In five working days you will be looking at your own site, running.
This business is new and I am not going to pretend otherwise. I cannot show you a wall of client logos or hand you three references to ring. So I would rather not ask you to take my word for any of it.
Instead, five working days after we agree what you need, I send you a private link. Behind it is a working prototype of your own project with your branding on it. You can log into it, click through it, put it in front of someone else and try to break it. Not a wireframe, not a slide, not a mood board. The actual thing, early and rough, on your phone.
An agency will still be writing the proposal. You will already know whether you want to work with me, because you will have seen what I produce rather than what I claim.
The prototype is a fixed fee, agreed before I start, and it comes off the price of the build if you go ahead. If you decide not to, that fee is all you have spent and there is nothing further to pay.
What I build
Sites that have to actually do something. Paid memberships and gated access, Stripe payments and subscriptions, content that unlocks on a timetable, admin screens that a normal person can use without training, booking and webinar delivery, and transactional email that lands in the inbox rather than the spam folder.
Almost all of it is Next.js and Supabase, which is the same stack running my own business, dadhugsforyoursoul.com. That site has thousands of paying customers on it and I built and maintain every part of it. You are not paying me to learn on your project.
How it works
We agree a fixed price before I start, with a deposit up front, and that price does not move unless you change what you have asked for.
After the prototype, the build carries on the same way it started. You keep the private link, I keep putting work behind it, and you tell me what is wrong as it appears rather than at the end. There is no long silence in the middle where you wonder what you are paying for.
I take one build at a time, which is why they take weeks instead of months.
At sign off, when the final payment clears, the whole thing transfers into your name: the code, the repository, the hosting, the database, the payment account. Nothing is held back and there is no fee for any of it. I hold the repository while the work is in progress, which I will tell you to your face is for my protection rather than yours, and it ends the day the build does.
Builds start at £7,000, and most sit somewhere between that and £50,000 depending on how much the thing has to do.
Why it is faster
There is one person on your build and it is the person you spoke to. Nothing has to be explained twice, nothing waits in a queue behind another client, and there is no account manager translating what you said into a ticket and losing half of it on the way.
Most of what you are likely to need, I have already built once for myself. I know where those things break, because they have broken on me, at six in the morning, with real customers watching.
What I will not do
- I am not the cheapest and I am not trying to be. If price is the only thing that matters, there are plenty of people who will quote you less and I would rather you used them.
- I do not bill by the hour, because that arrangement rewards me for being slow.
- I will not put you on a template and describe it as bespoke.
- I will not take your project hostage. Once the build is paid for, everything goes into your name and I keep no access, no accounts and no leverage. There is no handover fee and no charge for leaving.
- If I think what you are asking for will not work, or that you could buy something off the shelf for a tenth of the price, I will tell you before you pay me rather than afterwards.