Answers to common questions.

The numbers on the pricing page are turn-key — design, build, copy guidance, mobile, SEO setup, and revisions. No nasty surprises.

Things that aren’t included: the domain itself, ongoing hosting (see care plans), professional photography, and copywriting if you want us to write the words for you. We can quote those separately or refer you to people we trust.

50% deposit to start. Final 50% after website launch.

For Signature builds (longer projects), we can split into thirds — start, milestone, launch — if that helps cashflow.

Quick rule of thumb:

• Spark if your budget is under $3,150. Small, sharp, and slick — just smaller in scope.
• Studio if you want to edit your own content and your budget is $3,900–$7,200. This is where most clients land.
• Signature if your website is genuinely a competitive advantage — premium services, design-forward brands — and you want it to look and feel exceptional.

See the pricing page for the full breakdown, or just have a chat with me — 15 minutes is usually enough to know.

Every website tier is hosted on Cloudflare — fast, secure, global:

• Spark — hosted on Cloudflare.
• Studio — hosted on Cloudflare.
• Signature — hosted on Cloudflare, with a monthly Care plan.

Online stores are hosted by Shopify, and apps run on Cloudflare too. Whichever build, you keep ownership of the domain and the content. If you ever switch hosts, the content moves with you.

Template platforms trade your performance for their convenience. You inherit their bloat — scripts, plugins and page-builder overhead loading on every page whether you use them or not. You inherit their restrictions — your design squeezed into someone else’s template, your ideas capped by what the platform allows. And you never fully control the result: customisation hits a wall, optimisation hits a ceiling, and when the platform changes, your site changes with it.

Every Pixelsmith build is custom, on a modern stack (Astro + Cloudflare). Pages load in milliseconds, there’s nothing to patch and no plugins to break, and there’s no ceiling — the design, the performance and the code are yours, built to do exactly what your business needs and tuned as far as we want to take it.

Roughly:

• Spark — 1 to 2 weeks
• Studio — 3 to 5 weeks
• Signature — 4 to 6 weeks

The biggest variable is content readiness. If you have copy and photos lined up, we can move fast. If we’re building those alongside the design, add a couple of weeks.

1. Free 15-min chat. We work out if it’s a fit. No pressure.
2. Brief and estimate. I send you a written estimate — a ballpark, not a binding quote — based on what we discussed.
3. Kick-off. Once you’re in, we have a longer call to lock in scope, content, timeline — and the final quote, if anything’s shifted from the estimate. 50% deposit.
4. Design + build. I show you progress along the way, not just at the end.
5. One revision round. You give feedback, I fix things, we land it.
6. Launch. Site goes live, I train you on the editor (if applicable), final invoice.
7. Stay in touch. I’m around for ongoing support, edits, or a Care plan whenever you want one.

Yes — fully. The domain, the content, the design. You own it all. If you ever want to leave Pixelsmith, you take everything with you. No lock-in, no ransom, no awkward handover.

Depends on the tier:

• Spark — no. Pixelsmith handles updates (small fee per update or a Care plan).
• Studio — yes, fully. The Sanity editor is clean and genuinely easy. We’ll spend up to 30 minutes training you at handover.
• Signature — yes, on the parts that matter (case studies, blog posts, FAQs). The bits that need careful design (hero, layout decisions) stay in code.

A few options:

• Edit it yourself (Studio and Signature tiers) — most small content changes you can do in the editor.
• Pay-as-you-go — flick me a message, I’ll quote it. Small updates are usually turned around in a day or two.

There’s no “support contract” with weasel-word fine print. Whatever works for you.