Notes from the workshop.
Eolas Labs is the development studio of Eolas Prints, in Reocín, next to Torrelavega, Spain. We write here about what we learn keeping our own systems alive: what things actually cost, what breaks, and why. Few notes, each with our own data behind it.
Where to start when digitalising a production line
Almost every industrial digitalisation project that goes wrong goes wrong on the order, not the technology. It starts with what can be seen — sensors, screens, a dashboard — and leaves for later the thing that makes any of it useful: being able to attribute a reading to a specific batch. This is the order we recommend, and why the reverse gets expensive.- Invoicing · Compliance
Will your custom system comply with Verifactu?
The Verifactu date has been postponed twice and now sits a year and a half behind the original. Expecting it to move again is reasonable, and it is the first objection we get. Here is the argument for not waiting anyway: the obligation has not been repealed, only moved, and the work required to meet it is work that is usually worth doing on its own. The people with a problem are those invoicing from a custom build, a store wired to an ERP, or an integration somebody wrote years ago — where no vendor is responsible for adapting it. - Maintenance · Inherited software
Nobody maintains the software you already paid for
It is one of the most common calls we get at Eolas Labs: the system works, the business depends on it, and the person who built it has stopped answering. Software does not wear out from use — it wears out because the world around it keeps changing while the code stands still. Here is what breaks first, in what order, and what we check before taking on something we did not write. - Ecommerce · Cross-border selling
Why your customer refuses the parcel at customs
A customer outside the EU buys, pays, gets a message from the carrier asking for duty and import VAT, and refuses the parcel. You lose the outbound shipping, the return and the customer. It is not a fault in the store: the checkout charged for the product and not for crossing a border. We are writing it down because the Eolas Prints store sells into 235 countries and territories, and it has happened to us. - Public sector · Procurement
How a small town council buys software
A small council that wants an app or a citizen platform finds that the hard part is not choosing a supplier: it is knowing which route it can contract through. Spain’s public sector contracts law sets thresholds that decide whether a file is resolved in weeks or in a year. We are writing this from the other side of the counter, after building and operating SomosTorre. - Live data · Engineering
More than twenty-five data sources in one app
SomosTorre aggregates more than twenty-five data sources and presents them as one. As of 27 August 2026 there are twenty-eight: twenty-two public — national, regional, municipal and professional bodies — and six commercial or community. This is the whole list, because the number is only interesting if you can see it broken down. - AI and search · Our own data
A year of ChatGPT traffic, measured on our own store
From the first month with attributable traffic to August 2026 — thirteen months, the first of them partial — ChatGPT sent 1,933 sessions to eolasprints.com: from 16 in that stub of a month to 212 in August. It is now our third-largest named referrer behind Google and Bing, and ahead of DuckDuckGo. These are our own store’s figures, not a report’s. - Public sector · Costs
What a civic platform actually costs
A municipal civic platform in Spain starts at €14,900 and passes €60,000 once there are many sources to integrate, paperwork with electronic signature and native apps. Almost nobody publishes that figure, so we are writing it down — we built SomosTorre for Torrelavega and we run it every day. - Operations · Costs
What it costs to keep software alive after launch
Keeping software in production costs, at our published prices, from €150 a month for a site or a store, from €450 a month once there is live data, integrations and native apps, and from €900 a month when a written SLA and out-of-hours on-call are needed. That spend is not optional and it does not start when something breaks: it starts on launch day. We run SomosTorre and our own store every day, so these figures are what it costs us. - Buying software · Judgement
How to read a software quote (and when not to build custom)
Three quotes for the same project can differ by an order of magnitude, and it is almost never because one is expensive: it is because they are quoting three different jobs. A software quote is judged on what it says about year two, about who owns the code, and about which assumptions it takes for granted — not on the figure on the front page. And sometimes the right reading is to build nothing: our custom platforms start at €30,000, and below that figure the honest answer is nearly always to buy something that already solves 80% of it.
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