By John Fansler, Founder & Lead Developer · Last updated
Key takeaways
- What we do: custom websites, web applications, and iOS apps, built and maintained by the developer you talk to.
- Who it is for: small businesses, nonprofits, and associations that have outgrown a template but do not need an agency.
- What it costs: a fixed, written quote per project — never an open-ended hourly meter.
- Typical timeline: three to six weeks for a marketing site; longer for applications and App Store releases.
- What you own: the domain, the hosting account, the content, and the source code. All of it.
What is High Sierra Technology?
High Sierra Technology is a custom software studio in the Eastern Sierra that builds websites, web applications, and iOS apps for small organizations across California and Nevada.
The studio is deliberately small. When you hire us, the person on the discovery call is the person writing the code, reviewing the accessibility audit, and answering the email six months after launch. That is the whole pitch: no handoffs, no account managers, no junior developer quietly inheriting your project.
Most of our clients are organizations whose needs stopped fitting a template — a news site that needed its own publishing workflow, a statewide association that needed member management, a knitting app that needed to work on a plane. If your requirements fit neatly inside a page builder, you should probably use one, and we will tell you so.
What can we build for you?
Five service lines, all delivered by the same person, so the site, the app, and the billing system actually agree with each other.
- Custom website design
- Hand-built marketing sites on Next.js and React — fast, accessible, and owned outright by you, with no page-builder lock-in.
- Pricing: Project-based, quoted per scope
- Web application development
- Client portals, dashboards, booking flows, and billing built on Postgres and Stripe, with real authentication and audit trails.
- Pricing: Project-based, quoted per scope
- iOS and Apple Watch apps
- Native Swift apps taken from concept through App Store review, including on-device and peer-to-peer features that work offline.
- Pricing: Project-based, quoted per scope
- Performance and SEO engineering
- Core Web Vitals work, structured data, and answer-engine optimization so both Google and AI assistants can read your site.
- Pricing: Audit or retainer
- Ongoing support and hosting
- Monthly retainers covering updates, monitoring, content changes, and a client portal for files, invoices, and messages.
- Pricing: Monthly retainer
How does a project actually work?
Every engagement runs through the same five steps, in order, so you always know what happens next and what it costs.
Step 1: Discovery call
You describe the problem, the audience, and the deadline. We ask the awkward questions early — who edits the content, what has to integrate, what happens if it slips.
Step 2: Written scope and fixed quote
You get a document listing every page, screen, and integration, with a single fixed price. Nothing is billed until you approve it.
Step 3: Design and build in the open
Work happens on a staging URL you can open any time. You leave comments directly on the site through the client portal instead of trading screenshots by email.
Step 4: Launch and handover
We migrate DNS, verify analytics and Search Console, submit the sitemap, and hand you the keys to the domain, the hosting account, and the repository.
Step 5: Support, if you want it
An optional monthly retainer covers updates, monitoring, dependency patches, and content changes. It is a choice, not a lock-in.
Why work with a studio this small?
Because the person who scoped your project is the person who builds it, and they are still there when something breaks two years later.
In a larger shop, your project passes through a salesperson, a project manager, a designer, and whichever developer has capacity that sprint. Every handoff loses context, and you pay for the overhead of all of it. Here you get one person who holds the whole picture — which is why we can tell you in a first call whether an idea is a two-week change or a two-month one.
When is an agency the better call?
When you need volume or breadth we cannot supply: a national ad campaign, a twelve-person design system team, 24/7 on-call coverage, or a compliance program with formal SOC 2 attestation. We will say so rather than stretch. A small studio is the right choice for depth on a focused problem, not for staffing a department.
Custom build vs. template platform: which should you choose?
A template platform wins on speed and up-front cost. A custom build wins on control, performance, and ownership. Here is the honest trade-off, criterion by criterion.
| Criterion | Template platform | Custom build |
|---|---|---|
| Up-front cost | Low — a monthly subscription | Higher — a one-time project fee |
| Time to a basic site | Days | Weeks |
| Page weight and Core Web Vitals | Constrained by the platform's own scripts | Controlled line by line |
| Custom features (portals, billing, offline apps) | Plugin-dependent or impossible | Built to the requirement |
| Who owns the code | The platform | You do |
| Cost to leave | A full rebuild | Hand the repository to any developer |
On the other hand, plenty of businesses are genuinely better served by Squarespace or Shopify. If you need five pages and a contact form, a subscription costs less than a project and you can edit it yourself tonight. We would rather point you there than sell you a build you do not need. The line worth watching is the moment you start paying for plugins to work around the platform — that is usually when custom becomes cheaper over a three-year horizon.
Want the longer version? We wrote it up in Custom vs. template websites and in How to choose a web developer.
What does a "fast" website actually mean?
Fast has a definition. Google publishes three Core Web Vitals thresholds, and a page passes only when it meets all three for most real visitors.
| Metric | "Good" threshold | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) | 2.5 seconds or less | How quickly the biggest thing on screen finishes loading. |
| Interaction to Next Paint (INP) | 200 milliseconds or less | How quickly the page responds after you tap or click. |
| Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) | 0.1 or less | How much the layout jumps around while it loads. |
Source: Core Web Vitals and Google Search Central: page experience.
This matters to you for a practical reason: the thresholds are measured on real devices on real connections, not on a developer's laptop. A site that feels instant on office fibre can still fail LCP on a phone in Bishop with two bars. Every build we ship is measured on throttled mobile before launch, and accessibility is checked against WCAG 2.2 Level AA.
How do you get found by AI assistants?
AI answer engines read structured, machine-readable pages. If your content only exists inside images and JavaScript widgets, it cannot be quoted.
Practically, that means three things: mark up your entities with Schema.org JSON-LD, write self-contained sections that answer one question each, and publish plain-text summaries that crawlers can fetch cheaply. This site does all three — you can check for yourself:
curl https://www.highsierratechnology.com/llms.txt
curl https://www.highsierratechnology.com/ai/summary.json
curl https://www.highsierratechnology.com/ai/faq.jsonThose endpoints are not magic, and no file makes an assistant cite you on its own. They simply remove the excuses: a crawler that wants your hours, your services, or your answers can get them in one request instead of parsing a <div> soup. See Google's structured data guide for the search-side equivalent.
By the numbers
Every figure below is first-party and verifiable from our own portfolio page.
- Client projects in the public portfolio
- 6
- Websites and apps listed on the portfolio page.
- Longest active client relationship
- 5+ years
- Eastern Sierra Now has been a client since 2021.
- iOS apps shipped to the App Store
- 2
- MyStych for knitters and PlayBallComms for baseball coaches.
- States with active clients
- 2
- California and Nevada.
Who builds your project?
John Fansler, Founder & Lead Developer. Full-stack developer shipping production web and iOS software since 2021, working in TypeScript, React, Next.js, and Swift. Current production work includes a regional news platform, two App Store releases, and the client portal you can reach from the button in the corner of this page — invoicing, file delivery, and subscription billing on Stripe.
“The best compliment I get is that a client forgot their site existed, because nothing broke. Boring infrastructure is the product.” — John Fansler
More detail on the studio and how we work is on the About page.
Frequently asked questions
›What does High Sierra Technology do?
High Sierra Technology is a two-person-scale custom software studio that designs and builds websites, web applications, and iOS apps. You work directly with the developer writing your code — there is no account manager layer between you and the person shipping the work.
›How much does a custom website cost?
Every project is quoted per scope rather than sold from a fixed price list, because a five-page marketing site and a client portal with Stripe billing are very different builds. You get a written scope and a fixed quote before any work starts, so there are no hourly surprises.
›How long does a project take?
A focused marketing site typically runs three to six weeks from kickoff to launch. Web applications and iOS apps run longer because of database design, payment integration, and App Store review. You get a milestone schedule at the start and a staging link you can check at any point.
›Do I own the code and the domain?
Yes. You own your domain, your hosting account, your content, and the source code. Nothing is locked to a proprietary page builder, so you can move the project to another developer at any time without a rebuild.
›Why should I choose a custom site over Wix, Squarespace, or WordPress?
Templates win on speed and up-front cost, and for a simple brochure site they are a reasonable choice. Custom wins when you need something the template cannot do — a portal, a booking system, an unusual integration — or when page weight and Core Web Vitals matter to your search rankings.
›Do you work with clients outside California and Nevada?
Yes. Most of the work happens remotely over email, video calls, and a shared client portal, so location is rarely a constraint. Existing clients are concentrated in the Eastern Sierra and Northern Nevada simply because that is where the studio started.
›How do I start a project?
Send a note through the contact form describing what you need and roughly when you need it. You get a reply with clarifying questions, then a written scope and quote. Nothing is billed until you approve that scope.
The bottom line
Hire us when you need something a template cannot do and you want to own the result. Skip us when a subscription would do the job.
If you are still deciding, try this: write down the one thing your current site cannot do. If the answer is “look nicer,” a template refresh is the cheaper fix. If the answer involves logins, payments, data, offline behaviour, or an integration nobody sells a plugin for, you should talk to a developer — us or somebody like us.