Websites and web apps built from the architecture up by senior engineers, to performance and accessibility budgets agreed before the first sprint. 2,500+ projects across 30+ countries since 2004, each handed over documented, tested and yours.
First deliverable in 14 days · Budgets in writing · You own the code
PixelCrayons is a custom web development company: websites and web applications engineered from brief to deployment by one senior team. Architecture is agreed before code is written. Front end and back end are built to performance and accessibility budgets, and every merge passes senior review. First working deliverable within 14 days of NDA, 2,500+ projects shipped since 2004, and you own every line. Direct for brands, white-label for agencies.
Outcomes tied to real engagements, not averages.
Every build starts with the decisions that are expensive to reverse. The data model: how your information is organised. Hosting: where the site runs and what that costs. Integrations: which systems it must talk to. And how pages are served: prebuilt, on request, or a mix. You get an architecture note in plain English: what we recommend, why, and the trade-offs. The stack becomes a decision you were part of, not something you inherit.
Front end and back end are written by engineers who work in your stack every week. Nothing merges without a second senior engineer signing off against a written standard. Review gates keep a codebase coherent as it grows. The one you inherit reads as if one careful author wrote it.
Automated checks run in CI on every merge, and a QA engineer tests features across browsers and devices before each demo. Defects found inside the sprint are fixed inside the sprint. You review working software at every demo, and the bug list never quietly becomes a second backlog.
Load-time and accessibility targets are agreed in writing before the first sprint. They're measured on every release, on slow connections and mid-range phones, not office machines. If a feature would break the budget, the trade-off comes to you as a decision upfront, not as a slow page discovered later.
The repository lives in your accounts from day one and IP assignment is in the contract. Architecture notes, environment runbooks and deployment docs are maintained as we build. Your own team, or any future supplier, can take the build over without archaeology. Independence is part of the deliverable.
We sign the NDA and walk the brief together: goals, existing code, integrations, constraints, and who will maintain the build after launch.
An itemised, priced scope with the recommended architecture and the reasoning behind it, so you compare approaches, not just day rates.
Data model and API boundaries settled, performance budgets in writing, repository and CI standing in your accounts, sprint one planned with you.
Reviewed, tested, working code demoed on a call: proof of cadence, not a slide about progress. The sprint rhythm runs from here.
Your build runs in a Prism workspace you log into: requests, approvals, the task list and the weekly review, beside the repository your team already owns.
One queue, beside the repository your team owns.
Every task has one owner and a date.
Each decision recorded, with the expectation attached.
An agency drowning in backlog handed us their delivery queue. Dedicated pod, their brand, their tools: velocity up 85%, client never knew we existed.
We worked with PixelCrayons for around three years, with their developers becoming a genuine extension of our team. Having consistent developers who understood the work and could stay with us over the long term made a real difference to continuity and delivery.
Every layer of a custom build is also a service you can buy on its own: bring us the whole build, or just the layer that hurts.
This page covers custom websites and web applications. If the build is a storefront, eCommerce development is its own discipline (catalogue, checkout, payments) on the same 14-day start. To extend your own team instead, hire full-stack developers who own a feature from database to browser.
From your constraints, not our preferences: what your team can maintain, what you already run, your hosting, and how easy the technology is to hire for. Our default is boring, proven and widely staffed: TypeScript with React, Next.js and Node, PHP with Laravel or WordPress where a CMS fits. A fashionable framework nobody can maintain in three years is a liability, not an asset. And if an off-the-shelf platform would serve you better than custom website development, we say so before you spend custom-build money. Where we lack genuine senior depth in a technology, we tell you and point you elsewhere.
You do, from day one. The repository, hosting and CI pipelines are created in your own accounts, and IP assignment is written into the contract. There are no licence-back clauses, no proprietary framework you can only maintain through us. Where the build uses open-source libraries, their standard licences are documented in the handover notes. Documentation, credentials and runbooks are maintained as we go rather than ransomed at the end. So if you leave, you take everything and lose nothing.
Yes, most builds move onto a maintenance retainer covering dependency and security updates, monitoring, small features and performance checks against the original budgets. But maintenance with us is a choice, not a hostage situation: because the build is documented and the accounts are yours, you can hand it to an in-house team or another supplier at any point. We would rather earn the retainer on responsiveness than on lock-in.
It depends on scope, integrations and how much custom application logic you need, so we put timelines in the proposal rather than quote a universal number. What is fixed is the start: an itemised proposal within 48 hours and the first working deliverable on staging within 14 days of the NDA. A content site lands in weeks. A complex web application takes months. If a date comes under risk, you hear it from us early, with options.
Yes, and it is one of the most common arrangements in our web application development services. We can submit pull requests into your repository under your review standards, or lead the build with your engineers reviewing ours. Either way, the working agreement (branching, reviews, deployments, timezone overlap) is written down in week one. Knowledge transfer is deliberate: documentation as we go, pairing where it helps, and no part of the system that only we understand.
Yes. Many agencies use us as their web app development company, and a large share of our web builds ship under their brands: your project tools, your client calls, our engineers behind the scenes. It is NDA-backed, with a clause signed at the start that we never approach your clients, during the engagement or after it. The average partnership runs past two years, which is the measure that matters.
Tell us what you're building. You'll have an itemised proposal (stack, team and timeline, with the reasoning) within 48 hours, and reviewed working code on staging within 14 days of the NDA.
48-hour proposals · NDA standard · You own the code
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