Broadcast and publisher software from the engineer who 10x'd Cuez
Editorial tools, live control surfaces, publishing workflows for media and broadcast operators. Senior engineer with real broadcast-SaaS experience. $3,499/mo.
Who this is for
Broadcaster, publisher CTO, or live-event media operator where live workflow tools are slow, CMS does not match editorial process, and scale spikes break the stack.
The pain today
- Live workflow tools are slow when every second matters
- CMS does not match editorial process and editors work around it
- Traffic spikes during major events break the stack
- Commercial media tools are expensive and do not fit workflow
- Integrations between editorial, ads, and analytics are fragile
The outcome you get
- Custom media or broadcast app on subscription at $3,499/mo
- Editorial tool, live control surface, or workflow app in 8 to 14 weeks
- Performance discipline from Cuez rescue (3s → 300ms, 10x faster)
- Scale architecture that survives peak events
- Integration with existing ads, analytics, CMS
Media and broadcast app constraints
Three constraints shape every media app. Latency — broadcast and live-event tools need sub-second response; editors cannot work with 3-second lags. Reliability — downtime during a live event is a career-ending event for the platform and the customer. Scale — major events bring 10x to 100x normal traffic concentrated in hours. Design under these constraints means proper caching, smart queuing, server-rendered critical paths, and horizontal scaling architecture. General-purpose SaaS engineering is not enough for serious media workloads.
Common apps I build
Editorial tools (content creation, review, scheduling, multi-editor workflows). Live control surfaces (rundown management, queue control, operator dashboards). Publishing workflows (article through review to publication with metadata, SEO, social). Broadcast automation (file-based playout, asset management, live switching integration). Audience-facing tools (live blog, comment systems, live polls). For internal-only ops (newsroom, control room), performance and reliability dominate. For audience-facing surfaces, performance and scale dominate.
Performance patterns (caching, CDNs, queues)
Server-rendered critical paths for audience-facing pages (news article, live blog). Edge caching through Cloudflare or Vercel for static and semi-static content. Redis for hot-path caching of editorial and session data. Message queues (BullMQ, AWS SQS) for background processing so user-facing requests stay fast. CDN image and video delivery with proper origin fallback. At Cuez I applied these patterns to take a broadcast-SaaS API from 3 seconds to 300 milliseconds with 40 percent infra cost reduction. The same stack choices work for media apps broadly.
Pricing and engagement model
Standard $3,499/mo. Pro $4,500/mo. Pro usually right for media clients — cadence matters, and performance work is often a primary deliverable. 14-day money-back guarantee. Cancel anytime. 100 percent code ownership under Work Made for Hire. Hosting for media apps is typically more expensive than general SaaS due to scale and reliability requirements — $500 to $5,000/mo depending on audience and features. For live-event-heavy operators, additional regional hosting or burst capacity may be warranted.
Case: Cuez — broadcast-SaaS API rescue
At Cuez by Tinkerlist in Belgium I rescued a broadcast-SaaS API blocking user growth — 3 seconds to 300 milliseconds, 10x faster, ~40 percent infra cost reduction. Stack: Laravel, Vue.js, TypeScript, AWS, FFMPEG. The work combined database query optimisation, caching strategy, and architecture changes. Same pattern applies to any media SaaS or publisher stack under stress. Performance work in media pays compounding returns — faster editorial tools raise editor productivity, faster audience pages raise engagement and ad revenue.
When a commercial media tool is enough
For standard editorial workflows, WordPress VIP, Arc XP, or Brightspot cover most needs. For standard broadcast automation, Adobe Premiere, Avid, Ross, and Imagine platforms are the default. Custom work pays back when commercial tools materially block workflow — unique editorial patterns, live-event formats commercial tools do not handle, or product-building (media SaaS startups competing with Cuez, Newsroom, etc). My target is operators where custom engineering materially affects speed, scale, or differentiation. Not a commercial-tool replacement for standard needs.
Recent proof
A comparable engagement, delivered and documented.
Rescued a slow API that was blocking user growth
Refactored the backend architecture, making the system far more responsive and scalable for the growing user base.
Frequently asked questions
The questions prospects ask before they book.
- Can you handle live-event traffic spikes?
- Yes. At Cuez I worked on broadcast-SaaS under live-event load. The architecture: aggressive caching at CDN edge, server-rendered critical paths, queue-based async processing, horizontal scaling on the origin tier. For big-event-heavy clients, we pre-scale hosting capacity before the event, test load patterns, and monitor closely during. Post-event, infrastructure scales back down. Hosting cost flexes with load; big events add short-term hosting cost but the infrastructure is built to handle it.
- What about uptime guarantees?
- I cannot offer formal SLAs beyond hosting providers' own (AWS, Vercel, Cloudflare typically 99.9 percent). What I provide: architecture that supports 99.9 percent uptime in practice (multi-AZ deployments, automated failover, health checks, runbooks for incidents). For clients needing higher reliability (mission-critical live events), we build active-active multi-region architecture. Standard pattern for Cuez-scale broadcast work — bolttech achieved 99.9 percent at the unicorn scale.
- Can you integrate with Google Ad Manager?
- Yes. GAM integration through the Publisher API for programmatic setup, plus Prebid.js for header bidding on the client side. Ad slots reserve with explicit sizes to prevent CLS. Ad loading deferred below the fold. For publishers running complex yield optimisation, I wire the infrastructure and integrate with your yield-management partner. Ad-ops strategy is your team's responsibility; I make sure the technical plumbing performs and preserves Core Web Vitals.
- How do you handle video delivery?
- Mux for most publisher and broadcast needs — professional quality, adaptive bitrate, analytics. Cloudflare Stream as a budget alternative. For live streaming, RTMP ingest to AWS IVS, Wowza, or Cloudflare Stream Live. Video costs pass through to you — budget based on video-minutes delivered. For publishers optimising video costs, cost-audit work is part of the engagement. At Cuez I worked with FFMPEG for broadcast media processing — the patterns are familiar.
- Can you integrate with existing CMS?
- Yes. WordPress (via REST API or headless), Arc XP, Brightspot, Contentful, Sanity — all integrate with custom apps via API. For publishers keeping their editorial CMS and building custom audience-facing surfaces, headless architecture is the typical pattern. For publishers building new editorial tools, the custom app can be the CMS itself or sit alongside an existing one. Choice depends on editor skill and migration risk.
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