Our story
Built inside an agency. Used there every day.
Aether Web Media is a digital agency. Like most agencies that grow past a handful of people, we ended up running on a patchwork: leads in one spreadsheet, invoices in another tool, projects on a board nobody updated, client feedback scattered across email, and the real state of the business in a few people’s heads.
Every tool we tried was good at its one job and blind to the rest. The CRM didn’t know what we’d invoiced. The invoice tool didn’t know about the hours. Nothing could tell us which clients were actually profitable.
So we built the system we wanted, one module at a time, and moved the whole agency onto it as each one was ready.
How it was built
In the order an agency needs it.
Phase 0
Platform
Sign-in, roles and an audit trail, before a single feature. Everything after this inherits the same rules.
Phase 1
Sales
Clients, the pipeline, proposals with e-signature, and lead forms that work on any website.
Phase 2
Delivery
Projects, boards, a timeline with dependencies, timers, workload, SOPs and templates.
Phase 3
Finance
GST invoices, PDFs, payments, a ledger, an email outbox and retainers that bill themselves.
Phase 4
Client portal
Progress, files, approvals, requests and invoices, with internal notes kept internal.
Phase 5
Insights and content
MRR, churn, forecast, utilisation, profitability, and a content calendar with client approval.
Phase 6
Everywhere
An installable app with push, a faster shell, a daily AI brief, Aeth AI and an MCP server.
What we believe
Five rules we built it on.
01
One source of truth
Every client, project, invoice and conversation lives in one place. No more toggling between tools to answer a simple question.
02
Security by role
People only see what their role allows. A designer can’t stumble into the books, and a client can’t see internal notes.
03
Automation over manual work
Retainer billing, email delivery and the numbers happen on a schedule, so the team can do client work.
04
Client transparency
The portal gives clients real visibility into their work without a phone call or an email.
05
Money as truth
Invoices, payments and the ledger use exact amounts and are GST-compliant from day one.
Who it’s for
Service agencies of up to about fifteen people and fifty clients: past the point where spreadsheets work, short of needing an enterprise suite.
See the system we run on.