Backend
.NET
High-performance, cross-platform services on modern .NET — built by engineers who run them in production.
Overview
Modern .NET is the open-source, cross-platform successor to the old Windows-only .NET Framework, and getting that distinction right is the first thing that matters on any .NET project. When people say ".NET" today they may mean one of two very different things: the legacy .NET Framework (4.x), which is Windows-only, in maintenance mode, and receiving no new features; or modern .NET — the unified platform that began as .NET Core and now ships as .NET 8 and beyond — which runs on Linux, macOS and Windows, is genuinely open source, and is where all current investment goes. We build on modern .NET. We only touch .NET Framework to migrate off it.
Underneath the languages sits the CLR — the Common Language Runtime — which manages memory, garbage collection and type safety, and compiles intermediate language to native code. That compilation happens two ways: a just-in-time (JIT) compiler that optimises code as it runs, and ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation that produces a small self-contained native binary with fast start-up and no runtime JIT, which suits short-lived containers and serverless functions. Around the runtime sits the Base Class Library, one of the broadest and best-documented standard libraries of any platform, so a great deal of what other ecosystems reach for third-party packages to do is already in the box and maintained by the platform team.
We use .NET where its strengths actually pay: high-throughput web APIs and services in ASP.NET Core, data-heavy line-of-business systems with Entity Framework Core, and workloads that live on Azure. C# is the language we write most, though F# and VB also run on the same runtime. The platform’s performance is not marketing — in independent benchmarks ASP.NET Core sits among the fastest managed web stacks in existence, ahead of most of what teams assume is quicker. Our job is to hold that distinction between old and new firmly, pick the parts of the ecosystem that earn their place, and be honest when a lighter runtime would serve a small service better.
Best for — Performance-sensitive APIs and durable line-of-business systems — especially on Azure — where a strongly typed platform and a deep standard library pay off over the life of the software.
Why teams choose .NET
Performance without dropping a level
ASP.NET Core delivers throughput that normally requires a lower-level language, while you keep a managed runtime, garbage collection and a productive language. For most services you get near-native speed and safe, readable code at the same time.
A standard library that covers the ground
The Base Class Library handles HTTP, JSON, cryptography, collections, async I/O, dependency injection and far more, maintained by the platform team. You pull in fewer third-party packages, so there is less to audit, patch and keep current over the years.
One platform, many workloads
The same runtime and language span web APIs, background services, desktop and mobile (MAUI), web UI (Blazor) and cloud functions. A team’s C# skills and shared libraries carry across surfaces instead of being relearned per tool.
Why businesses choose .NET
- You need back-end services that are fast under real load and stay maintainable as the domain grows, without hand-tuning a low-level language.
- You are building or running on Azure and want the stack with the least integration friction across identity, hosting, messaging and monitoring.
- You value long-term-support releases, a predictable annual cadence, and a large hiring pool over chasing the newest ecosystem.
- You have — or want us to provide — the judgement to keep modern .NET cleanly separated from legacy .NET Framework, and to migrate the latter deliberately rather than all at once.
What we build with .NET
The capabilities this technology is genuinely strong at — and what we most often build with it.
ASP.NET Core minimal APIs and MVC
We build HTTP services in ASP.NET Core, choosing minimal APIs for lean, high-throughput endpoints and controllers where a larger surface benefits from structure. Middleware, model binding, validation and built-in dependency injection are used idiomatically, not fought.
Entity Framework Core
EF Core is our default data-access layer for relational work: LINQ queries, migrations, change tracking and a real understanding of when it generates efficient SQL and when it does not. We drop to Dapper or raw SQL for hot paths where the ORM’s convenience is not worth the query cost.
Async and the task-based model
The platform’s async/await and Task model let a small number of threads serve a large number of concurrent I/O-bound requests. We write async correctly end to end — no sync-over-async deadlocks, no blocked thread-pool starvation — which is where a lot of .NET performance is quietly won or lost.
Native AOT and trimming
For short-lived containers and serverless functions we use ahead-of-time compilation and trimming to produce small, fast-starting native binaries with no JIT warm-up. We apply it where cold start and footprint matter, and skip it where its constraints on reflection would cost more than they save.
The generic host and background services
Long-running workers, scheduled jobs and message consumers are built on the generic host with IHostedService and BackgroundService, giving consistent configuration, logging, dependency injection and graceful shutdown across every process type in the system.
Blazor and MAUI where they fit
When a project wants C# on the client we use Blazor for interactive web UI and MAUI for cross-platform desktop and mobile. We are honest that these are not always the right call against React or native, and we recommend them only when sharing a single language across the stack genuinely pays.
Use cases
High-throughput APIs and back-ends
Public and internal APIs serving heavy request volumes where latency and cost-per-request matter — ASP.NET Core’s performance is the reason to choose it here.
Line-of-business and enterprise systems
Data-rich internal systems — finance, operations, scheduling, workflow — with complex domains that must stay correct and changeable over many years.
Azure-native cloud services
Services designed for Azure: App Service or Container Apps hosting, Azure SQL, Service Bus and Entra identity, where the co-designed stack removes integration friction.
Legacy .NET Framework modernisation
Migrating Windows-only 4.x applications to modern, cross-platform .NET — untangling old dependencies, replacing dead ends like Web Forms, and moving to containers deliberately rather than in a risky big-bang rewrite.
When .NET is the right choice
- Right for high-throughput web APIs and back-end services where raw request performance and predictable latency matter — ASP.NET Core is one of the fastest managed web stacks measured, and you get that without dropping to a lower-level language.
- Right for data-heavy, long-lived line-of-business systems: the type system, the mature tooling, Entity Framework Core and the depth of the Base Class Library make large domains tractable and safe to change over years, not months.
- Right when you are already on Azure or committed to it — .NET and Azure are co-designed, so identity, hosting, messaging and observability integrate with the least friction of any stack.
- Wrong for a tiny single-purpose service where every megabyte and millisecond of cold start counts and you have no other .NET in the estate — a minimal Go binary or a small Node service is lighter to ship and run than even a trimmed .NET container, and pulling in .NET for one function adds a runtime you would otherwise not carry.
- Wrong when your team and surrounding systems are entirely in another ecosystem with no .NET expertise — the platform is excellent, but adopting it for a single project means owning a runtime, a language and a toolchain nobody around it knows, and that gravity toward the Microsoft ecosystem is a real cost, not a footnote.
.NET: pros and cons
Strengths
- Genuinely strong performance — ASP.NET Core ranks among the fastest managed runtimes in independent benchmarks, with a mature, tunable garbage collector and AOT for fast-starting, small-footprint deployments.
- A broad, well-documented Base Class Library and first-class tooling (the C# compiler, analyzers, the debugger, and the dotnet CLI) that make large codebases productive and safe to refactor.
- Truly cross-platform and open source since .NET Core — it runs and is developed in the open on Linux, macOS and Windows, and deploys cleanly in containers.
- Excellent Azure integration and a strong enterprise story: identity, long-term-support releases on a predictable annual cadence, and a large, stable hiring pool.
Trade-offs
- Legacy .NET Framework baggage is real: a large amount of existing code is Windows-only and pinned to 4.x, and migrating it to modern .NET is genuine work — Web Forms has no direct successor, and some old dependencies never made the jump.
- Microsoft-ecosystem gravity: the platform is at its best on Azure and with Microsoft tooling, and while nothing forces that, the path of least resistance keeps pulling you there. Fighting the current costs effort.
- Heavier than minimal runtimes for tiny services — even a trimmed, AOT-compiled container carries more than a small Go or Rust binary, so for a single micro-service the runtime footprint and cold start can be more than you want.
- Lingering perception problems: many still assume .NET is proprietary, Windows-only and licence-encumbered. Core .NET is free and open source, but the reputation lags the reality and can shape decisions unfairly.
Architecture
We structure .NET systems around a clear domain, with the web layer kept thin. ASP.NET Core’s built-in dependency injection is the backbone: services, data access and cross-cutting concerns are registered explicitly and resolved through constructors, so dependencies are visible and testable rather than reached for through statics. For anything beyond a small service we separate the domain and application logic from the ASP.NET Core host, so the business rules do not depend on the web framework and can be exercised in isolation.
The most important architectural decision on a .NET project is often the boundary with the past. We keep modern .NET code cleanly separated from any legacy .NET Framework it must interoperate with, communicating across a well-defined seam rather than letting old assumptions leak into new code. Where a monolith is the right shape — and for many line-of-business systems it is — we build a well-organised modular monolith rather than reaching for micro-services by reflex, and split out services only where an independent scaling or deployment need genuinely justifies the operational cost.
Performance
Modern .NET is fast, but the headline benchmark numbers assume you write idiomatic code. The biggest wins come from getting async right end to end so the thread pool is never starved, avoiding allocations on hot paths using Span and pooled buffers, and understanding EF Core well enough to know when it emits an efficient query and when it quietly issues one query per row. We measure with BenchmarkDotNet and real profiling under load rather than guessing, and we tune the garbage collector — server versus workstation mode, and concurrent settings — to the actual workload.
For deployment-sensitive workloads we reach for Native AOT and trimming to cut cold start and memory footprint, which matters for serverless and containers that scale to zero. We are equally clear about the ceiling: a managed runtime carries overhead a hand-written native binary does not, and for the rare service where every microsecond and megabyte is critical, that is a reason to consider a different tool rather than to keep squeezing .NET past the point of sensible return.
Security
ASP.NET Core gives you a solid security baseline — authentication and authorisation middleware, the built-in Identity system, anti-forgery protection, HTTPS and HSTS by default, and a Data Protection stack for keys and secrets — but a baseline is not a finished job. We enforce authorisation on the server at the point data is accessed, never merely in the UI, and we use policy-based and role-based authorisation deliberately rather than scattering ad-hoc checks. On Azure we lean on managed identity so services authenticate without long-lived secrets in configuration.
Data access is parameterised by default through EF Core, which closes off most SQL injection, and we keep that discipline when we drop to Dapper or raw SQL for performance. Beyond the framework, we treat dependencies as attack surface: the NuGet tree is kept lean and current, scanned for known vulnerabilities, and secrets live in a vault or environment configuration, never in source. Security is a set of explicit decisions we own, not defaults inherited from a project template.
Scalability
A well-built .NET service scales horizontally without drama: keep the process stateless, push session and shared state into Redis or the database, and run as many instances behind a load balancer as demand requires. ASP.NET Core’s efficient use of threads means each instance serves a high volume of concurrent connections before you need to add more, so you often reach a given capacity with less hardware than a less efficient stack would need.
On Azure we scale with the platform — Container Apps or App Service scaling rules, and AKS where Kubernetes is genuinely warranted — and use messaging (Service Bus or Kafka) to decouple producers from consumers so load spikes queue rather than topple the system. The constraint that scales worst is usually the database, so we design data access and caching for it early. We add distribution only when a real scaling or isolation need justifies the operational cost, and we say so when a modular monolith on bigger instances is the cheaper, saner answer.
.NET integrations & ecosystem
The technologies we most often pair with it — each links to how we work with it.
How we work
We start by settling the decisions that are cheap to get right early and expensive to change later: the target framework version (a current long-term-support release, not a legacy one), the boundary between domain and web layers, the data-access strategy, and — where there is legacy .NET Framework in play — exactly how old and new code will interoperate and in what order things migrate. Then we build in thin vertical slices: one real endpoint or feature, running in production behind proper CI, rather than a scaffold that compiles but does nothing.
The engineers who design the service are the ones who write it and keep it running. That is what we mean by operating what we build: performance tuning, garbage-collection settings and deployment choices are made by people who will be on call for the consequences, so we favour durable, well-understood patterns over whatever is newest. You get typed code, honest trade-offs, and a system your own team can pick up, extend and run.
The service behind it
Delivered throughCustom Software DevelopmentWhat we build with .NET
The disciplines this technology most often shows up in — from a first build to taking over and stabilising an existing one.
How we deliver
- 01
Discover
We map the system, the constraints and the business it serves — including the parts nobody documented.
Architecture brief
- 02
Architect
Decisions get made, written down and defended before a line of production code exists.
Decision records
- 03
Build
Short cycles against working software. You see progress in the product, not in a status deck.
Shipping increments
- 04
Operate
Monitoring, incident response and iteration. The system is alive, so the engagement is too.
Runbooks & SLOs
Industries we use .NET in
Domain knowledge changes what gets built. A few of the sectors we know before the first meeting.
Also in Backend
Why teams choose us for .NET
Senior engineers only
The .NET decisions that age well — async discipline, EF Core query shape, garbage-collection tuning, the modern-versus-legacy boundary — reward experience and punish guesswork. The people making them on your project have made them before and lived with the results. No juniors learning on your codebase.
We operate what we build
We run the services we ship, so we optimise for the on-call reality and the eighteen-month maintenance horizon, not the demo. That means measured performance, sensible deployment, and code your own team can maintain after we hand it over.
Honest about the modern-versus-legacy line
We will not sell you a rushed rewrite of a working .NET Framework system, nor let new code quietly inherit legacy Windows-only assumptions. We migrate deliberately, and we tell you when a lighter runtime would serve a small service better than .NET would.
Azure fluency without lock-in by accident
We know where .NET and Azure fit together and use that integration where it pays, while keeping the domain independent of the host so you are never locked in by neglect rather than by a decision you actually made.
Typical timeline
- 01
Discovery and architecture
One to two weeks agreeing the target framework version, domain boundaries, data-access strategy and — where relevant — the legacy interoperation and migration order, so the foundations are settled before code volume grows.
- 02
First vertical slice
Two to three weeks delivering one real feature end to end in production, with CI, EF Core migrations and observability in place, proving the architecture against reality rather than a plan.
- 03
Iterative build
Feature-by-feature delivery in short, shippable cycles, with async correctness, query performance and test coverage on the load-bearing paths checked as we go rather than bolted on later.
- 04
Hardening and handover
Load testing and profiling under BenchmarkDotNet and real traffic, garbage-collection and deployment tuning, security review, and documentation so your team can own and run the system.
How pricing works
- Fixed-scope builds for well-defined services — a specific API, a background processing system, a defined application — quoted once we understand the domain, the load and the integrations.
- Monthly senior engagement for ongoing product and platform work, where scope evolves and you want continuity of the same engineers rather than a fixed deliverable.
- Migration and modernisation engagements for legacy .NET Framework estates, priced against an upfront assessment of the codebase, its dependencies and the dead ends that need replacing.
- Focused audits and rescues for existing .NET systems — performance, architecture, EF Core query problems or a stalled build — priced by the assessment.
Hire .NET engineers
Need .NET capacity on your own team? We embed named senior engineers into your existing team — reporting to your leads, working in your rituals — so you add capacity without a hiring cycle.
Hire .NET engineersCommon questions
What is the difference between .NET and .NET Framework?
.NET Framework (4.x) is the original, Windows-only platform, now in maintenance mode with no new features. Modern .NET — which began as .NET Core and now ships as .NET 8 and later — is the open-source, cross-platform successor that runs on Linux, macOS and Windows. They are not the same thing, and all current development goes into modern .NET. We build on modern .NET and only touch the Framework to migrate off it.
Is .NET actually free and open source?
Yes. Since .NET Core, the runtime, libraries, compiler and CLI are open source under permissive licences and developed in the open, and you can build and ship without paying Microsoft anything. The lingering belief that .NET is proprietary and Windows-only describes the old Framework, not the platform we use today. Some Microsoft tooling around it is commercial, but the platform itself is not.
Is .NET fast enough for high-throughput services?
Yes — this is one of its real strengths. In independent benchmarks ASP.NET Core sits among the fastest managed web stacks measured, ahead of much of what teams assume is quicker. You reach that with idiomatic async code, careful allocation on hot paths, and a garbage collector tuned to the workload. For the rare service where even a managed runtime’s overhead is unacceptable, we will say a native-compiled language fits better.
Should we use Entity Framework Core or write SQL directly?
Usually EF Core, and selectively raw SQL. EF Core’s LINQ, migrations and change tracking make most data access productive and safe, and it parameterises queries by default. But it can quietly generate inefficient SQL — the classic one-query-per-row problem — so on hot paths we profile the generated queries and drop to Dapper or raw SQL where the ORM’s convenience is not worth the cost. It is a per-query decision, not an all-or-nothing one.
Can you migrate our old .NET Framework application to modern .NET?
Often, yes, but it is genuine work and we scope it honestly. Some things port cleanly; others do not — Web Forms has no direct successor, and certain old dependencies never moved to modern .NET. We assess the codebase first, plan a deliberate migration order across a well-defined boundary rather than a big-bang rewrite, and are straight about the parts that need rebuilding rather than porting. If a rewrite is genuinely cheaper than a migration, we will tell you that too.
Building on .NET?
A technical conversation with the engineers who would do the work. If we are not the right fit, we will say so on the call.