During the COVID pandemic, Fynydd partnered with Blue Sequoyah Technologies (https://bluesequoyah.com) to build Coursabi: a cutting edge learning platform (https://coursabi.com). It's an all-in-one learning solution with features like native and SCORM course support, video conferencing, audio and video libraries, forms, reports, events, and more, all presented as a concise learning journey.

We found particular success in the pharmaceutical and healthcare space, and are proud to see these clients renewing each year as they find success in keeping their teams trained, compliant, and most of all, happy.

One of our early subscribers, Deciphera (https://deciphera.com), has been at the cutting edge of cancer research for decades. They do great work, and we're proud to say that they have renewed their Coursabi subscription for 2025!

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There is a world full of "build your own website" services that allow just about anyone to stand up a new website in a few hours. Even organizations can leverage the simplicity offered by these services to set up an online store, community, and more. Here are a few examples of why people typically choose these services.

• Quick setup and time to market
• Reasonable up-front pricing
• Design templates
• Integrated services, like shopping carts and email
• Managed hosting

Sounds great! But as with everything in life, there are tradeoffs.

• Quick setup and time to market means giving up control over things like your domain name, web app design, email provider, and more
• Reasonable up-front pricing usually means a tiered pricing model with add-on pricing for essential features like a custom domain name, additional bandwidth, and increased storage
• Design templates mean your web app will largely look like a lot of other web apps that use the service, and may not match your vision, and custom designs can require service-specific web development
• Integrated services also means no choice over the provider of the service, which could be missing features you need
• Managed hosting means scaling (growing) is significantly more expensive, network bandwidth caps can apply, and true customer and data ownership are dubious

Regardless, these services can be a great way for individuals and small organizations to bootstrap their web presence, and in many cases, you can happily continue to use the service for years.

But there are also long-term lock-in issues that can be more serious, potentially impeding your growth, for example:

• You may contractually own your data, but extracting it to migrate to another platform is usually not practical or possible at all; they don't want you to leave
• When the service changes (features, pricing, etc.) or if the service is purchased by another entity, you usually have no choice other than rolling with it, for better or worse
• If the service shuts down, you're going to struggle to replace everything they offered to your visitors in a relatively short period of time
• Most successful businesses will outgrow these services anyway, so you could be missing out on long-term savings

Custom Websites

If the tradeoffs are too much to swallow, fear not! You can also go with a custom web app tailored specifically to your needs and budget. It can match your vision without compromises and scaling can be managed more easily as your business or traffic grow.

So how do you get started? With a builder service you first have to find one with the price and features you need, and then create an account and dig into their control panel to start configuring your website. Whereas for a custom website the first step is to find a web development partner you can rely on for advice and technical expertise, like Fynydd. Your partner can help gather your ideas, come up with a plan, and build your web app, all within your budget and timeline. They're usually experts in both new web app projects and migrations from other platforms and services. Most importantly, they fill the knowledge gap left by the "build your own website" service.

A web development partner will choose technologies that have a proven security track record. One way we do this is by consulting the CVE database; a publicly funded global resource for tracking common vulnerabilities and exposures. For example, a CVE search quickly reveals that WordPress has historically been a security nightmare.

Your development partner will help you with a design that matches your vision, a hosting service that meets your needs and budget, a security review, a backup plan and disaster recovery strategy, and more. When the time comes to grow your platform, they can help with that too. And throughout the journey you maintain full control over your brand, your website, your data, and your customers.

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Do you need a new software development partner for an upcoming project? We would love to work with you! From websites and mobile apps to cloud services and custom software, we can help!

ZOIA Healthcare is a direct-to-patient provider of specialized nutritional products dedicated to empowering and improving the lives of individuals with inherited metabolic disorders and other rare diseases. They focus on navigating the complexities of healthcare, ensuring patients who require targeted nutrition that cannot be met through a regular diet alone gain access to necessary medical and low protein foods.

Accredited by the Healthcare Quality Association on Accreditation (HQAA), they adhere to stringent standards, helping their patients experience transformative outcomes. Their portfolio is curated to foster advancements in disease management, harnessing the power of nutrition.

ZOIA Pharma partnered with Fynydd to build a new web sales and marketing platform providing patients and organizations with a streamlined shopping experience. Individuals can browse, search, and purchase nutrition products, and even get notified when products are back in stock. And organizations also have the ability to offer a formulary catering specifically to their patients.

Some of the key features of the platform include:

• Based on ASP.NET and Umbraco CMS
• Hosted on Amazon Web Services
• Fynydd's bespoke Umbraco shopping platform supporting consumers and organizations with formularies
• Integrated with Stripe for payments and purchase management
• Responsive framework works great on mobile, tablets, and larger devices

Key Technologies

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Do you need a new software development partner for an upcoming project? We would love to work with you! From websites and mobile apps to cloud services and custom software, we can help!

Fynydd partnered with Blue Sequoyah Technologies to build a community-driven learning platform named Coursabi, which gives learners a simple but powerful way to grow as they follow their learning journey. Their dashboard shows them progress to-date and what assignments are next. They can explore the content library for elective learning, sign documents, and complete forms. And the community gives them a way to learn from peers and content authors.

Coursabi Mission Control is where authorized users can create and organize training content like documents, forms, and courses. There are also libraries for audio and video content, as well as imported learning modules. People and learning assignments are managed here. And administrators and training managers can stay up-to-date using dashboards, reports, notifications, community activity, and so much more.

• Amazon AWS, CloudFront, S3, Okta SSO
• SCORM/xAPI/HTML import, native Coursabi content
• Courses, documents, audio, video, forms, events, community, and more
• Real-time reporting and analytics suite
• Native content builders
• Assignments, progress tracking, notifications
• Team and role-based security for authors, members, and content

Key Technologies

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There's usually more to the story so if you have questions or comments about this post let us know!

Do you need a new software development partner for an upcoming project? We would love to work with you! From websites and mobile apps to cloud services and custom software, we can help!

Monitoring Analytics was established in 2008 as the fully independent external market monitor for PJM Interconnection by the Market Monitoring Unit of PJM. PJM Interconnection, a regional transmission organization, ensures the reliability of the electric power supply system in 13 states and the District of Columbia.

Monitoring Analytics (MA) partnered with Fynydd to create a new web platform optimized for a modern user experience.

The goal of the project was to provide visitors with easy access to the Monitoring Analytics quarterly reports and other support documentation, as well as an updated visual appearance.

One of the challenges was the creation of a new taxonomy for their 20 year document collection. It needed to be easy to manage in the back office, but also provide better on-site search results. We were able to work with MA to categorize and organize their document collection and provide a user flow that made finding and downloading documents quick and easy.

Due to various compliance requirements, some aspects of the hosting were non-standard. But we were able to meet all their needs. For example, we deployed the platform CMS without the back office code, and with the CMS management APIs disabled, providing additional security in production. This meant creating a unique publishing workflow whereby a separate instance could be used behind a firewall and approved changes could be deployed through a VPN connection.

Some of the key features of the platform include:

• Based on ASP.NET and Umbraco CMS, hosted on Amazon Web Services
• SQLite database
• Non-standard publishing workflow
• Indexing of PDF content, ingested into Lucene indexes
• Composite web/PDF content site search
• Responsive HTML5 framework
• Device themes (system/dark/light modes)

NOTE: THE WEBSITE IS NOT YET LIVE

Key Technologies

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There's usually more to the story so if you have questions or comments about this post let us know!

Do you need a new software development partner for an upcoming project? We would love to work with you! From websites and mobile apps to cloud services and custom software, we can help!