How cookie‑cutter shops overcharge for underbuilt sites
We’re pulling back the curtain. If your “custom” site was delivered in days, there’s a good chance it’s a $49 template with your logo on it — and AI‑generated copy you paid premium rates for. The competition will hate us for spelling this out, but they’re competitors, not colleagues. The AI age exposes shortcuts; we build the software those shortcuts pretend to be.
The usual playbook (we’ve audited dozens)
- Install WordPress (free) on a shared host.
- Buy a theme ($49) and import the demo content.
- Swap logo/colors and change a few images.
- Ask AI for copy and paste it into the template.
- Invoice thousands and call it “custom design”.
That’s not engineering. That’s assembly — and a bill you shouldn’t have to pay.
Why this hurts you
- Slow pages, broken plug‑ins, security holes
- No ownership: hard to migrate, fragile updates
- SEO and accessibility left as an afterthought
Meanwhile you get recurring fees for “maintenance” that mostly means clicking update and hoping nothing breaks.
What we do instead
- Audit‑clean, Core Web Vitals A
- Strict types, secure sessions, real CI/CD
- Own your stack, avoid lock‑in, clear docs
We build software, not slide decks. If AI writes copy, you’ll know. If a template is right, we’ll price it accordingly.
Spot the template in 60 seconds
Red flags
- Theme name shows in page source
- Dozens of generic plug‑ins loaded
- Same layout you’ve seen on five other sites
Ask these questions
- What’s our deploy process? Can we roll back?
- Where are logs, metrics, uptime?
- How do we export content and migrate?
If you want a template, cool. Don’t pay custom prices for it.
We’re happy to implement a theme when it fits — quickly and fairly. But if you need performance, reliability, and ownership, we’ll build something worth paying for.
