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.
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.
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.
Huge attack surface. A new plugin vulnerability lands every other week.
Tiny surface, no plugin lottery. Patched by us, hosted on hardened AU metal.
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.
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.
Plan tiers, app subscriptions and per-sale transaction cuts - forever.
Just hosting and your domain. No tax on every sale you make.
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.
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 buildMost 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.
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.
// built once, owned forever
// 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.
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.
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%
Encrypted snapshots, off-host. 14-60 day retention by plan.
Postmark deliverability, SPF/DKIM/DMARC configured.
Originals on S3, served via image CDN - auto WebP/AVIF, resized on demand.
Domain expiry watched. We ping you at 60/30/7 days.
Security updates within 24h, uptime checks every minute.
Global edge cache, DDoS protection, WAF - included.
all AUD · pay monthly or yearly (2mo free)
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.
Brochure sites and small business presences.
Busy small business and content-driven sites.
Ecommerce, portals, anything mission-critical.
// domains
.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.
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%.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.