We take over PHP, Laravel and Yii systems built by other teams — including the ones whose original developers are long gone — and modernize them in place, without stopping operations.
We read the system you already have — code, database, infrastructure, deployment — and take responsibility for it. First we make it safe to change: a reproducible environment, honest version control, a deployment you can roll back, monitoring that catches breakage before your customers do, and tests around the riskiest parts. Business logic stays untouched here. That's the point: you get the ability to change things before you change them.
PHP version, framework version, dependencies, server stack — done incrementally, behind feature flags, with a rollback path at every step. Where the jump is too large to make directly (Yii 1.1, PHP 5.x, a framework someone forked in 2013), we bridge it: old and new run side by side while functionality moves across, module by module, on your schedule.
Instead of a rewrite, we put an API layer around what already works and replace the system from the outside in — the highest-pain module first, the rest when it earns its turn. Custom code that a maintained library now covers gets deleted; systems that never talked to each other get an integration layer; data migrates on your timeline. If a full rebuild really is the right answer, we'll say so — and say why, before you've spent anything.
Most modernization projects skip this, which is why so many AI pilots die at the demo stage. AI needs what legacy systems lack: clean data boundaries, an API that isn't the UI, permissions the model can respect, structured logs, and a way to catch a bad answer before a customer sees it. We build that layer as part of the modernization, then ship the feature on top — semantic search, an assistant that answers from your data, document and PDF extraction, classification and routing.
Need AI in a system that's already in good shape? That's AI Integration → · Healthcare system under HIPAA? Healthcare Software → · Two systems that won't exchange data at all? Healthcare Interoperability →
Not “will be.” Are. These are the vendors' own published dates — the ones your security auditor, your underwriter and your enterprise customer's questionnaire will use:
| What you're probably running | Status as of today |
|---|---|
| PHP 8.1 and anything older | End of life. No security patches at all. |
| PHP 8.2 | Security fixes only — stop 31 December 2026. |
| Yii 1.1 | End of life 31 December 2026. No security fixes after that date. |
| Yii 2.0, below 2.0.50 | End of life 23 November 2026. |
| Yii 2.0, 2.0.50 and above | Security fixes end 23 November 2026; final EOL November 2027. |
| Laravel 11 and older | Out of support. Laravel 10 had no security fixes since February 2025. |
| Laravel 12 | Bug fixes ended August 2026; security fixes end February 2027. |
This isn't only about old systems. A Laravel 10 app built three years ago is already unsupported. Age isn't the measure — the vendor's support window is.
What “out of support” actually costs you, in the order it usually shows up:
What we do about it: an incremental, reversible upgrade path — no one-step migration of a live system, no quarter-long feature freeze. The first deliverable is a written path: which versions, in which order, what breaks at each step, and what it takes. You sequence it with real numbers instead of a vendor's urgency.
A full rewrite is the easiest thing for an agency to quote and the hardest thing for you to survive. Twelve to eighteen months on an old system nobody is improving, while the new one relearns a decade of requirements — most undocumented, half of them rediscovered in production.
Sometimes a rewrite is right: the platform underneath is genuinely dead, the domain model was wrong from the start, or the code is small enough that rebuilding beats understanding. We'll tell you when that's your case. It usually isn't.
The method on this page, on a live business, in two stages. We took it over in 2015: a mix of Yii 1.1 and an in-house framework, tangled enough that nobody could predict what a change would break.
Stage one — make it coherent: we removed the custom framework and unified everything onto one codebase, changing no business logic. Stage two — move it forward: new modules on Yii 2.0, the rest migrated module by module while the marketplace kept trading. No switchover date, no feature freeze.
Alongside that: application, database and storage split across AWS, search replaced with Elasticsearch, and years of continued development. Between 2015 and 2020 competitions roughly doubled and the average award rose from $760 to $1,015.
AI on top of existing systems — shipped, not slideware: a virtual assistant running on our own site, an ML-based award-suggestion mechanism inside Arcbazar trained on 1,500+ completed competitions, an AI advisor that answers from complex PDF tables, and a brand-strategy content portal where the model works with the client's own strategy as context.
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The contracting entity is Estonian; the engineering team is in Poland and Ukraine. We work under your NDA and MSA, inside your infrastructure if you prefer, and we answer subcontractor, data-residency and IP questions in writing. All source code and all IP are yours, from the first commit.
Pick the one you're comfortable with.
You give us nothing
12 questions about your system: versions, tests, deployment, environments, documentation, and what happens if your one key person leaves. It scores your exposure across four axes — security, changeability, operational risk, key-person risk — and gives you a scorecard you can forward to whoever signs off the budget.
No code, no access, no call. The result is on screen; email only if you want the PDF.
Run the Legacy Risk self-checkFree, and we do it ourselves
Two working days of server access, and we tell you what's running and what's unsupported.
What you get — a one-page status sheet:
Not a code review — that's the paid step below.
Request the diagnosticFrom $1,500, credited toward the project
The paid step — the one that answers what you're really asking: what would it take, and is it worth it?
We read the code, not just the environment: dependency risk, dead code, complexity hotspots, test coverage. Then the roadmap — the upgrade path, an honest modernize-vs-rebuild call, and a prioritized first 90 days with effort ranges.
Fixed scope, fixed timeline. The document is yours, and credited if you go ahead with us.
Book a 30-minute scoping callCan't grant access — policy, or it isn't your call? That's normal. Start with the self-check and a call, and we'll work with what you can tell us.
A free, two-working-day read of what your system actually runs on — OS, web server, PHP and framework versions, database, TLS, backups, deployment process — done by us, on a dedicated account you create and close.
A fixed-scope, fixed-timeline read of the code itself: dependency risk, dead code, complexity hotspots, test coverage, an honest modernize-vs-rebuild recommendation, and a prioritized first 90 days with effort ranges.
Reproducible environments, version control that reflects reality, a deployment you can roll back, monitoring, and tests around the highest-risk paths — so the system stops being frightening to change.
PHP, framework and dependency upgrades, done incrementally behind feature flags with a rollback path at every step, on the sequence agreed in the roadmap.
Strangler-pattern module replacement with an API layer around what already works, integrations between systems that never talked to each other, and data migration on your timeline.
The access, permission and logging layer a legacy system needs before it can host AI safely, then the feature itself — semantic search, an assistant over your own data, document extraction.
We keep the system we modernized, on a retainer, with a named team — for as long as it keeps running the business.
Steps 3 and up are quoted after the roadmap: a PHP system isn't a number of hours until someone has read it, and a real number beats a range you can't plan against. Everything is fixed-scope with a fixed timeline.
The language people wrote obituaries for in 2015 now runs a large share of the web, on a runtime several times faster, with a mature type system and two first-class frameworks. Your problem is almost never that the system is written in PHP. It's that it's written in a version nobody supports any more, by people you can no longer ask.
Nothing required
12 questions, a scorecard you can forward, no call attached.
Run the self-checkTwo working days
One named engineer, an account you create and close, a one-page status sheet to keep.
Request the diagnosticWhen you're ready
Bring one system, one blocker, or one quote you want a second opinion on.
Book a call
