LMS development company for schools, universities and training providers.
We build and extend learning platforms: custom LMS builds, integrations into the system you already run, and the search, reporting and AI work that sits on top of it.
Most of our education work starts with a platform that already exists and has stopped answering a question the organisation runs on. We are a custom development partner, and nothing we earn depends on your platform, so the answer is sometimes to extend what you have.
- 120+Projects delivered across 12 countries since 2012
- 100+Senior in-house engineers, six countries
- 2 to 4 weeksTypical time from signature to start
- ISTQBCertified QA inside every sprint
- ISO 27001Certified security practice, audited by Quay Audit UK
01Overview
What LMS and EdTech development actually covers
LMS and EdTech development is the building, extension and integration of the systems schools, universities and training providers use to deliver and record learning: course delivery and enrolment, assessment, reporting, search and discovery, and the connections into the student, HR or finance systems that already hold the data. unicrew (founded 2012, formerly Artelogic) works as a custom development and integration partner. We publish three education case studies: RWTH Aachen University, Sterling Test Prep and meinUnterricht, plus interface modernization for CaT Concepts.
- Deliver and enrolGetting the right learner into the right course, and keeping the record of it straight.
- Course and cohort delivery
- Enrolment and entitlements
- Roles for tutor and learner
- Assess and recordThe part an institution is judged on: what was attempted, what was passed, and the evidence.
- Assessment and marking
- Progress and completion
- Certification records
- Connect and reportThe unglamorous half. Learning data almost never lives in one system.
- Student and HR systems
- Single sign-on
- Reporting and exports
- Find and personalizeWhere most of the recent work is: helping a learner reach the right material faster.
- Search and discovery
- Content tagging
- AI-assisted retrieval
02Compare
Off the shelf, extend, or build: how to tell which one you need
The decision that governs an education platform budget is not which vendor, it is whether to buy, extend or build at all. Each row below is a situation we are actually brought in on, what it usually costs the organisation, and the route that fits it. Two of the five end in advice to keep the platform you have.
| Where you are | What it costs you | The route that fits |
|---|---|---|
| “Our courses are ordinary and the platform is fine.” | Nothing, and a custom build would | Keep the platform. Spend the budget on content and on the one report your team rebuilds by hand each month.Reporting and data workOr book a meeting |
| “The platform does most of it and the rest is manual.” | Re-keying, parallel spreadsheets, no audit trail | Extend it. A custom layer beside the platform for the part it misses, kept at the edge so upgrades do not remove it.Platform development and integrationOr book a meeting |
| “Learners cannot find the material we already have.” | Content nobody reaches, and support answering for it | Search and discovery work on the existing platform: relevance, filtering, autosuggest, tagging and vector retrieval.How we did this for meinUnterrichtOr book a meeting |
| “What we teach does not fit a course-and-quiz shape.” | Fighting the product on every release | Build. This is the case where a custom platform is cheaper over its life than bending someone else’s data model.How we build custom systemsOr book a meeting |
| “It works, but it looks a decade old and people say so.” | Slow onboarding, and procurement using it against you | Interface modernization against the existing back end, replacing legacy components without losing behaviour.How we did this for CaT ConceptsOr book a meeting |
03Solutions
What we build for education and training organisations
Six kinds of work, drawn from what we have actually delivered in this sector. Each names the situation it is for, so you can find the one your organisation needs.
Custom learning platforms
A platform built around how you actually teach, for the cases where the course-and-quiz model of an off-the-shelf LMS is the thing you keep fighting.
- Right when
- Your model does not fit a product
Extending the LMS you run
A custom layer beside the platform covering the part it does not, connected by API and kept at the edge so a vendor upgrade does not take it out.
- Right when
- The platform does most of it
Search and discovery
Relevance, filtering and autosuggest over a library people cannot navigate, including the tagging and embedding work behind vector search.
- Right when
- The content exists and nobody finds it
Integrations into systems of record
Single sign-on, and connections into the student, HR or finance systems that already hold the enrolment and completion data you report on.
- Right when
- Learning data lives in three places
Interface modernization
Replacing legacy interface components against an unchanged back end, mapping old behaviour onto new so nothing a user relies on disappears.
- Right when
- The back end is fine, the front is not
Reporting and analytics
Turning progress, completion and engagement data into the reports your team currently rebuilds by hand, on a refresh schedule they can plan against.
- Right when
- The monthly report is a spreadsheet
04Obligations
What an education platform has to satisfy
Learning software inherits obligations whether or not anyone planned for them, and in education several come from procurement rather than from a regulator. Three below that constrain a build, then what unicrew brings to them.
Personal data about learners
Learning records are personal data, and where the learners are children the consent and retention rules around them are stricter than most product teams assume.
- In a build
- Retention decided in the data model
Accessibility
Public-sector and university procurement increasingly asks for a conformance position on WCAG before it asks about features, and retrofitting one costs far more than building to it.
- In a build
- A design constraint, not a QA pass
Institutional security review
An institution's IT department reviews hosting, access and incident handling before it will connect your platform to a student system, on its own timetable rather than yours.
- In a build
- Answered from documents, not calls
Certified information security
unicrew holds ISO 27001:2022 and ISO 9001:2015, renewed through a multi-stage audit with Quay Audit UK, which is usually what an institutional security questionnaire is reaching for.
- What it gives you
- A document trail that already exists
QA inside every sprint
ISTQB-certified QA engineers work inside the sprint rather than after it, which matters most on assessment and certification paths where a defect reaches a learner's record.
- What it gives you
- Defects caught before a record is written
Least-privilege access
Contracts and NDAs are signed before anyone starts, we work from least-privilege access agreed with your technical contact, and read-only wherever the work allows.
- What it gives you
- No production write during discovery
A custom LMS pays off when your training does not fit a course-and-quiz format, or when you need reporting a standard platform cannot provide. For standard courses, we extend the platform you already run, which costs less.
Yaroslav HavrylivSenior Engineering Manager, unicrew05Delivery
How an education engagement runs
Four stages, and the first exists to make the rest cheap. Education budgets are usually annual and procurement is usually slow, so we front-load the decision that costs the most to reverse. Most engagements start within two to four weeks of signature.
- Read the platform you haveWe look at the system in use, the data model behind it, and the reports someone is rebuilding by hand. This is the stage that decides buy, extend or build, and the written answer is worth paying for on its own.You getA written recommendation: buy, extend or build
- Scope against a real termWe size the work against your actual academic or training calendar rather than a generic roadmap, because a release that lands mid-term is a release nobody can adopt.You getA sequenced scope with the release windows your calendar allows
- Ship the highest-pain workflow firstOne workflow, built against your real data and put in front of tutors, administrators or learners before the rest of the scope is committed. On a platform replacement we go module by module so teaching keeps running.You getWorking software in a term, not a status report
- Integrate, then hand overSingle sign-on and the connections into student, HR or finance systems, then documentation and handover to whoever maintains it, which in an institution is often not the team that commissioned it.You getIntegrations live, and a system your own staff can run
06Proof
What our education clients have measured
Five verified Clutch reviews from education and training organisations, and three published case studies with the client named. The two figures below are the clients' own, in their own words.
- A research university measured the changeFor RWTH Aachen University we built a custom time-tracking tool for research project leaders. In his Clutch review the research assistant who ran it writes that they saw "around a 40% increase of how many project leaders are tracking the time of their employees instead of making guesses or delegating the task".40%the client's own figure, RWTH Aachen
- An edtech platform ran the experimentFor meinUnterricht in Berlin we worked as an embedded engineer on search and discovery, from user-facing features down to the tagging and embeddings underneath. Their Director of Product and Engineering reports "a controlled experiment showing a roughly 9 percent lift in search success rate".9%the client's own figure, meinUnterricht
- Education clients on the recordFive education and training clients publish verified reviews: RWTH Aachen University, Sterling Test Prep in Boston, meinUnterricht in Berlin, CaT Concepts in Germany, and BLPS CC in Indiana, where a team of three developers and two QC specialists built interactive educational materials across several grade levels.5verified reviews from this sector
07Client voices
What education clients say
We saw around a 40% increase of how many project leaders are tracking the time of their employees instead of making guesses or delegating the task. Their response time was fantastic. They were organized and provided us with tools to track their progress in a transparent way. Every time we needed to add some small things to make it work better, they adapted those requirements very quickly.
Our headline result was a controlled experiment showing a roughly 9 percent lift in search success rate. The features built are live in production, and the AI tagging and embeddings work set up our move to vector search. What stands out most is their ability to own work end to end, from user-facing search features to the AI and data layer underneath.
They implemented a range of website features, including a specific payment processing functionality. They developed everything in PHP. They greatly improved our customer experience. I enjoy the way our platform works now. Working with Artelogic gave me confidence in our technical solutions and allowed me to focus more on business.
The goal was to replace legacy UI elements with new UI components. The new UI components already existed, key challenge was to map the existing implementations to the new ones while not losing functionality. They were super responsive and did exactly as we agreed upon. The colleague they send to us was an extremely good fit to the problem that we have described.
Artelogic was professional and timely. They added value throughout the project with their technological expertise. Project management was very well organized. Their level of professionalism is remarkable.
08Case studies
Education platforms we have built and extended
Three published builds, three different starting points: a custom tool where no product fitted, a platform inherited from a previous vendor, and search engineering over a library that already existed.
See all case studies- EducationThe custom time-tracking tool that got around 40% more project leaders tracking time at RWTH Aachen Universityunicrew built a custom time-tracking web app for a research group at RWTH Aachen University, in place of spreadsheets or off-the-shelf software.~40%More project leaders tracking time
- EducationScaling an online test-prep platform for a growing user base (Sterling Test Prep)A three-person unicrew team implemented website features and payment processing in PHP for a test-prep platform gaining users every day.
09Questions
LMS development: frequently asked questions
Use an existing platform unless you can name the specific thing it stops you doing. Two situations justify a build: what you teach does not fit the course-and-quiz model products assume, or the platform's data model cannot answer a question your organisation runs on, such as an entitlement or completion rule specific to you. Everything else is better solved by extending the platform you have with a custom layer beside it.
Yes, and it is most of the education work we do. We connect learning platforms to the student, HR and finance systems that hold enrolment and completion data, add single sign-on, and build the reporting layer over the top. For CaT Concepts we replaced legacy interface components against an unchanged back end. Where a platform exposes no usable API, the integration layer is the first thing we build, because everything else depends on it.
We work on three engagement models: time and materials billed hourly and quoted per project, fixed price quoted per project against an agreed outcome, and team extension billed monthly per team member. Which fits depends on how firm the scope is, and we recommend one at the end of discovery rather than before it. We price against your scope: the range between a single integration and a full platform build is wide enough that any number here would mislead most readers. Most engagements start within two to four weeks.
Most engagements start within two to four weeks of signature. The constraint on duration in education is usually the calendar, not the engineering: a release landing mid-term is one nobody can adopt, so we sequence against your academic or training year and aim to put the first working workflow in front of real users within a term. Platform replacements go module by module so teaching keeps running.
Yes. RWTH Aachen University in Germany is a published client. Expect an IT security review before anything connects to a student system, and expect procurement to ask for an accessibility position early. unicrew holds ISO 27001:2022 and ISO 9001:2015, renewed through a multi-stage audit with Quay Audit UK, which is usually what those questionnaires are reaching for.
Yes. The useful version is usually retrieval rather than generation: discovery over content you already own is lower risk and easier to measure than generating new material, and it is what we recommend first. For meinUnterricht in Berlin we worked on search relevance, filtering and autosuggest, plus the AI tagging and embeddings behind vector search. Their own controlled experiment measured a roughly 9 percent lift in search success rate.
We document it and hand over to whoever maintains it, which in an institution is often not the team that commissioned the work. Where you want us to stay, we continue as team extension billed monthly per team member. Where you do not, the handover is the deliverable: the system runs on your infrastructure, the integrations are documented, and a new engineer should get it building on their first day.
Tell us what the platform cannot do, get a straight answer on whether to build
A call with a senior engineer who has shipped education work, not a sales qualifier. You leave with an opinion on buy, extend or build, and the reasoning behind it.
What happens after you contact us
- We reply within one business dayA senior engineer reads your message, not a bot.
- A call about the platformWhat you run, what it will not do, and who has to sign off.
- Route and engagement model, in writingBuy, extend or build, priced as time and materials, fixed price, or team extension.
- NDA, then discoveryMost engagements start within two to four weeks of signature.