The engineering behind YourBOT: How I built a UK first AI platform

CREATED BY STEFFI LEWIS Published: 27/11/2025 @ 09:00AM #YourBOT #SaaSFounders #UKTech #MadeInTheUK #AIEngineering #DevStory

Every SaaS has a story, but YourBOT's begins in a place most people wouldn't expect: a Classic ASP codebase, an SQL Server back-end, and a developer with more than three decades of experience building web platforms long before 'SaaS' was even a thing ...

AI chatbot platform UK, Technology connects us, Unleashing our minds

While Silicon Valley likes to brag about frameworks that didn't exist five minutes ago, YourBOT was built the old-school way - by someone who knows their tools inside out.It grew from the simple idea that UK small businesses deserved an AI chatbot solution that didn't require a computer science degree just to get started.

Building it meant rethinking what an AI
chatbot platform could look like!

The priority has to be usability, stability, and speed rather than shiny complexity. It also meant weaving modern AI capabilities into a familiar, rock-solid foundation that has powered business systems for years.

At the core sits Classic ASP and SQL Server - a pairing that's battle-tested, fast, and endlessly flexible. While newer frameworks might trend on Twitter for five minutes, ASP still offers something invaluable: total control. Every line of logic, every CRON task, every query, every data-handling routine has been designed, handwritten, tested, and refined.

The database structure powering YourBOT has grown into a smart, lean engine with tables for bots, chats, leads, conversations, FAQs, queues, charts, URLs, RSS feeds, triggers, nudges, and everything in between. Behind the scenes, each botlet - the term for individual bots - sits as a fully isolated entity that can be trained, configured, and deployed in minutes.

One of the biggest engineering challenges was getting
the Stripe integration just right!

It needed to be seamless, secure, predictable, and flexible enough to power the subscription model for hundreds (and eventually thousands) of bots. Handling subscriptions, upgrades, downgrades, prorations, limits, and Stripe Climate contributions required a custom billing logic that plays nicely with the YourBOT system at every step. The result is a billing engine that feels effortless to users, but took an architect's precision to build.

Then came the metrics engine: a full analytics system that captures every question, every reply, every lead, every page host, and every country. It runs through CRON tasks on a dedicated subdomain, processing chats overnight and preparing the charts users see on their dashboards. These tasks handle queue processing, daily summaries, lead delivery, and conversation structuring, all while keeping the central YourBOT platform running at full speed.

Another key engineering component is the automatic JSON generator that produces structured data for websites. This isn't a plugin or a borrowed library - it's a custom-built generator that reads each bot's FAQs, URLs and RSS feed items then builds JSON-LD, and injects it safely into the client's page. It gives websites a genuine SEO bump without any extra work, and it's one of the most quietly powerful features of the whole platform.

But the real magic is the botlets!

The concept was simple: give every website its own tiny AI brain that can be trained, customised, and deployed independently. No shared confusion, no tangled datasets, no content crossover. Just clean, self-contained AI instances that learn what their owners teach them. This architecture is why YourBOT feels so fast, so predictable, and so easy to use.

Building YourBOT has been both an engineering challenge and a deeply personal achievement. It's the culmination of a 32-year coding career, tied together with modern AI integrations, careful design choices, and a determination to build something genuinely useful for UK businesses.

It proves that innovation isn't about chasing the newest tech stack - it's about knowing how to use the tools that work and bending them into something fresh.

The engineering is ongoing, the platform is expanding, and the story isn't finished yet. But one thing is certain: YourBOT was made in the UK, built with heart, powered by experience, and designed to help small businesses thrive.

Until next time ...

STEFFI LEWIS
The SaaSy Coder - Creator of sBlogIt! YourPCM & YourBOT

Share the blog love ...

Buffer Facebook Twitter Linkedin Pinterest WhatsApp #YourBOT #SaaSFounders #UKTech #MadeInTheUK #AIEngineering #DevStory

About Steffi Lewis ...
I bring over 30 years of experience in web development. From creating my first website for the Open University in 1993, through being part of the dot com boom, to my explorations in SaaS and AI over the last few years, my journey has been a rich tapestry of web projects, big and small, both funded and bootstrapped. My head is in the cloud, my heart belongs to the web, and my soul is filled with such beautiful code 💗

More blog posts for you to enjoy ...
		Welcome to YourBOT: The AI chatbot built for UK small businesses Running a small business in the UK isn't easy. Between customers, paperwork, marketing, late-night admin, and the never-ending ''I'll just sort this quickly'' jobs, most small business owners simply don't have the time or the...
		How the YourBOT Leadgen feature turns visitor chats into real leads Most chatbots are brilliant at answering questions ... and absolutely terrible at turning those conversations into real leads. YourBOT doesn't make that mistake. Its built-in LeadGen Engine sits quietly in the background, wat...
		How YourBOT's multi-source knowledge system works with your data YourBOT's brain isn't one big pot of mush where every scrap of text gets thrown in and hoped for the best. Instead, it uses a structured 'multi-source knowledge system' built around five distinct pillars: FAQs, URLs, RSS, Sit...
		Chatbots for web designers and marketing agencies If you run a web design studio or a marketing agency, you already know what your clients want. They don't care about tokens, APIs, or the number of layers in an AI model. They care about results ......
		YourBOT smart AI chatbots: one dashboard to rule them all Your clients' website visitors expect instant answers. They want information while they're already on the site, not hours or days later via email. Fast, relevant responses keep them engaged and reduce the chance of losing the...
		Small Business Owners: The new YourBOT wizard makes building your chatbot even easier! If you've ever tried to build a chatbot and thought,"Well, that got complicated quickly" (usually somewhere between settings screens and mild existential dread), you'll be pleased to know those days are officially over. The n...
		Turn every client website into a 24/7 lead capture machine For most web designers, building a great-looking website is only part of the job. Clients increasingly want more than clean layouts and responsive pages, they want enquiries, leads and proof that their website is actually doi...
		Why YourBOT works so well for UK small business owners Running a small business in the UK isn't for the faint-hearted. One minute you're the marketing team, the next you're doing invoices, juggling orders, chasing leads, posting on socials, and wondering when you last had a day o...

Other bloggers you may like ...
		Coming Soon: smart document capture in Xero for faster bookkeeping Posted by Alison Mead on https://blog.siliconbullet.com Smart document capture is about to make getting documents into Xero much quicker. Upload, email, or snap a photo, and Xero will read it, prefill the r ...
		What does the duty on electric cars in 2028 mean for drivers? Posted by Roger Eddowes on https://blog.essendonaccounts.co.uk Wondering how the duty on electric cars will actually be charged from 2028? It's a mileage-based levy tied into the existing DVLA system, with estimat ...
		How to be happy retiring from your consultancy, without losing yourself Posted by Jacky Sherman on https://www.jackysherman.com What makes a happy retirement when you've been in consultancy for years? It's less about stopping work and more about designing your identity, boundar ...
		Why serviced accommodation in Milton Keynes outperforms hotels for modern work trips Posted by Emily Freeman on https://blog.shortstay-mk.co.uk If a hotel room feels like living out of a suitcase, there's a far better option. Our serviced accommodation in Milton Keynes offers space, privacy an ...