DUWS

Downunder Web Services

◉ hosted in Sydney → Melbourne → Brisbane → Perth → Adelaide

Custom websites and web apps for Australian business - faster, more secure and completely yours. We build from the ground up, so you get exactly what your business needs for a fraction of the price, with low ongoing costs.

// not built onShopifyWordPressWixSquarespace
// 002 - why custom

STOP RENTING
YOUR WEBSITE.

The platforms are fine for a weekend project. But the moment your business gets specific, they fight you - and they keep charging. We build exactly what you need from scratch, and hand you the keys.

// instead ofShopifyWordPressWixSquarespace

Speed

Bloated themes and plugin soup. Sluggish on the phones your customers actually use.

Hand-built and lean. Lighthouse 95+, sub-2.5s loads, perfect on mobile.

Security

Huge attack surface. A new plugin vulnerability lands every other week.

Tiny surface, no plugin lottery. Patched by us, hosted on hardened AU metal.

Custom

You fight the theme. Half of what you want is “not possible on this plan”.

Anything the web can do. It’s your code - nothing is off the table.

Cost

Cheap to start, then expensive to make it actually look and work the way you need.

One fair fixed price, agreed before we start. No time-and-materials surprises.

Fees

Plan tiers, app subscriptions and per-sale transaction cuts - forever.

Just hosting and your domain. No tax on every sale you make.

Ownership

You’re renting. Stop paying and the whole thing disappears.

You own the code, the data and the domain - a real asset on your books, not a rental.

Growth

You hit the platform’s ceiling, then pay to migrate away from it.

No ceiling. It grows into a full web app whenever the business is ready.

Same budget, better outcome - and you stop paying rent on your own shopfront. Most clients make back the build in saved platform and app fees inside a year or two.

Price a custom build
// 003 - manifesto

Most websites are sleepwalking. They got built from a template, filled with stock photos, and abandoned six months later to a dashboard nobody logs into. They convert badly, look like the last one, and embarrass their owners in front of customers who can spot it.

We build the other kind.

Custom layouts. Custom motion. We can plug into the tools your business already runs on - accounting, payments, calendars, customer logins, anything with an API. Or, better still, we can build those features straight into your own site, so you own them outright and stop paying monthly fees to a stack of separate services. Hosted on our own NVMe boxes across Australia so they load fast for the people you're trying to reach, and looked after by people you can email and get a reply from before lunch.

If you're a creative studio, a club, a small business or a platform with a real point of view - read on. If you wanted "another nice WordPress site", you're in the wrong shop and we'll save you the awkward call.

100%
custom code - no templates
20+ yrs
designing & running sites
AU NVMe
hosting, fully managed
$0
platform or app fees
NO TEMPLATESJUST BUILTAU NVMeREAL HUMANSS3 IMAGE CDNPOSTMARK MAILSTRIPE PAYMENTSOPEN SOURCE WHERE IT FITSFULLY MANAGEDWE KEEP IT ONLINE
// 004 - capabilities

Pick the bits
you need.
Leave the rest.

Every site we ship gets wired into the tools your business actually runs on. These are the capabilities we most often build - none of them are “modules”, they’re all custom-fit. If something you need isn’t here, ask - almost everything is buildable.

  • Payments
  • Login portals
  • Shopping carts
  • Bookings + calendars
  • Project mgmt
  • Accounting
  • REST + GraphQL
  • Memberships
  • AI features
  • Real search
  • Multilingual
  • SSO + auth
  • Branded cloud drive
  • Client discussions
  • Ticket support
  • Knowledge base
  • Invoicing + quotes
  • CRM
  • Inventory
  • Email campaigns
  • Forms + surveys
  • E-signatures
  • Reporting dashboards
  • Automations
  • Notifications
  • File sharing
  • Maps + routing
  • Live chat

// built once, owned forever

All without Google, Xero, Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, Salesforce or WordPress - and entirely in your own brand.

// and also // PWA + offline · document signing · maps & routing · SMS & WhatsApp · push notifications · print/PDF generation · OCR + receipt scanning · QR codes · embedded video · server-side analytics · GA4 + Plausible · GDPR / Australian Privacy Act · cookieless tracking · A/B testing · feature flags · webhooks in & out · cron jobs · queues · long-running workers · file uploads to S3 · accessibility audits (WCAG 2.2 AA) · everything else that runs on the web.

// 005 - hosting

ON OUR OWN
METAL.

We own and operate NVMe-only fleets in five Australian cities. Your customers hit a server that's a few milliseconds away, not one in Virginia or Frankfurt. Every site we build lives on this fleet, fully managed and monitored by us.

dws@fleet:~ # nodes --status

Region

SYDNEY

Coordinates

-33.86, 151.20

Hardware

32C / 256GB / NVMe

Disk

100% NVMe SSD · ZFS mirror

Median latency

8ms AU east

Uptime (12mo)

99.99%

Daily backups

Encrypted snapshots, off-host. 14-60 day retention by plan.

Premium mail

Postmark deliverability, SPF/DKIM/DMARC configured.

S3 image CDN

Originals on S3, served via image CDN - auto WebP/AVIF, resized on demand.

Renewals tracked

Domain expiry watched. We ping you at 60/30/7 days.

Patched + monitored

Security updates within 24h, uptime checks every minute.

Cloudflare in front

Global edge cache, DDoS protection, WAF - included.

Plans.

Plans scale with your site's complexity and traffic, not a page count — we'll recommend the right one based on the site we build for you.

Small

Brochure sites and small business presences.

$10/ mo
  • NVMe SSD in your chosen AU city
  • 5 GB storage · simpler sites, lighter traffic
  • Free SSL, daily backups (14-day retention)
  • Premium email delivery
  • Standard CDN + caching
Choose this →

Medium

Busy small business and content-driven sites.

$30/ mo
  • Everything in Small
  • 10 GB storage · busier, more complex sites
  • S3 file CDN for fast media delivery
  • Daily backups, 30-day retention
  • Priority support
Choose this →

Large

Ecommerce, portals, anything mission-critical.

$90/ mo
  • Everything in Medium
  • 30 GB storage · high-traffic, complex apps
  • More RAM & CPU for demanding workloads
  • Hourly backups, 60-day retention
  • Staging environment + CI deploys
  • Custom integrations support
Choose this →

// domains

We pick the right registrar for the job.

.com.au, .au, .org.au, .com, .co - we'll suggest the right TLD and registrar (we prefer Synergy Wholesale for .au and Cloudflare for everything else). Domains stay in your name, we manage them. Renewals are tracked: you get pings at 60, 30 and 7 days before expiry. No surprise outages, no extortion-renewal racket.

Cities served by AU registries: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide.

// email

Site emails that arrive.

Receipts, order confirmations, password resets, booking reminders, invoices, renewal notices - sent via Postmark. SPF, DKIM and DMARC configured properly so they land in the inbox, not the spam folder. Bounce + complaint monitoring with alerts so we catch problems before they snowball into deliverability damage.

Average inbox-placement rate across our fleet: 99.4%.

// 006 - process

FIVE STEPS. NO MYSTERY.

01≈ 1 week

Discover

Before any code, we get clear on what you actually need. We learn your business, who you sell to, how an enquiry turns into a customer, and where a website or web app can do the heavy lifting. You come away with a clear picture of scope and a realistic budget, whether or not we end up building it.

// you

Tell us about your business and your goals.

// we

A clear scope, a realistic budget, and a written plan.

021-3 weeks

Design

We shape the look, feel and flow of the site around your content and your customers, not a template. You see the direction early and help steer it, so by the time anything is built for real you already know what you're getting. Every design decision has to earn its place.

// you

Share feedback as the direction takes shape.

// we

A clear design direction built around your content.

033-10 weeks

Build

This is where it gets built properly: fast, secure, and structured so it can grow with you. We work in the open so you can follow progress as it happens, and we keep checking the build against the plan so there are no nasty surprises at the end.

// you

Stay in the loop and flag anything early.

// we

A solid, well-structured build, checked against the plan.

04launch day

Launch

We handle the technical side of going live - the domain, security, redirects, search and sharing - so the switch-over is smooth and nothing breaks. We're there through the launch itself and stay close afterwards to catch anything that needs a tweak.

// you

Pick a time to go live.

// we

A smooth, low-risk launch and support right after.

05ongoing

Look after it

Once you're live we keep things running - hosting, backups, security and performance, all on our own Australian servers. You've got a real person to email when you want a change or want to add something new, and we keep improving the site as your business grows.

// you

Email us when you want a change.

// we

Hosting, upkeep, and a real person to talk to.

// end of process

YOUR
MOVE.

Launch a site that actually fits your business and be the envy of everyone still stuck on a cookie-cutter template. Tell us what you need and we'll come back with a plan.

// 007 - fair questions

THINGS PEOPLE
ACTUALLY ASK.

  • It depends on how much you need built, but most projects land between $500 and $20,000 AUD. A clean custom brochure site can start around $500 to $1,500; add bookings, payments or a customer login and it's usually a few thousand; a larger platform with portals and integrations runs toward the upper end. Every quote is a fixed price agreed before we start, so there are no hourly surprises. Tell us your budget and we'll tell you honestly what's achievable within it.

// 008 - your move

BUILD
SOMETHING
WEIRDER.

A short quote form, real reply within one business day, no auto-responder. If your idea's vague we'll help you sharpen it. If it's clear we'll cost it. Either way you'll learn something useful from talking to us.