/akˈsəʊdəs/
Retire the .mdb. Keep the business logic.
Acçodus™ migrates Microsoft Access estates to modern web applications — schema, forms, reports, macros, VBA — without losing the decades of operational know-how encoded inside them. A productised, fixed-price service from Digital Spark.
Microsoft Access isn't legacy because the logic is broken.
It's legacy because the platform is. The forms, queries, macros and VBA inside a typical SME Access estate represent decades of how the business actually runs — the rules, the exceptions, the quiet workarounds that no documentation captures. That's not technical debt. That's institutional knowledge.
The problem isn't the logic. It's that you can't run it on a phone, you can't trust the file-share, you can't find anyone who knows Access any more, and the cyber insurer is starting to ask awkward questions. Acçodus™ is built to respect the logic and replace the platform.
How Acçodus™ works.
Three phases, each independently priced. You can stop after any phase. Phase 3 is optional. Most customers complete Phase 2 in 8-12 weeks.
Phase 1
Discovery Scan
Scope your estate in a week.
Upload the front-end of your Access database — the .accdb or .mdb file containing the forms, reports, queries, macros and VBA. No data needed — we only analyse the code. You get a scoping report with risk areas, effort estimate, and a fixed Phase 2 quote.
From £250 · Currently Free
Limited cohort — register for the Free Discovery Scan Queue.
Phase 2
Migration
Replicate Access on a modern stack.
Port schema, forms, reports and business logic to a modern, UK-hosted web application. Parallel-run alongside Access, or hard-cutover. Users get a browser app; data gets cloud-grade resilience.
Typical from £6,000
Fixed price determined after the Discovery Scan — no surprises.
Phase 3
Enhancements (optional)
Now you're free from Access constraints.
With the platform modernised, the door opens to capabilities Access could never reach — proper mobile access, multi-site federation, dealer / customer portals, DSX-bridged on-prem hardware, and AI augmentation (WhatsApp agents, automated reporting, inbound-email ingestion). AI is one example, and a great one.
Scoped per ambition
Treated as a Forge engagement once defined.
Why Acçodus™.
Four principles the methodology is built on. They're also what most generic "Access migration" offers miss.
Fidelity
Keep the logic.
VBA, macros, joins, cascading rules — ported faithfully. Your business runs the same way, just on a better foundation.
Platform
Modern, maintainable.
A standard, well-supported web stack — proven in production for UK SMEs. No lock-in to a proprietary low-code tool you can't escape later.
Continuity
Parallel running.
Run the new app alongside Access until you trust it. Zero-downtime switchover when you're ready.
UK-based
No offshoring.
UK-registered, UK-delivered. One small team owns the migration end-to-end.
The Access clock
Microsoft hasn't killed Access. But the clock is ticking.
Microsoft hasn't formally retired Microsoft Access — but the direction of travel is unmistakable, and one specific deadline matters for most UK SMEs running it today.
13 October 2026
Access 2021 loses all support.
The version most SMEs are running today reaches official end of support. No more security patches, no more bug fixes, no more help from Microsoft. Cyber insurers and IT auditors start asking awkward questions the moment that lapses.
9 October 2029
Access LTSC 2024 — the runway.
If you upgrade to the LTSC 2024 release, you buy yourself three more years. After that, the same conversation comes around again — and you still haven't moved off the platform.
Investment
Microsoft has stopped investing.
No major innovation in Access for over a decade. The Database Compare tool retires June 2026. Microsoft's roadmap is Power Apps, Dataverse and Azure — Access doesn't fit that future. You're running mission-critical operations on a tool Microsoft no longer cares about.
The harder truth
Every year, migration gets harder.
Fewer Access developers in the market. Fewer integrations updated. More workarounds piling up. Your Access app isn't going to break tomorrow — but the cost of leaving it where it is keeps quietly compounding.
Acçodus™ moves you to a maintained, modern platform on a timeline that suits you — not Microsoft's.
Hosting — your call.
An Acçodus™ migration produces a real web application. How it gets hosted and managed afterwards is up to you. We support three hosting models — full hand-over of the source and docs, hybrid management where DS looks after specific parts, or hands-free where DS owns the whole stack to your specified resilience.
See the three hosting models →Plays nicely with DSX.
Many Access apps depend on local hardware — a label printer, a barcode scanner, a network share. The cloud-only answer is to lose those capabilities; the honest answer is to keep them, just bridged properly.
When an Acçodus™ migration needs the office floor, we bring in DSX — our companion on-prem bridge. Silent printing, secure file-write to shared drives, and (coming next) scanners, scales and the legacy ODBC bridge. Outbound-only, no firewall holes.
Ready to retire the .mdb?
Start with a Discovery Scan. We'll tell you exactly what's in your estate, what it will take to migrate, and a fixed price to do it.
Acçodus™ is a trade mark of Digital Spark Ltd.