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ALTA IGNITE
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About Alta Ignite · Est. 2010

Fifteen years of shipping websites for people who actually run the business.

We started in a shared studio above a coffee roaster in 2010. No investors, no runway, one laptop between two of us and a stubborn belief that a website should feel like something you own — not something you rent from an agency that ghosts you the moment the invoice clears.

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2010

The year we opened the door

2,400+

Websites shipped and looked after

48h

Average turnaround on a revision

99.99%

Uptime on our managed hosting

Small design studio with sketches and a laptop on a wooden desk
Where it started · 2010

A studio above a coffee roaster, a stubborn opinion, and one client.

Two of us. One second hand iMac. A phone that only worked if you tilted it. Our first client was a family owned bakery who had been quoted twelve grand for a five page website and told us plainly, 'That is my rent for a year.' We built it for a fraction of that in a fortnight and she is still a client today. That first project taught us the lesson the industry keeps forgetting: most people do not need a bigger agency, they need someone who picks up the phone.

  • First client, 2010: a bakery who is still with us today
  • First hire, 2012: a designer who is now our head of design
  • First office, 2014: three desks and a very loud radiator
Designers reviewing a website layout on a laptop together
The pivot · 2019

The moment we stopped selling projects and started selling a relationship.

For nine years we did what every agency does. Quote a project, ship it in twelve weeks, hand over a zip file, watch it slowly go stale. Clients kept coming back with the same painful conversation: 'Can you just change this one thing?' — followed by another proposal, another deposit, another six week wait. In 2019 we tore up the model. Flat monthly fee. Unlimited requests. Ship in 48 hours. Cancel whenever. Our accountant told us we were mad. Our clients told us we were finally listening.

  • Killed the project model that punished small requests
  • Guaranteed 48 hour turnaround, not 6 week proposals
  • Kept 91% of clients through the transition, gained 300 more
Small design team gathered around a shared studio table
The team

Twelve people who genuinely like each other and answer their own emails.

We are not a marketplace. We are not a platform that connects you with 'a talented freelancer in your region.' We are twelve people in one company, sitting on the same Slack, arguing about kerning in the same meetings. When you sign up you meet a real designer and a real developer, on video, in the first week. They stay with your account. There is no ticket queue and there is no offshore night shift 'fulfilling your request' while nobody is awake to answer for it.

  • One named designer and one named developer per client
  • Weekly Loom updates so you always know what shipped
  • No AI slop copy, no template pages, no ghostwritten strategy
Developer workstation with a code editor and site preview
The stack

Standard tools your next developer will already know.

We have watched dozens of proprietary 'website platforms' come and go, each one leaving clients trapped inside something they cannot export. So we build on the boring, well documented tools your team can hire for tomorrow: Next.js, TanStack, WordPress, Shopify, Webflow. If you ever leave us, another developer opens the repo and gets to work in an afternoon. That is not a bug in our model. That is the entire point.

  • Framework picked to fit your business, not our margins
  • Full source, design files and hosting credentials from day one
  • Handover pack included with every build, whether you leave or stay
Modern data center with server racks and status lights
The hosting

The bit most agencies quietly outsource, we run ourselves.

Your site lives on a global edge network with SSL, daily backups, security patching and monitoring that pages a human when something moves the wrong way. It is included in your subscription. There is no separate hosting invoice, no third party dashboard to log into, and no finger pointing between 'the developer' and 'the host' when something breaks at 11pm on a Friday. It is one bill and one phone number, and the phone number rings a person.

  • 99.99% uptime SLA, publicly posted every month
  • Daily backups with one click restore, tested weekly
  • Security patches applied inside 24 hours, quietly, before you notice
Website mockup shown on a laptop and phone screen
Where we're going

Same principles, more clients, none of the venture nonsense.

We have never taken outside money and we never intend to. That means we answer to you, not to a board asking why average revenue per user is not up 40% this quarter. Our plan for the next fifteen years is the same as the last: keep the team small enough to care, keep the price honest, keep the code yours. If that sounds like the studio you wish you had hired the first time round, we would love to meet you.

  • Independent and profitable since year two, still is
  • Team capped at 20 by design — quality over headcount
  • You always own the outcome, we just make sure it ships

Come and meet the studio.

Fifteen minutes on a video call, no pitch deck, no pressure. Just us, you and a shared screen.

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