Nothing here is locked to us
What the site is made of, what it can talk to, and what happens to all of it if you stop working with us.
This page is here so that the answer to "what is it built with" is a page rather than a shrug. It matters for one practical reason: it decides what happens to your website if you stop working with us.
Sites are hand-written HTML, CSS and JavaScript, with content in a headless CMS and hosting on an edge network. There is 0 page builder runtime, 0 themes and 0 licences to renew. The repository, the hosting and the CMS are in your name, so any competent developer can pick the site up without us.
What the site is made of
- Hand-written components. HTML, CSS and a small amount of JavaScript, written for your site. No theme underneath and no builder on top.
- A headless CMS for the words and pictures, modelled as fields that match your business. See the CMS page.
- Edge hosting with SSL and a global network, so the page is served from near the visitor rather than from one country.
- Git, in a repository in your name, with the whole history rather than a zip file at the end.
- Structured data and a generated sitemap, produced by the build rather than maintained by hand.
The interesting constraint is what is missing. There is no framework runtime shipped to a visitor for a site that is essentially pages of text and pictures, because that is a cost your visitor pays for a convenience the developer enjoys.
What it can talk to
Most businesses need three or four of these and no more. Anything on this list is normal work rather than a special project.
- Contact forms, and the mailbox or CRM behind them
- Bookings and calendars, including the kind of booking flow this site uses
- Online payments and payment links
- Mailing list signup
- Visitor analytics, including the privacy-friendly kind
- Live chat
- Maps and directions
- Reviews and ratings
- A product catalogue, or a full headless storefront
- More than one language, with the hreflang work done properly
- A blog you write yourself
- Search across the site
If what you need is not on this list, ask on the call and you get a yes or a no in the same 30 minutes rather than a maybe in a document.
What you own, precisely
| Thing | Whose name | When |
|---|---|---|
| Source code and git history | yours | launch day |
| Hosting account | yours | launch day |
| CMS account and content | yours | launch day |
| Domain | yours | always, at your registrar |
| Design | yours | launch day |
What it costs to run
0 EUR a month to us. Your domain is roughly 10 to 15 EUR a year at your own registrar. Hosting and the CMS both sit inside a free tier at the volume most small businesses have, and if you outgrow it you pay the provider directly on your own account.
Why not the usual thing
The usual thing is a theme, a page builder and a stack of plugins. It is genuinely faster for the first afternoon, and it is where the cost turns up later: plugin subscriptions, updates that break the layout, and a page weight your visitor pays for on every visit.
The trade we make is the opposite one. The first version takes real work, and after that the site is small, fast, standard and yours. The argument in full is on the blog: hand coded versus page builders.