The web doesn’t have to be this slow.

In 2015, the median home page on a phone weighed about 845 KB. By 2025 it was 2,362 KB, nearly three times heavier, according to the HTTP Archive. A lot of that is code: the median phone home page now loads 632 KB of JavaScript for scripts, trackers, page builders and plugins, much of it on every visit whether it’s used or not.

Google counts a page as fast when its main content appears within 2.5 seconds. On phones, nearly 4 in 10 sites miss that mark. People leave slow pages, and search engines rank them lower, so a slow site turns customers away before they see what you offer.

WordPress runs about two in five websites. It’s a capable tool, and for large publications or online stores it can be the right one. Often, though, it’s picked because it’s the name people know.

For a typical business site, a few pages about who you are, what you do and how to reach you, WordPress brings a lot along for the ride. A database and server code run every time someone visits. A theme and a stack of plugins add weight, and each one needs updates and can become a security hole. Owners end up paying for that upkeep, in money or in time, for features they never asked for.

The pages themselves rarely change. Building them fresh on every visit is like reprinting your menu each time someone walks in.

We start from what the site actually needs to do. For most businesses, that means building it with Astro: every page is prepared ahead of time as plain, lightweight HTML. There’s no database to break into, almost nothing to patch, and very little for a phone to download.

If you want to publish articles or send a newsletter yourself, we build on Ghost, a modern publishing platform with a simple editor, built-in newsletters and memberships, and none of the plugin upkeep. And if a project needs more, like bookings or a client portal, we build that part properly instead of bolting on another plugin.

Less to run means less to maintain, which is why we can charge less: a website starts at $300, and hosting at $25 a month.

And the site is yours. Hosting with us is optional, and if you ever want to move, we’ll hand over everything you need.

Des Moines is full of small businesses that need a good website, but not an agency price tag or a monthly bill for features they’ll never use. That’s who we build for.