About Us

Akal is a fully remote (but London based) digital agency specialising in developing business solutions using core web technologies: HTML, CSS & JavaScript. Bringing you the future, today.

We’re a small team who has over 20 years of experience delivering web projects successfully.

• Company No. 10566608
• VAT No. GB263707105

Open Stack

We develop all our projects on a fully open stack (except some design tools):

• JavaScript - TypeScript/ES6, React.js, React Native, Redux, Angular, RxJS, Vue.js, Node.js, Cordova, Ionic & Electron
• HTML - via templating languages e.g. Markdown, JSX, Handlebars
• CSS - via preprocessor languages & plugins eg. SCSS, PostCSS
• Middleware / Backend - RESTful API via Node.js (preferred), Python, Java
• Databases - SQL (Postgres, SQLite) or NoSQL (MongoDB, Redis)
• DevOps & Automation - Docker, Kubernetes, Ansible
• Testing - Jest, Cucumber & Gherkin, Cypress
• Design - Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator, Sketch, storybook.js, Bulma

Please note: if you already have a proprietary database e.g. SQL Server, Oracle, IBM Db2 we can integrate with these via RESTful microservices using an ORM (Object Relational Mapper) and/or a RESTful middlelayer

Core Philosophy

We are strong advocates of the Open Source philosophy, Agile methodology, remote working & automation. We also provide training to help your business to transition its culture to think more in these terms.

We are strong on process, testing, code quality & documentation so that when we hand over the source code to you, you can easily get setup and bring the code maintenance back in-house or hire us to do this for you with a maintenance team. See our standard set of deliverables for more information.

Our Simple 3-Step Process

1. Consult - No obligation FREE 45 minute consultation with one of our Senior Team on the phone or via video conference to discuss your project requirements
2. Propose - We’ll decide on the training (normally a 5 day design sprint is required), resources (number of team members & their roles) & technology stack appropriate for your project & send you a detailed proposal. If you accept our proposal, we will get you to sign all the necessary legal paperwork
3. Begin - With paperwork out of the way, we shall pick a start date to have our team start remotely or onsite on your project

Open Source Policy

• We will open source whatever we can, whilst remaining sensitive to legitimate business concerns
• It’s our duty to give back something to the open source community, projects and tooling upon which our work is based
• Open sourcing code helps improve security, re-usability, code quality, documentation and maintainability of applications
• All source code would be released under the MIT license
• Organisations benefit from receiving FREE updates to packages maintained by us for life

Standard Set of Deliverables

We believe we are one of the few digital agencies in the world to offer such a comprehensive set of deliverables at the end of the projects we complete.

Please note these only apply where you have hired one of our agile teams onto a greenfield project (a brand new application) or an existing application re-written from the groundup using our open stack:

1. A fully unit & end-to-end tested codebase
2. A docker image for easily getting started with development
3. An archive of user & technical documentation
4. An archive of all design files associated with the project
5. An interactive component library
6. A list of open source outcomes from the project to watch for in the future & be proud of

Ethical Policies

As a digital agency we will not work with any companies or projects that condone, encourage or invest in any of the following:

• gambling
• drugs (including alcohol & e/cigarettes)
• adult content
• fraud (in any form)
• the production of weapons or technologies used within weapons
• war
• bringing any harm to the environment or biodiversity

Green Policy

As a company we strive to minimize our environmental impact with the following initiatives:

• Only consuming energy from 100% renewable sources
• Only hosting our applications in data-centers which use at least some renewable energy sources
• Encouraging our employees to work from home, cycle to work or use public transport wherever possible
• Ensuring the products we use in the office are certified as being from sustainable sources e.g. paper is certified under the Rainforest Alliance and any confectionary or tea must be Fairtrade