Most small businesses end up renting their website: a template on a platform, a monthly fee that never stops, and a design that looks like everyone else's because it is everyone else's. This is the other option — a site or web app built for your business in modern code, fast because it was engineered rather than assembled, and handed over complete. The repository, the accounts, the deployment: yours from day one, with nothing that stops working if you stop paying someone.
The range runs from a fast marketing site to a full application with accounts, a database and an admin. What stays constant is that it is written rather than configured, and tested before it goes live.
Statically rendered where possible, images and fonts handled properly, and a Lighthouse score that holds up on a phone over cellular rather than only on your desk. Speed is a ranking factor and a conversion factor, so it is treated as a requirement rather than a bonus.
Accounts and authentication, databases, dashboards, file uploads, payments, admin interfaces, and role-based access. The kind of thing a no-code tool can start and then quietly cannot finish.
A focused first version that does one thing properly, deployed and instrumented, structured so version two is an extension rather than a rewrite. Most MVP pain comes from shortcuts in the data model, so that is where the care goes.
Content, products, prices, reviews and images editable by you without a deployment or a support ticket. Liora Studio's owner runs their entire storefront this way.
Server-rendered HTML, structured data, clean canonical and sitemap handling, and metadata that is generated rather than typed once and forgotten. Crawlers see the content, not an empty shell waiting for JavaScript.
Stripe, email delivery, CRMs, spreadsheets, analytics, and internal APIs — connected server-side with credentials that stay on the server, not exposed in the browser.
Four phases, each ending with something you can look at. No phase where you wait weeks and hope.
A conversation about what the site has to do and for whom, then a written scope: pages and features, what is explicitly excluded, what is needed from you, a delivery date, and a fixed price. Nothing is built before you approve it.
The build happens in working pieces on a live preview URL you can open at any point. Course corrections happen mid-build, while they are cheap, rather than at a reveal after the fact.
Real devices, not just a resized desktop window. Forms, payments, edge cases, accessibility and keyboard navigation, plus the automated tests where logic warrants them.
Deployed to your own hosting account, DNS switched with a rollback path, then every credential and repository transferred to you along with written notes on how to run it.
Both of these are real client work you can open in a browser, not mockups in a portfolio.
DM Express — a trucking recruitment site in React and TypeScript with light and dark themes and a structured driver application flow. 29 automated tests using equivalence partitioning, boundary value analysis, decision tables and state-transition testing, tuned to a sub-500KB first load.
Liora Studio — a full e-commerce storefront: product catalogue, image galleries, reviews, stock, a buy-now flow, and token-based personal offer links. Built on Next.js with Prisma and libSQL, Vercel Blob uploads, and an admin gated behind TOTP two-factor auth. The owner manages the whole store themselves at no monthly platform cost.
Websites from
$1,500
web apps & MVPs from $7,500
A marketing site starts at $1,500. Applications with accounts, databases and admin interfaces start at $7,500. Every project is a fixed quote agreed in writing before work starts — you know the number and the scope before you commit to either.
Discuss a websiteFor some businesses those are genuinely the right answer, and you will be told so rather than sold a custom build. They stop fitting when you need behaviour the platform does not offer, when the monthly fees outgrow the cost of owning the thing, or when performance and SEO start mattering commercially. A custom build costs more once and then costs nothing per month.
Typically Next.js, React and TypeScript, deployed on Vercel or Cloudflare, with Postgres or SQLite depending on the shape of the data. These are mainstream, well-documented choices specifically so another developer can pick the project up — the goal is that you are not locked to one person.
Yes, completely. The repository is transferred to your account, the hosting and service accounts are in your name, and there is no licence, no per-seat charge, and no ongoing fee required to keep the site running. If you never speak to me again, everything keeps working.
A marketing site is usually two to four weeks. Applications depend on scope — typically four to ten weeks for a first version. The written scope fixes the delivery date before any work begins, and progress is visible on a preview URL the whole way through rather than revealed at the end.
Yes, and that is the default rather than an upsell. Anything that should change regularly — text, images, products, prices, reviews — gets an admin interface so you do not need a developer or a deployment to change it.
Performance and technical SEO are part of the build, not a later project. Pages are server-rendered so crawlers see real HTML, structured data and metadata are generated from your content, and speed is tested on real devices over real networks. What no honest developer can promise is a specific ranking — that depends on your market and your competitors as much as on the code.
Yes. The work is remote by nature, and clients so far have been in different states. Being Sacramento-based just means an in-person kickoff is possible if you are local and want one.
Small fixes in the period right after launch are part of the project. Beyond that, further work is quoted per change or handled at $90/hour, whichever suits you better. There is no retainer, and no obligation to keep paying for a site that is finished.
Most projects touch more than one of these, and one engineer covering them means no hand-offs between the pieces.
Agents, RAG assistants and workflow automation, built with evaluations and guardrails.
Open pageNative iOS in SwiftUI or cross-platform, from a focused first version to a tested App Store release.
Open pageIndependent functional, regression and edge-case testing, with a written report your developers can act on.
Open pageDescribe the project and where it's stuck. You'll get an honest read on whether this is the right fit — including when the answer is that it isn't.