Emesent
7
Language markets on one platform
0
Downtime at the DNS cutover
100%
Delivered on time and on budget
Operating systems and websites your team runs on
The front door and the back office, built by the same team.
Two jobs, one team, because underneath they’re the same craft.
The front door is the marketing site. Fast, findable, and built so your marketers ship a page on a Tuesday without raising a ticket. We build on HubSpot CMS, headless where it earns its keep, and we care about the unglamorous parts: page speed, accessibility, how the thing gets crawled, analytics that actually fire. Those are what decide whether anyone reads your copy at all.
The back office is everything behind the login. Client portals and customer facing tools that hang off your CRM data. Quoting tools, booking systems, and the internal platform that finally replaces the spreadsheet your ops lead has been holding together with sheer willpower.
We have been doing this for more than a decade, on sites carrying household names and on the platforms that run the rest of the business. Bring us the one everyone has learned to work around.
A portal or an internal platform ends up holding real customer data, so we work out with you where it sits, which systems it moves between and who can reach it before we build. Your platforms stay yours, and our access ends when the project does.
Where the data sits, and who holds whatBusinesses we build for
What we built, and what it moved.
Bring us the website your team has given up updating.
Book a callWhat we build here.
Most projects are one or two of these, and your statement of work spells out which.
Marketing websites
On HubSpot CMS, or headless where that makes sense, with reusable modules so your marketers can build a page without us.
Client portals
Where your customer checks their own status instead of emailing to ask, hanging off the CRM data you already hold.
Quoting and booking tools
The customer facing jobs that currently run on a form, a spreadsheet and somebody rekeying between the two.
Internal platforms
The ops tool behind the login: the jobs, approvals and records your team currently runs out of spreadsheets and inboxes.
The unglamorous parts
Core Web Vitals, WCAG AA, crawlable markup and structured data, and analytics events that actually fire.
The connection to everything else
The same team builds the site and the system underneath it, so the forms, the portal and the CRM share one data model from the start.
HubSpot CMS development: what does a HubSpot developer build?
HubSpot CMS development is building your website on HubSpot’s own content system, so every form, page view and enquiry lands on the same record your sales team works from. Our HubSpot developers sit in Brisbane, on the same team that builds the CRM underneath, and every site ships with reusable modules so your marketers can build a page without us.
Moving off WordPress. We rebuilt Emesent’s site on HubSpot CMS across seven language markets, with one form model in every language and no downtime at the DNS cutover. For AUSMAR we moved 80+ pages off WordPress and cut maintenance overhead by 70%.
Themes, modules and custom code. A theme built for your brand, modules your team can reuse, and custom APIs where the site has to talk to something HubSpot does not. Our guide to integrating HubSpot CMS with custom APIs shows how we approach that part, and HubSpot CMS vs WordPress helps if you are still choosing.
After launch. The site keeps changing after go live, and so does the portal behind it. If you want a named person to look after both, compare the models for managed HubSpot support in Australia, or read how our HubSpot support after go live runs.
AI operating systems: what is one, and does your team need it?
An AI operating system is the internal platform your operations team logs into to run its work: one screen that pulls from HubSpot, finance and the documents you already hold, agents that prepare the routine parts, and a person who checks before anything changes. It sits beside your existing systems and replaces the spreadsheets and inboxes in between.
The sign that you need one is usually said out loud in the first workshop. Customer information scattered across six systems, with no one screen for a customer. A scheduler moving between a spreadsheet and a second tool to book one job. A credit assessment kept in a spreadsheet that three people save over. None of that is fixed by buying another tool, because the tool count is the problem.
What goes in one. Whatever the jobs need, starting with a login for each role, the records the job needs read from the systems that own them, agents that do the reading and preparing, and a log of every action. We give it a name and a screen when there is something for people to log into, and keep it as a service on a server when there is not.
We run on one. Neighbourhood runs on NBHOS, a platform we built that holds our projects, sales and signed agreements. Its agents work under the Green, Amber and Red action policy in our AI Security and Governance Overview, so routine actions run and are logged and anything irreversible waits for a person.
Business process automation: which processes should you automate first?
Start with the process someone does every week by copying information from one place to another, then deciding something simple about it. Those are cheap to automate, easy to check and the hours come back straight away. Leave the processes that change every month until last, because an automation of a moving target breaks as often as the target moves.
Rules first, AI where it reads. Most of a process is rules: when a deposit is paid, move the deal; when a partner goes quiet, tell their manager. Those belong in HubSpot workflows, which cost nothing extra per run. AI earns its place in the steps where a person currently reads something before deciding, such as a borrower’s documents or a long email thread. Our guide to choosing between an AI agent and a HubSpot workflow has the test.
What it looks like in practice. For Plungie, payments move the deal, the deal creates the equipment ticket and balance reminders count back from the delivery date, so nobody sets a reminder by hand. For Flint, each referral partner’s form creates the deal and updates the partner’s record, and Breeze summary cards save brokers an estimated six to ten hours a month on long threads.
Built to last. Every automation gets a named owner, a log, an alert when it stops and a fallback to a person. That is the difference between an automation and a dependency, and our post on why AI bolted onto HubSpot breaks covers what goes wrong without them. For the agent side, start with AI agents for business in Australia, and for the build itself, custom AI systems built on Claude.
How we usually build it.
The anxiety on this kind of project is never the design. It is being handed a build nobody in your team can maintain, and a quiet dependency on the one person who remembers how it was put together.
This is roughly the order we work in, and every project bends it a bit. Some need all six steps. A lot start with mapping what exists, because the thing being replaced was never written down. What your project includes gets agreed in your statement of work.
Scope What the team opens every morning, and what it is replacing.
- The job the software has to do. Described as a job first. Feature lists come later, and they are usually where the last build went wrong.
- What it replaces, and what happens to that. The spreadsheet, the inbox, the third party tool nobody likes. Ideally at least one of them is gone at the end.
- Who has to be able to change it later. That answer shapes the stack, so we ask it at the start.
Sitemap The pages or the screens, the templates behind them, and what is in against what links out.
- The pages or screens, listed. Including the ones everyone forgets, which are usually the ones carrying the work.
- Templates over one offs. So a new page is something your team can put together from existing modules.
- What is in, what is out, and what links out. Worth agreeing early, because scope on a build like this tends to drift.
Design We try to sort accessibility and colour contrast here, instead of waiting for an audit to find them.
- Components before pages. Designed once and reused, so the thing stays consistent as it grows.
- Contrast checked early. We aim for WCAG AA, the usual accessibility standard, on colour pairings before they reach a developer.
- Designed against real content. Including the longest name, the missing image and the empty state, which is where designs tend to come apart.
Build On tools any competent developer can pick up.
- A stack your own team can hire for. So you can keep working with us because you want to.
- Changes reviewed before they reach your site. Version control, a staging copy where the platform allows it, and a second set of eyes before anything goes live.
- Built to the standards, then measured against them. Lighthouse, accessibility checks and the browsers your customers use, tested before launch.
Launch Usually a staged launch, with the way back worked out beforehand.
- Content in before launch. A site launched empty gets judged empty.
- Redirects mapped from the old site. Every old URL pointed somewhere sensible, so years of links and rankings don’t end up on a 404.
- A launch window. Chosen with you, with DNS and a rollback plan worked out beforehand.
Upkeep The code, the accounts and the documentation are yours.
- A handover your team is walked through. Usually recorded, so whoever joins later can watch it too.
- Documentation written for whoever inherits it. How it is built, where things live, and how to change the common stuff.
- Maintenance if you want it. On a scope we agree together. You can keep us on, or run it yourselves.
HubSpot and Claude
We are a HubSpot Diamond Partner and we have been building on the platform for more than a decade, across every Hub. Most of what we build on this side sits on HubSpot CMS, so that experience goes straight into the work.
17 HubSpot Impact Awards sit behind it, across Technical Expertise, Platform Excellence, Platform Migration Excellence and Product Excellence. We are also Certified HubSpot Trainers, and we run Brisbane’s official HubSpot User Group.
See the HubSpot work
We build on Claude too. Between us the team has completed roughly 75 courses on Anthropic Academy.
It matters on this pillar because the tools we build increasingly have AI inside them, and a portal or an internal platform is exactly where that has to be governed from the start, before someone else bolts it on.
Meet the engineers
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Natalia ZiarkowskaDigital Strategist -
Alex BaileyDigital Strategist -
Harry Spicer-ShortDigital Strategist -
Chloe VickMarketing Manager
A platform is judged eighteen months after launch.
Launch day is the easy part. These three days tell you more:
- The Tuesday your marketer needs a landing page. And does not have to ask anyone for it.
- The morning traffic spikes. And nothing falls over.
- The day the person who built it has moved on. And the documentation still makes sense to whoever opens it next.
That’s what we build for.
These are the organisations that trust the work: ASX listed, household names, and businesses whose sites carry serious traffic and whose internal platforms run the operation behind them. We ask the same question of each of those builds: are the marketers still shipping pages without a ticket once the launch is old news?
- 17HubSpot Impact Awards, 2020 to 2026
- 300+Businesses helped
- 11+Years as HubSpot partners
Where the data sits, and who holds what.
We access client platforms as authorised users under least privilege and revoke at project end. Client data is deleted or returned within 30 days of engagement end, on written request.
For Australian and New Zealand clients, HubSpot data is hosted in Sydney, inside Australian data centres and under Australian data sovereignty. Anything we host ourselves, including any working copy of records a tool we build for you needs, runs in Sydney and stays Australia-resident.
Where a build calls a model, it calls Anthropic, which operates under SOC 2 Type II. Fathom, which we use for meeting records, holds the same certification. Neighbourhood does not hold SOC 2 itself and does not imply otherwise.
Some of our work is performed by autonomous agents, and they run under a published action policy. Routine actions proceed and are logged. Actions in the middle tier notify the team first. Anything in the top tier stops and waits for an explicit human go, and a senior person reviews that queue before it moves. A narrow set of org control actions is reserved for the Director and cannot be performed by any agent, at any tier.
Read where your data lives
“We couldn’t be happier. They combine expertise with a genuinely collaborative and approachable style, always helpful, responsive, and willing to go the extra mile.”
Katie D.
Marketing Manager, AUSMAR · Read the case study
We use AI heavily. Here is what it is allowed to do.
Yours to run, and built so you actually can.
Software built around the way your team works. The same people build the site and the system behind it, so they work together properly from the start.
What you end up with is a platform your team opens every morning and never has to think about. Your marketers can change a headline themselves, the numbers are there when someone asks, and nobody is stuck waiting on the one person who remembers how it was built.
What we will tell you straight.
Four things we say out loud on this kind of project, usually earlier than the client expects and occasionally against our own interest.
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A rebuild will not fix a positioning problem.
If the issue is that nobody can tell what you do, a faster site gets them to the confusing bit sooner. That is a copy job before it is a build job.
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You probably do not need a custom platform.
If an off the shelf tool covers eighty per cent and your process is not the thing that makes you money, buy the tool. We will say so.
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The content is the long pole, and it is yours.
Builds do not slip on code. They slip waiting for the words, and no amount of project management fixes that from our side.
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If you cannot maintain it, we have failed.
A build that only we can change is a build we got wrong, whatever it looks like on launch day.
What marketing and ops leads ask us.
Do we have to move off WordPress?
Not automatically. If the site is doing its job and the cost is defensible, we will say so. Where it comes up is when the site and the CRM know nothing about each other, and the maintenance bill is the thing nobody can justify any more. That is the point at which a migration earns itself.
Can our marketers actually ship a page without raising a ticket?
That is the test we build to. Reusable modules, so a new page is an assembly job for your marketers and never a development job. If shipping a page still needs us afterwards, we got it wrong.
What happens to our search rankings when we migrate?
Redirect mapping, metadata and structure are planned into the build from the first week. Rankings can still move on any migration, and anyone who promises they will not is guessing. What you get from us is a written record of what was done to protect them and where to look if something shifts.
Do we own what you build?
Yes. It is written into the contract, so nobody has to rely on goodwill.
Can you build the internal tool as well as the website?
Same team, same engagement, which is the whole reason the two sit on one page. It means the platform behind the login and the site in front of it are designed together from the start.
Who maintains this in a year?
Your team or ours, and we decide that together before we build. If it is yours, handover includes the runbook, the documentation and the training. If it is ours, it is a stated monthly scope with a named person on it.
What is an AI operating system for business?
An internal platform your team logs into to run its work. It reads from the systems you keep, such as HubSpot and Xero, gives each role one screen, uses agents to prepare the routine parts and logs every action, with a person checking before records change.
Which business processes should we automate first?
The weekly ones where someone copies information between systems and makes a simple decision about it. Put the rules in HubSpot workflows, which cost nothing extra per run, and use AI only where a person currently reads something before deciding.
Tell us what’s not working.
A few lines is enough. You will get a human reply within one business day. After a first call with Matt, one PM plans it and builds it.
Got it, there.
We will be back to you within one business day. Rather not wait? Pick a time with Matt below and skip the email round, or call 1300 71 61 41.