Environments that drift
Different runtime versions in development, staging and production, so bugs appear in only one of them.
[ Servers & DevOps / Docker & Containers ]
It works on my machine, and now everywhere else.
Containers only pay off when they are done properly — small images, no secrets baked in, and a local setup developers actually want to use. Done badly they add a layer of confusion on top of the problem you started with.
Usually 1-2 weeks · Local setup included · Fixed price
1-2 wkstypical delivery
Multi-stageimages, kept small
Localenvironment included
Nosecrets baked in
[ Why bother ]
What containers actually solve.
Not everything needs containers. These are the specific problems they genuinely fix.
Painful onboarding
A new developer loses two days installing dependencies before writing a single line of code.
Locked to one host
Deployment tied to a specific machine's configuration, so moving providers means rebuilding everything.
Scaling means cloning servers
No way to run more of a single component without duplicating the whole machine.
Dependency conflicts
Two applications on one server needing incompatible versions of the same library.
Images that are too big
Already containerised, but with multi-gigabyte images and build times that kill the pipeline.
[ How it works ]
Assess, containerise, deploy.
01 — Week 1
Assess
An honest look at whether containers help you. If your application is a single monolith on one server that never scales, I will tell you to save the money.
02 — Week 1-2
Containerise
Multi-stage builds, a local development setup with hot reload, configuration through environment variables and secrets injected at runtime.
03 — Deploy
Ship & document
Deployed to the target platform with health checks, resource limits and logging, plus documentation covering build, run and debug.
[ What actually changes ]
What gets delivered.
The goal is a setup a new developer can run in one command and an operator can deploy without reading the source code.
Images & local dev
- Multi-stage Dockerfiles — build tooling excluded from the final image, so it stays small and fast to pull.
- Non-root containers — running as an unprivileged user, because a container is not a security boundary by default.
- Compose setup for local work — app, database, cache and queue, running with one command.
- Hot reload in development — so containers speed developers up instead of slowing them down.
- Layer caching — ordered so a code change does not trigger a full dependency reinstall.
Running in production
- Health checks — so orchestrators restart what is actually broken instead of guessing.
- Resource limits — memory and CPU bounded so one container cannot starve the host.
- Configuration and secrets — injected at runtime, never committed into the image.
- Registry and image tagging — a versioning scheme that makes rollback obvious.
- Orchestration path — Compose, ECS or Kubernetes, chosen for your team's actual capacity to operate it.
[ Example engagement ]
Two days of onboarding down to one command.
A legacy application with a twelve-page setup document, containerised with a Compose environment and multi-stage production images.
Illustrative example of a typical engagement. Figures vary with the state of your systems and are not a guarantee of a specific outcome.
1 cmdto a running local stack
82%smaller production image
3 minfaster pipeline builds
0environment-only bugs since
[ Free · honest answer ]
Not sure containers are worth it?
Tell me about your application and deployment setup. If containers will not help you, I will say so and suggest what would instead.
[ Pricing ]
Pricing that fits your budget.
Tell me the number you have to work with. I'll tell you honestly what's achievable within it — and if it isn't enough, I'll say so before we start rather than halfway through.
Fixed project price
Scope agreed in writing, price agreed in writing, before any work starts. No hourly creep and no invoice you haven't already approved.
Monthly retainer
For ongoing work — maintenance, monitoring, updates and small changes. Month to month, cancel whenever, no minimum term.
Hourly for small jobs
For a single bug or a short task where writing a full scope would cost more than simply doing the work.
Budget too tight for the whole thing? I'll often suggest doing the highest-value part first and the rest later, rather than doing all of it badly.
[ Questions ]
Common questions.
Do we need Kubernetes?
Most teams do not. Kubernetes is powerful and genuinely expensive to operate well. Unless you are running many services with a team able to maintain it, Compose or a managed container service will serve you better.
Will containers make our app faster?
Not directly. What they improve is consistency, onboarding and deployment. Performance gains usually come indirectly, from being able to scale individual components instead of whole servers.
Can you containerise a legacy application?
Usually yes, including older PHP, Python and Node applications. Occasionally something depends on the host in a way that makes it a poor fit, and I will tell you early rather than after you have paid.
What about our database?
Databases run in containers well for local development. In production I generally recommend a managed database service, because backups, failover and patching are solved problems not worth re-solving.
Do you handle the deployment too?
Yes, that is included — deployed to your chosen platform with health checks and logging wired up, not just handed to you as a Dockerfile.
[ Related services ]
Related engineering work.
CI/CD & GitHub ActionsAutomated build, test and deploy pipelines with real rollbacks.DevOps ConsultingDeployment, reliability and process for teams without a DevOps hire.AWS Server SetupProduction-ready VPC, compute, database and CI/CD from scratch.Node.js DevelopmentAPIs, services and background workers that stay up.Python & FastAPITyped, async Python APIs and data services.Server Setup & ConfigurationLinux servers built properly: web stack, TLS, backups, monitoring.
[ Let's talk ]
Tell me what you're building.
Describe it in a few lines and you'll get a straight answer on scope, cost and timeline — same working day, from the person who'd actually build it.