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01 / The Studio

A studio of thirty‑some humans, quietly keeping the internet running.

We've been doing this since 2000. Battle Creek, Michigan, plus a handful of humans on three continents. We answer the phone. We sign our emails. We say no to the wrong projects so the right ones get our best work.

  • Founded2000
  • HeadquartersBattle Creek, MI
  • Studio size26 humans
  • WorkingWorldwide
The origin

We started as a custom CMS shop. We've never stopped writing software for a living.

In 2000, Steven Pignataro started corePHP as a custom content‑management shop in Battle Creek, Michigan. A few years later he co‑founded the open‑source project that became Joomla! It now powers around 2.5 million websites and won Best Free CMS four years in a row. We're proud of that. We don't lead with it.

What we lead with is the studio that grew out of it. Twenty‑some years later we're still here, still writing code, still answering email. We've taken work from Fortune 500 brands, scrappy nonprofits, government agencies, private equity firms, healthcare networks, real estate co‑ops, and a surprising number of breweries. We've also said no a lot. The two go together.

The studio runs on a simple thesis: technology should help people. If a tool, a website, or a campaign isn't quietly making someone's day a little easier, we built the wrong thing. So we keep rebuilding until it does.

How we work

Three rules. We don't break them.

  1. 01

    Technology that helps people.

    Every line of code should make a human's day a little easier. If a build doesn't pass that test, we rebuild it. This is the only rule that's ever stopped a project mid‑sprint.

  2. 02

    Best‑in‑class, or we don't ship it.

    We don't grade on a curve. The code is reviewed. The designs are critiqued. The campaigns are tested against numbers. If our work isn't measurably better than what came before, it isn't done.

  3. 03

    Phones get answered. Emails get replies.

    The unfashionable one. We respond inside one business day, always. You'll know who's working on what. When something breaks at 11 p.m., a human picks up. That's the actual differentiator.

Who's here

Twenty‑six humans. Named.

Not "an experienced team." Not "a global network of specialists." First names. Real humans. The complete roster of the studio, on one page, in order of bench size.

  1. 16 humans
    The build bench

    Engineering & QA.

    Adam · Ankita · Arturo · Hiral · James · Krushita · Mukesh · Nimesh · Parth · Pratik · Rajhans · Rehana · Roberto · Sandeep · Vinicius · Yogesh

    Full‑stack, front‑end, QA · WordPress to Laravel to React
  2. 4 humans
    The lights bench

    Leadership.

    Steven · Michael · Josh · Ashley

    Founders and directors · The ones who sign
  3. 3 humans
    The growth bench

    Marketing & SEO.

    Peter · Joe · Trent

    SEO, paid acquisition, conversion analysis · Math first
  4. 2 humans
    The PM bench

    Project Management.

    Andrea · Rodrigo

    Schedules, translation, the boring discipline that keeps projects on the rails
  5. 1 human
    The 24/7 bench

    Hosting & Security.

    Fotis

    Infrastructure, PCI, incident response · You only meet him when something breaks
The difference

What you're actually paying for.

Twenty‑five years of muscle memory.
We've shipped through the Joomla wars, the WordPress 5 rewrite, the Magento 1 to 2 migration, Shopify Plus going mainstream, and three Google algorithm cliff‑edges. There's almost no platform quirk we haven't seen.
One shop, every layer of the stack.
Strategy, design, code, marketing, hosting, support. You won't be triangulating between three vendors when something breaks. The person who built it is one floor away from the person hosting it.
Range that bites.
We've taken work from healthcare networks, breweries, nonprofits, real estate co‑ops, casinos, school districts and the occasional Fortune 500. Different industries break in different ways. We've learned most of them.
The unfashionable answer to most questions.
We will tell you when the cheaper option is the right one. We will tell you when the trendy stack is wrong for your business. We will tell you to keep your current site if it's working. That's a feature, not a bug.
Got something to look at?

Tell us about the project.

A real human will read it. You'll hear back inside one business day, even if it's just to say we're not the right fit. No automated drip. No AE chasing.