# About Dave Ellis

> Who you would be working with: a solo web and mobile developer in Edinburgh who ships his own products, including The Racing Line, winner of Brand of the Year at the 2026 Race Media Awards. How I work, who I work with, where I work, and the ultra running and racing licence that explain the apps.

Canonical page: https://daveellis.dev/about/
Made by Dave Ellis (Edinburgh, Scotland). Email: dave@daveellis.dev
Last updated: 2026-11-12

About Dave Ellis: how he works, who he works with, where he works, and the products he owns.

## One person, end to end.

I am Dave Ellis, a web and mobile developer in Edinburgh. I build my own products and I take on client work, and the second one gets the same treatment as the first. Here is how I work, who I work with, and the parts that are worth knowing before you email.

I ship real products of my own, and I bring that same care to client web and mobile work.

I work solo and end to end: Swift for iOS, Android alongside it, and modern, dependency-light web tech on the sites. There is no account manager, no handover from a designer to a developer, and nobody learning your business twice. The person you email is the person who writes the code.

I have spent years building and running my own software, which is a different education from building software for other people. The Racing Line reaches over 100,000 motorsport fans every race weekend and won Brand of the Year at the 2026 Race Media Awards. Sauna & Plunge and Peek Notes are on the App Store now, Location Vault and Widgeling are due out shortly, and I am also building Stuc, a hiking companion for Scotland's hills.

Owning products means carrying the support emails, the one star reviews, the App Store rejections and the September when a new iOS changes something. It is the reason I am comfortable publishing prices and timings: I have found out the hard way what things actually take.

Away from the keyboard I run ultra marathons and hold a UK motorsport racing licence, which is roughly how The Racing Line and Stuc came to exist. I build the things I want to use myself, and that habit is where most of my products start.

I also co-own Pass Pursuits, a driving-experience brand running alpine road trips, where I do the brand and the website as well as the trips. Running a business that sells something other than software has made me a markedly better person to build business software.

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## Six things worth knowing.

- One or two projects at a time. Yours is not queued behind five others. It is also why I am sometimes booked, and why the availability notice on the home page is kept honest.
- Prices published. You know the order of magnitude before you spend an afternoon on an email. If my numbers are wrong for your project, you find that out immediately rather than after two meetings.
- Fixed quotes, not ranges. A number with a written scope beside it. Business systems get a paid discovery first, because a scope cannot be guessed from an email.
- You own everything. Code, domain, content, data. No licence, no platform you can only leave by starting over, and a handover I will help with rather than make awkward.
- Plain language throughout. If you cannot follow what I have written, that is my failure rather than yours. This applies to quotes, policies and the explanation of what went wrong.
- No clock on a question. Asking me something does not generate an invoice. I would rather answer three emails than build the wrong thing.

The other side of working with one person: I am one person. I am not the right choice for a project that needs four developers in parallel or a twenty-four hour support line, and when that is the honest answer I will say so in the first reply rather than take the work and stretch.

## Who I work with

Small and medium businesses, from one person up to around fifty, where the website or the system is something you depend on rather than a brochure you forget about.

In practice that means trades and services where the diary and the job sheets are the business, places that live on bookings, manufacturers and fabricators whose customers check them out before phoning, and charities, community interest companies and social enterprises.

Two real examples sit on this site: Charnwood Coatings & Fabrication, a UKCA-marked structural steel fabricator, and The Circle, an award-winning community interest company in Dundee.

What those have in common is not an industry. It is that somebody in the business cares whether the thing works.

## Where I work

Based in Edinburgh. Edinburgh, the Lothians, Fife, Glasgow and the rest of the central belt are close enough for a kick-off meeting or a discovery session in your own premises, which is genuinely useful for a business system because watching the work happen beats hearing it described.

Dundee, Perth, Stirling, Aberdeen, the Borders and the Highlands work the same way remotely, and plenty of projects never need a meeting in a room at all. I work with clients across the rest of the UK too: Charnwood are in Loughborough.

Further afield is fine. The search work is built for global reach as standard, with local signals added wherever they will win you work, so where I sit matters a lot less than it used to.

## The products I own.

Not a portfolio of work for other people. These are mine, which means I carry everything that comes with them.

### The Racing Line

Live motorsport and 220+ global series. 100,000+ fans, 4.9 stars, and Brand of the Year at the 2026 Race Media Awards.

### Sauna & Plunge

A contrast therapy timer built around the Action button on Apple Watch Ultra. On the App Store.

### Peek Notes

Short notes on your Home Screen, across iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch. On the App Store.

### And the rest

Location Vault and Widgeling are due out shortly, Stuc is in progress, and Pass Pursuits is the one that is not software at all.

### What kind of businesses do you work with?

Small and medium businesses, from one person up to around fifty, where the website or the system is something you depend on rather than a brochure you forget about. That tends to mean trades and services where the diary and the job sheets are the business, places that live on bookings, manufacturers who need to look as serious as they actually are, and charities and community organisations. Two real examples: Charnwood Coatings & Fabrication, a structural steel fabricator, and The Circle, an award-winning community interest company in Dundee.

### Do you work with businesses across Scotland, or only in Edinburgh?

Across Scotland. I am based in Edinburgh, so Edinburgh, the Lothians, Fife, Glasgow and the rest of the central belt are close enough for a kick-off meeting or a discovery session in your own premises. Dundee, Perth, Stirling, Aberdeen, the Borders and the Highlands work the same way remotely, and plenty of projects never need a meeting in a room at all. I also work outside Scotland: Charnwood Coatings & Fabrication in Loughborough is one recent example. The SEO and GEO work is built for global reach as standard, with local search signals added wherever they will win you work.

### What makes you an award-winning developer?

The Racing Line, the motorsport app I own, design and develop, won Brand of the Year at the 2026 Race Media Awards. It is used by more than 100,000 motorsport fans and holds a 4.9 star rating from over 2,400 ratings.

Every question, answered