Built From Scratch

Built from scratch, not assembled from parts.

A complete WordPress site built for your requirements — no page builder, no premium theme, no thirty plugins covering the gaps. Fast because there is less of it, and maintainable because you can read it.

Starting at $1,500 starting
First response Within 48 hours
Scope Fixed, agreed upfront

The standard WordPress build is three compromises stacked on each other.

A premium theme, a page builder, and thirty plugins to cover what neither does. It gets a site live quickly, which is genuinely why it is the default — and every one of those layers then loads on every request, forever.

The compounding is the real cost. The theme cannot be updated without breaking the builder. Two plugins conflict and nobody can say which. Core Web Vitals fail, and no amount of caching fixes a problem that is structural rather than incidental.

Building from scratch inverts that. You are not paying for a general-purpose system configured down to your needs; you are paying for exactly your requirements and nothing else. There is less code, so there is less to go wrong, less to load, and less to understand when someone new picks it up.

Sound familiar?
  • Your site takes several seconds to load and caching has stopped helping.
  • You are afraid to run updates in case the whole thing breaks.
  • Simple content changes need a developer and a support ticket.
  • You are paying annual licences for a theme and builder you cannot leave.
  • Nobody can explain what half the installed plugins are for.
Get a Quote

Every engagement delivers all six

No tiered feature lists. The scope below is the standard engagement — anything beyond it gets quoted separately and agreed before we start.

Structure before pixels

We work out what the site needs to do and how content should be organised before anything is designed. Information architecture is what stops a site becoming unmaintainable at page forty.

Bespoke theme

Built to your design from scratch. No page builder, no parent theme, no framework you did not ask for — which is why it loads fast without a caching plugin doing the heavy lifting.

Editable without us

Content is editable in the block editor with the patterns and blocks your site actually uses. You change copy and images yourself; you call a developer for genuinely new functionality.

Performance as a requirement

Core Web Vitals targets agreed at scoping and verified before launch — treated as a build requirement rather than something to patch afterwards.

SEO foundations

Semantic markup, clean heading hierarchy, schema, sitemap, and Search Console connected at launch. The structural work that is expensive to retrofit and cheap to do once.

Configured and documented

Security hardening, automated backups, email deliverability, and analytics — set up correctly at the start, then written down so it is not tribal knowledge.

Four stages, no mystery

You know what happens at each point, what we need from you, and when.

1

Scope and architecture

What the site must do, how content is structured, and what success looks like. Fixed scope and fixed price agreed before any code — usually covering less than the initial brief, because we cut what will not earn its place.

2

Design

We build to your design if you have one, or to a designer you bring. If you have neither, we will say so plainly rather than improvising visual direction and charging you for the guess.

3

Build

Development on staging with weekly demos, so you watch it take shape instead of receiving one large reveal at the end when changes are expensive.

4

Launch and hand over

Cross-browser and device testing, performance verification, then launch at a time that suits your traffic. Documentation, a recorded walkthrough, and 30 days of support follow.

What's in the engagement

  • Fixed scope and fixed price agreed before build
  • Information architecture and content structure
  • Bespoke theme built without a page builder
  • Block editor patterns for the layouts you use
  • Core Web Vitals targets verified before launch
  • Semantic markup, schema and sitemap
  • Security hardening and automated backups
  • Email deliverability configured and tested
  • Analytics and Search Console connected
  • Staging environment with weekly demos
  • Documentation and recorded walkthrough
  • Full code ownership — no licences, no lock-in
  • 30 days of post-launch support

A good fit if

  • Businesses launching something new and wanting the foundation right
  • Sites that have outgrown a theme-and-builder setup
  • Anyone paying recurring licence fees they cannot escape
  • Owners who want to understand and own what they run

Probably not yet if

  • Sites that need to be live next week — a proper build takes weeks, and rushing it produces exactly the technical debt you would be hiring us to avoid.
  • Existing sites that mostly work — a rebuild is rarely the cheapest fix. An SEO audit will usually tell you whether the problem is structural or not.
from $1,500 starting

Hosting is not included. Bring your own, or we will source and configure it as a separate line on the quote.

Every engagement is scoped and priced individually against your site — the figure above is where projects like yours typically start, not a placeholder for an upsell. You get a fixed quote in writing before any work begins.

Request Your Quote

No obligation · First response within 48 hours · Timeline scoped to your project

Questions people ask before booking

For a site you will run for years, the builder is a permanent tax: every page carries its rendering overhead, updates couple the theme and builder together, and leaving means rebuilding. Builders are a reasonable choice when speed to launch dominates and the site is small. When the site is a business asset, building it properly costs more once and less thereafter.
It helps and it is not required. We build to your design, work with a designer you bring, or build from a clear reference if you know what you want. What we will not do is quietly invent visual direction and bill you for guesswork — if design is the gap, we will say so and help you fill it before quoting the build.
It depends entirely on scope, which is why we quote timeline alongside price rather than publishing a number here. A focused marketing site is a different job from a site with custom post types, integrations and a content migration. You get both figures in writing before committing.
Because bundling it makes you dependent on us for something you should control, and marking it up would be charging you for a service we are not adding value to. You own the hosting account and the domain. If you want us to source and configure it, that is a separate, visible line on the quote.
Yes — that is a build requirement, not an afterthought. Content, images and page structure are editable in the block editor using patterns built for your site. The line is functionality: adding a new page is yours, adding a booking system is a developer job.
You take everything. The code is yours outright, documented, with no licence keys or proprietary framework. We would rather earn the next project than rely on the cost of leaving.

Tell us about your site.
We'll tell you what it needs.

Send us a few details and we'll come back within 48 hours to scope it properly.

No obligation · No sales sequence · A real person replies