It's the same approach we bring to custom web apps for clients: take an idea, build the genuinely hard parts properly, ship it, and keep it running.
Live, managed, and still being built
carFlippy is live at carflippy.com, open to anyone, and running on a free tier plus two paid plans. It is still an early product and we don't publish user numbers or revenue for it, because a figure we can't stand behind is worth less than no figure at all. What it does prove is the model we offer clients: a real, multi-user SaaS taken from idea to live product quickly, then hosted, billed and maintained by the same two people who built it, and still being added to rather than shipped and abandoned.