HOW DO WE START?
Send the site and one sentence about the goal. Within 24 hours you get a written assessment of what we actually think — including whether we believe the project is worth doing. No form gauntlet, no discovery questionnaire before a human looks at it.
WHO WILL WE ACTUALLY BE TALKING TO?
The people building your system. There is no account manager translating your requirements into a brief and translating our answers back into reassurance. You will know the names of the engineers and you can reach them directly.
WHERE IS YOUR TEAM BASED?
The United States, with the practice based in Austin, Texas. Work is not subcontracted to an offshore shop operating under our name. We are a service-area business — we work on-site and remote across the Austin metro, and remotely with clients nationwide.
DO YOU WORK WITH CLIENTS OUTSIDE AUSTIN?
Yes, and most engagements are remote. The Austin base matters for local clients who want people in the room occasionally; it is not a constraint on who we work with.
WILL YOU WORK ALONGSIDE OUR IN-HOUSE TEAM?
Frequently, and we would rather integrate with people who know your business than replace them. What matters is that the responsibility boundary is drawn clearly in the scope document, so nothing important falls into the gap between two teams.
DO YOU SIGN NDAS?
Yes, routinely, and usually before the scoping call if the project is sensitive. Send yours and we will review it rather than insisting on our own paper.
WHY DO YOU PUBLISH YOUR RATES?
Because withholding them wastes both parties' time. The standard agency practice is to reveal the number after you are emotionally invested in the relationship. If our rate does not fit your budget, a web page is a much cheaper place to discover that than a third meeting.
FIXED PRICE OR HOURLY?
Fixed, in nearly every case. The hourly rate is how the number is calculated; the number is what you agree to. Hourly billing transfers estimation risk to the client, who is least equipped to judge whether something should have taken nine hours or nineteen.
WHAT HAPPENS IF THE ESTIMATE WAS WRONG?
We absorb it. That is what fixed price means. The exception is genuine scope change — new requirements, or a third-party system that turned out to work differently than its vendor documented — and those are priced before the work happens, not after.
WHAT IS THE SMALLEST PROJECT YOU TAKE?
There is a stated minimum engagement, published on the pricing page. Below that threshold there is not enough room to do work we would put our name on, and you would be better served by someone whose model fits smaller jobs.
CAN YOU WORK TO A FIXED BUDGET?
Usually. Tell us the number and we will tell you honestly what fits inside it — including when the answer is that your budget does not cover the thing you actually need, in which case you should not spend it with us.
WHAT DO YOU BUILD WITH?
Modern JavaScript frameworks with server-side rendering, headless content management where a CMS is warranted, and edge infrastructure. The stack is chosen per project against what it has to do — not because it is what we used last time.
DO YOU USE WORDPRESS?
Not by default, and rarely by choice. WordPress is a reasonable answer for a simple content site with an editorial team already trained on it. It is a poor answer for anything with real integration requirements, and most of the sites we are asked to rescue are WordPress installations carrying fourteen plugins that each update on their own schedule.
WILL YOU USE A TEMPLATE OR THEME?
No. That is the entire premise of the practice. Custom code means the system does what your business needs rather than what a theme author anticipated, and it means nobody else can buy the same thing.
CAN YOU INTEGRATE WITH THE SYSTEMS WE ALREADY RUN?
Usually. ERPs, EHRs, CRMs, POS systems, student information systems, and payment processors are all normal work. We establish exactly what a vendor exposes during scoping rather than promising an integration and discovering the limitation in week six.
IS ACCESSIBILITY INCLUDED?
WCAG 2.1 AA is a build requirement, not an upgrade. It is measured before launch and the results are handed over. For public institutions and many organisations receiving federal funding the obligation is legal; for everyone else it is a straightforward commercial argument about not excluding paying customers.
HOW FAST WILL THE SITE BE?
Core Web Vitals are treated as a build constraint with a number attached, measured before launch and again after. You get both sets of figures. A performance claim nobody verified is decoration, and this site argues against decoration.
WILL WE LOSE OUR SEARCH RANKINGS IN A REBUILD?
Not if the migration is handled as its own discipline: URL mapping, redirect planning, structured data and internal linking preserved deliberately. Rankings are lost when a rebuild is treated as a design project and the redirects are an afterthought on launch day.
DO WE OWN THE SITE?
Completely. Code, content, and infrastructure configuration are yours, and documentation good enough to hand the project to another competent team is a deliverable. There is no proprietary platform and no hosting arrangement engineered to make leaving painful.
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER LAUNCH?
Whatever you want to happen. Monitoring, patching, and iteration based on real traffic if you keep us; a clean handover if you do not. This is the stage most agencies quietly skip, which is why so many sites decay within a year of going live.
DO YOU OFFER HOSTING?
Yes — managed hosting with monitoring, patching, tested backups, and incident response handled by the engineers who know your codebase. It is a fixed monthly figure, not a metered bill that surprises you in month three.
CAN YOU TAKE OVER A SITE SOMEBODY ELSE BUILT?
Yes, after a short audit so we know what we are agreeing to defend. If the platform underneath is genuinely unsalvageable we say so before taking your money, and the audit findings are yours either way.
WHAT IF WE WANT TO STOP WORKING WITH YOU?
You get everything produced to that point and you pay for the work completed. No exit clause, no hostage arrangement. A client who stays because leaving is expensive is not a reference.
THEN ASK US DIRECTLY.
You get a straight answer within 24 hours, from someone who would be working on the project — not a sales development representative reading from a sequence.