Machine
Magic

Old Macintosh animation by Angelica Blevins

The Web design & development practice of Jennie Robinson Faber and Henry Faber. We make things with our own communities, and with nonprofits, co-ops, collectives, and artists.

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Web site + application development

We design and build fast, secure, accessible Web sites and applications that:

  • you own outright – the code, the content, the data, everything
  • are built for what you do, so nothing gets squeezed into a template
  • give people something to do besides read
  • cost very little to run, and keep running for years

We specialize in moving sites off corporate platforms like Squarespace, Wix, and WordPress. We promise you can do better.

Own your content

Most platforms rent you your own Web site. They charge monthly fees, tack on per-user pricing, hide features you need behind higher tiers, and their export button, if you can find it, gives you half your data back in a format you can’t use. We build a custom stack with you instead, and you own it, so it can grow and sustain your work.

We use Nuxt, a free and open source framework, and plain JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. If we disappeared tomorrow, your site would keep working and any developer could maintain it. The same goes for the host. Your site is a folder of files in a repository you own, so moving it somewhere else is just a day’s work.

Putting up a Web site is easy now. Keeping one secure and working five years later is… not.

Recent clients

Web sites, member management systems, donation integrations, event applications, and more.

  • Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony
  • Tranzac
  • Pangaea Consultants
  • Baby Ghosts
  • Infinite Ammo
  • Weird Ghosts

Process

It’s 2026. We’re going to assume you already have a site. Maybe you built it, maybe you inherited it, maybe you’ve lost touch with whoever made it. We start by finding out what you’ve actually got on your hands.

Our process: phase, what it includes, and how long it takes
Phase Duration

Planning:

  • What’s running now: Who has the logins, whether the domain and DNS are still registered to someone who works with you, how security and backups are handled, whether your email is reaching inboxes, where the site falls short of WCAG 2.1 AA and where it fails on discoverability
  • Discussion of your vision and requirements (2 hours)
  • Deliverable: A plain-language report, a prioritized fix-list, and a quote. It’s yours to act on, with or without us.
  • We’ll also tell you whether the site is worth keeping.

The fee’s the same either way. If we rebuild, this work carries into the build; if we’re just taking over the site you have, it’s most of the job!

1-2 weeks

Building:

  • Design, development, and deployment of your custom Web site, built to WCAG 2.1 AA
  • Moving your content off whatever it’s on now
  • Domain and hosting accounts set up in your organization’s name
  • Domain registration or transfer
  • Training and reference documentation
  • Testing, bug fixes, sector research, and launch planning

A migration is a build. Unfortunately, there’s no button that moves a site from one platform to another without breaking it.

2-6 months

Support:

  • Security updates, domain renewals, backups, and uptime monitoring
  • We watch the hosting account and tell you before anything needs attention. The bill and the login stay yours.
  • Quick fixes included at no extra cost, priority response when something breaks
  • Planning calls, analytics reviews, and a discounted rate for new features

Works the same whether we built the site or adopted it. (If we didn’t build it, we’ll bring it up to standard first.)

Annual

Things stay patched, renewed, and backed up. If something breaks, it’s our problem.

What we’ll stand behind

Before we take on a site, it has to clear a bar:

  • backups exist, and someone has restored one at least once
  • the domain and DNS are under your organization’s control
  • dependencies can still be patched
  • email actually reaches inboxes
  • logins belong to the organization, not to a person

Most sites we look at fail at least one of these. The report tells you where you’re at.

Some things we’ve fixed more than once. Domains get registered on employees’ personal cards all the time – and if they leave without handing off the registrar login, no one can renew it. We’ve seen contact forms that have been silently failing for years. And backups running nightly that no one has ever tested.

If your site works and it’s built on something we wouldn’t have picked, we’ll still look after it. We’ll tell you what it costs to keep it running, and what it costs to replace it.

If you leave

You can end Support with 30 days’ notice. The domain, the hosting account, and the repository stay with you, because they were in your name the whole time. We hand over the deploy configuration and anything still on our side, and we take ourselves off your accounts.

Pricing

You’re paying for a site that keeps working after we’re done. Hosting runs about $20 USD a month, billed to your own account – that’s the whole running cost.

Companies and large nonprofits pay our full rate. That’s part of what lets us offer sliding scale to individual artists and game devs.

Pricing by client type. Prices in Canadian dollars.
Client type Planning
One-time
Building
Monthly
Support
Annual
Individual artists and game devs sliding scale
Collectives and worker co-ops Planning (one-time)$600 Building (monthly)$1,200 Support (annual)$1,500
Small nonprofits (annual operating budget under $300k) Planning (one-time)$750 Building (monthly)$2,000 Support (annual)$2,400
Companies and large nonprofits Planning (one-time)$1,500 Building (monthly)$4,500 Support (annual)$6,000

What you pay for Planning comes off your first Building invoice.

Support is optional. Some clients take the site and run it themselves. (That's what training and documentation are for.) You can always start it later.

If we didn’t build your site, first-year Support includes a one-time onboarding fee: The work of getting it to clear the bar above. We quote it from your report, and it’s paid before the annual Support clock starts. Sliding scale covers onboarding too.

These are guidelines for how we calculate your project budget. You’ll get a detailed breakdown. Prices are in Canadian dollars and exclusive of taxes, where applicable.

Get in touch

Tell us what you’re dealing with and we’ll tell you whether we can help.

Email us