Frequently asked questions

Local service businesses, small-to-mid-size brands, and growing SMBs. Plumbers, dentists, gyms, restaurants, consultants, boutique e-commerce — anyone who needs a real website that actually performs but doesn't want to pay an agency $25,000 upfront and then maintain it themselves. If you're a Fortune 500 or need HIPAA-compliant medical apps, we're probably not the right fit.

Yes, especially at the Business tier. Starter works well for pre-revenue or validation-stage startups. Once you're doing real revenue or raising a round, Business is usually the right fit.

You totally could, and sometimes that's the right call. Where freelancers come up short is the "after" — once the site ships, they're gone. When something breaks in six months, you're starting from scratch finding someone new. Our monthly fee is for that: a relationship with a developer who already knows your site, instead of a one-off transaction and then paying again when something needs fixing. If your site will stay mostly static and you won't touch it for a couple years, a freelancer is fine. If the site actually drives your business, the ongoing piece is where subscription pays off.

Starter is $299 setup + $149/month ($299 + $1,490/year on annual). Business is $999 setup + $349/month ($999 + $3,490/year on annual — most popular). Pro is $2,499 setup + $799/month ($2,499 + $7,990/year on annual). Ownership — full code repo, no subscription — is $9,500 one-time. Annual gets you two months free on every tier (~13% off). Full breakdown at /pricing.

Compared to a $30/month site-builder subscription, yes. Wix and Squarespace are great for a lot of businesses — if your site doesn't need to drive much revenue, genuinely stay there. What we build performs at a level those tools can't match: faster, ranks better on Google, and customizable past the ceiling DIY platforms hit after about 18 months. We're the middle path between $30 tools and $8,000 agency retainers, because that gap is where most small businesses actually live.

Maybe — let's talk about what you'd drop. If it's a tier's flagship feature, we'll move you down to the right tier rather than custom-carving a price. We deliberately don't do custom pricing: three public tiers (Starter, Business, Pro) plus the one-time Ownership option. That's it. Custom pricing invites haggling on every client forever and we'd rather spend that energy building your site.

Likely you did — the market has a huge range. The question isn't really price, it's what you want at the 12-month mark. Cheap sites nobody maintains are cheap once and expensive forever: dependencies break, security patches don't get applied, content gets stale, and then you're re-hiring someone to start over. The subscription model exists so that problem doesn't show up. If you genuinely need the cheapest possible build and don't care about the rest, we're not the right fit and that's fine — but be honest with yourself about which bucket you're in.

Starter tier: 1–2 weeks from kickoff to launch. Business tier: 2–4 weeks. Pro tier: 3–6 weeks. Ownership builds: 4–8 weeks depending on scope. Faster than traditional agency timelines because we start from production-ready templates and customize, rather than designing from scratch.

Four phases. (1) Discovery call — 30 minutes, no obligation, we figure out if we're a fit. (2) Brief + kickoff — you tell us your content, brand, and goals. (3) Build — we customize a template for you, iterate together, ship. (4) Ongoing — once you're live, we host it and keep improving it at your subscription tier's pace.

Every tier includes unlimited small revisions during the initial build (before go-live) and ongoing revisions after launch scaled to your tier: Starter ~30 min/month, Business ~2 hours/month, Pro unlimited. We find that clear briefs and good communication make "revision count" a non-issue — it's there as a cap, not a budget to burn through.

Light touches yes — as part of any tier we'll help with color, typography, layout. Full brand identity work (logo, brand book, style guide from scratch) is scoped separately. If you already have a logo and rough brand direction, you're set. If you need a brand built from zero, we'll price that as add-on work alongside your subscription.

Cancel anytime — no contracts, no fees. Your site stays live for 30 days after cancellation (grace window), your content is exportable throughout, your domain is always yours. If you want the source code to take to another developer, the Buyout is $9,500 one-time and includes migration help. Full terms at /agreement.

The whole model is built around you being able to leave without penalty. Cancel anytime, no fees, your site stays live for a 30-day grace window, and you get your content on the way out. If we ever shut down, we hand you everything plus 60 days of migration help — that's in the written agreement, not a verbal promise. Subscription pricing only works if we keep earning it every month. If we're not, you shouldn't have to pay for it.

You own your domain, your content, and the text/images on every page — always. While you're subscribed, we own the code repo (that's what the subscription pays for: hosting + maintenance + improvements). If you want the code itself — to take to another developer, run it yourself, or just feel more comfortable — the Ownership buyout is $9,500 one-time and you get the full repo plus migration help. No lock-in, no drama.

One live client site so far — Adventure Camper Company, a Twin Cities RV-rental business — plus a larger in-house project (Intlist.org) we built to prove out the full stack, which earned ~20M organic impressions and five major press features with zero ad spend. Both case studies are at /work. We're being direct: we're early. The work we ship today is the same quality as a year from now — the difference is you'd get the best attention from a small studio that needs the win.

Short answer: no, and here's why. Our process is designed around building together, not presenting and being graded. If you want to see what a finished site on our stack looks like, the templates at /templates are live demos of the exact output. If you want real client work, /work has the case studies. If that's not enough information to decide — honestly, we probably aren't the right fit for each other, and that's fine. Spec work filters out every serious client and attracts the worst ones.