Services · Custom Web Design
Custom web design in Los Angeles. No WordPress. No templates.
A custom-built web tool is software engineered to your operations — your data model, your integrations, your compliance requirements. ShipyardLA builds production-grade custom web applications on Rails and Elixir, deployed to infrastructure you own. The codebase is yours from day one. No page builders. No drag-and-drop. No dependency on a third-party platform to keep your site running.
Custom-built, maintainable, and actually yours.
Who this is for
Organizations that outgrew off-the-shelf solutions before they launched them.
- Organizations whose data lives in specialized systems (HMIS, CalJOBS, Bonterra ETO) that no plugin can talk to
- Teams that need multilingual tools — Spanish, Korean, Armenian, Tagalog — built in, not bolted on
- EDs and COOs who've been burned by a "website refresh" that didn't touch the actual problem
- Mid-size companies that need internal tools built to spec, not customized from a SaaS template
- Government and public sector organizations with Section 508 and ADA compliance requirements
What I build
Not websites. Web tools. There's a difference.
Custom intake and form systems
Web forms engineered to your data model. Offline-capable for field staff. Multilingual. Data routes directly to your backend systems — no middle step, no CSV import, no human transcription.
Dashboards and internal tools
Operations dashboards, program tracking tools, donor CRMs, real-time reporting views. Built on PostgreSQL with proper data models — not charts layered on top of a spreadsheet.
Public-facing web applications
Fast, accessible, mobile-first applications for public use. Built with Section 508 conformance as a design goal. Deployed to infrastructure you own. No shared-hosting surprises. No plugin update that takes down your site.
AI-integrated workflows
LLM integrations built into real workflows — case note generation, report drafting, document analysis. Scoped to one validated use case before expanding. Not AI features; AI tools that do specific jobs.
How this is different
ShipyardLA writes actual software. The stack is Rails and Elixir. You own the repository. The schema is documented. Custom intake forms that write to external databases, multi-funder compliance dashboards, AI-assisted workflows — these are scoped as engineering problems and delivered as working software, not approximated with off-the-shelf tools that stop short of your requirements. Fixed scope means you know exactly what you're getting before work begins.
How it works
Fixed scope. Fixed price. Clear ship date.
- 01
Audit and scoping
I map your current systems, document the gaps, and write a specific scope. Nothing starts until the scope and price are agreed in writing.
- 02
Build sprint
4–12 weeks. Custom code on Rails or Elixir. PostgreSQL. Deployed to AWS or Cloudflare — your infrastructure, not ours. Weekly progress updates.
- 03
Handoff and documentation
You get the repo, the deployment docs, video walkthroughs, and a training call. Ongoing engineering support available — never required to keep the software alive.
Book a 30-minute technical audit.
Walk away with a plain-language breakdown of what you need, what's possible, and what it costs to build it right. No templates, no upsells, no surprises.