B2B portal development case study at Hygge Software

BoardsOnline: Finding Out What You Own

A platform the previous team had reported as finished, with features that had never worked. Hygge ran a feature-by-feature code review and regression pass against the running application and delivered a written verdict the founder could verify himself. That verdict set the rebuild plan: refactored backend, rebuilt frontend, then the networking layer, country labor codes, job flow, membership website development on Stripe, and admin moderation, with code landing in his own repository at every milestone.

Ready to Find Out What You Own

An audit before a rebuild decides what the rebuild has to cover. Hygge scopes it the way this one started.

What the Board Member Portal Does

What the board member portal does now, after the software audit separated fact from status report.

Feature-by-Feature Audit

Every documented feature tested against the running application, with findings split into working, partially working, and not functioning despite being reported complete.

Networking Layer

Connections, a content feed, posts with comments and shares, and direct messaging with file sharing, rebuilt on a refactored backend.

Country Labor Codes

Labor codes for every country the platform covers, organized so a member can check the rules of a market before taking a role there.

Job Flow

Paid moderated job postings, search and filtering, saved searches and applications, job alerts, and applicant review for the posting side.

Membership and Billing

Subscription tiers with trial periods and gated access, handled through Stripe alongside job posting fees.

Moderation in the Admin Panel

Moderation tools in the admin panel, so the client reviews posts and takes down prohibited content himself.

The Challenge

The founder had already paid a development team, and the status reports said the work was complete. Parts of it were. Other features did not function at all despite being reported as finished, and he had no way to tell which was which before spending more money. Documentation described a system the running application did not match. Nothing in it said which parts of the codebase were salvageable, so any rebuild estimate would have been a guess and any new budget would have gone on top of features that were never finished.

The legacy backend and frontend both needed work, but which parts and in what order could only be answered after the audit.

Our Solution

Hygge started with a fixed-scope audit: a feature-by-feature code review and regression pass comparing documentation against the running application. The output was a document the founder could read himself, marking each feature working, partially working, or not functioning. The rebuild followed on that evidence. Backend refactored, frontend redesigned and rebuilt, with the code delivered into the founder's own repository at every milestone so ownership never sat with the vendor.

More than a year past the original contract, the relationship continues as ad hoc support, now helping the founder troubleshoot his own AI-assisted development.

Results

What the previous team delivered, and what code review services turned it into.

3 buckets

Features Verified Against the Running App

1 audit

Set the Scope and Price Before Any Code

~6 months

From Audit to a Platform in Production

1+ year

Support Past the Original Contract

The Stack Behind the Professional Networking Site

Angular

PHP (Laravel)

MySQL

Stripe

TypeScript

REST APIs

Docker

Services Involved

Technical Due Diligence Software Project Rescue Legacy Modernization Web Application Development Support & Maintenance

When I use it, it works, I think, the way it should... I find that very comforting.
Thomas Lehmann Heintzelmann
CEO
Verify on LinkedIn

Audit First, Rebuild Second

Step 1 - The Audit

A fixed-scope audit producing a written feature-by-feature verdict the founder could check himself, before any rebuild was quoted.

Step 2 - Refactored Backend

The backend rebuilt on what the audit found was salvageable, with everything the audit marked as unsalvageable replaced outright.

Step 3 - Networking Layer

Connections, the content feed, posts with comments and shares, and direct messaging with file sharing, rebuilt on the refactored backend.

Step 4 - Country Labor Codes

Labor codes organized by country, so a member can check the rules of a market inside the platform.

Step 5 - Job Flow

Paid job postings, search and filtering, saved searches, job alerts and applicant review, working end to end for the first time.

Step 6 - Membership and Billing

Membership website development from scratch: tiers, trial periods, gated access and Stripe billing, so what a member pays for matches what they get.

Step 7 - Moderation Tools

Moderation built into the admin panel, so prohibited content gets taken down as the platform grows.

Step 8 - Handover and Ongoing Support

Code delivered into the client's own repository at every milestone, with support continuing over a year past the original contract.

Track Record

Company-wide numbers, built from every project Hygge has delivered since 2019.

7 years

in continuous production engineering and AI delivery since 2019

200 +

end-to-end projects shipped for clients since 2019

3

independent quality and security certifications

Where a Software Audit Pays Off by Industry

Industries that share the shape of the problem BoardsOnline solved: a platform reported as finished, an audit that separates what works from what has to be rewritten, and a rebuild that starts from the working half.

All Hygge Industries

HR & Recruitment

Hiring platforms, professional networks and staffing marketplaces where matching runs on structured data.

Explore the industry

LegalTech

Document-heavy products where a reference has to be exactly right, and an approximately correct citation is a wrong one.

Explore the industry

Sales & Marketing Technology

Prospecting and outreach platforms where automation has to look human enough that the platform it runs on does not object.

Explore the industry

Healthcare & Staffing

Marketplaces and workflow tools for care organizations, where the mechanism in the middle decides whether the market is fair.

Explore the industry

Solutions Built Into BoardsOnline

A software audit decided what the rebuild had to cover. What came out of it is two Hygge products: the professional networking site where members and organizations meet, and the space each of them works in.

All solutions

Marketplace Development

Members and organizations on one record, with introductions, roles and history held in the platform where they happened.

Open the solution

3 bucketsSorted features a status report called done
1 auditDecides what the rebuild has to cover
2 sidesMembers and organizations on one record

Customer & Partner Portal Development

Each member and each organization gets a space of their own: profile, documents, activity and the part of the network visible to them.

Open the solution

6 monthsFrom that audit to a stable platform
1+ yearOf support past the original contract
Per memberProfile, documents and activity in one place

More Products Hygge Has Shipped

Projects that share the same shape of problem as this one: a platform reported as finished, and code review services that separated what worked from what was claimed.

All Hygge Case Studies

EdTech

Country Navigator

A decade-old monolith serving enterprise customers, rebuilt into services and given a production AI assistant, with the user base migrated without downtime.

0Downtime moving a decade-old platform
1 configReplaces the SSO setup only one person knew
10 yearsOf monolith rebuilt into services

Read the case

Software Audit: Frequently Asked Questions

Why did the work start with an audit?

Because a rebuild proposal from a vendor who has not read the code is a guess, and the founder had already been burned by reports that did not match reality. A fixed-scope audit produced evidence he could verify himself, and it changed what the rebuild needed to cover.

What did the audit find?

A mix. Some features worked as documented. Some worked partially. Some did not function at all despite being reported complete. The value was in the separation, stated feature by feature.

Who owns the code?

The client, at every milestone. Code was delivered into his own repository as it was built, which is what makes the audit finding unrepeatable next time.

Why integrate a moderation service?

Profanity and content detection is a solved problem with mature services behind it. Building it in-house would have consumed budget that belonged to the parts of the platform nobody else could supply.

Let's Build Something That Matters

We're your one-stop Digital Engineering Partner - tell us the process, product, or data problem you're trying to solve, and Hygge scopes AI and software work around a business result before any code gets written.

Tell Us What You're Building

Share the product, process, or data problem behind the request, along with the systems, data, or timeline the build has to work around.

Get an Audit-Backed Consultation

Hygge reviews the systems and data behind the request before the first call, so the conversation opens with real specifics already on the table.

Receive a Scoped Proposal

A plan with the approach, team, timeline, and cost, built around the business result the project needs to hit.