TL;DR
I'm a performance marketer (8 years) who got tired of watching agencies charge clients $20k-50k for websites that take 3 months and don't convert. So I built my own 1-person agency, the vibe company, with a radically different stack:
Stack: Single-file HTML + Tailwind, Netlify hosting, Python SEO page generator, Playwright screenshots
Price: $260 - $1,300 USD (1/3 of agency pricing)
Timeline: 5-21 days (1/3 of agency speed)
Monthly cost to client: $0 (Netlify free tier + $12/year domain)
Live portfolio: 6 sites shipped and running
Site: zamhwa-studio.netlify.app
The real problem with web agencies in 2026
I ran paid ads for 8 years. I've seen hundreds of landing pages fail. Here's the pattern:
- Agency charges $30k for a "brand refresh"
- Takes 3 months
- Delivers a pretty Figma export that doesn't convert
- Charges $300/month retainer forever
The designers don't understand ad funnels. The developers don't know CRO. The project managers extend timelines to justify fees.
Meanwhile, the actual work — designing a page that converts cold traffic — is something a single person with the right tools can do in a week.
The stack that made this work
├── Design: Figma + v0 + AI-generated Tailwind
├── Dev: Claude Code + Cursor
├── Hosting: Netlify (free tier, auto SSL, CDN)
├── SEO: Python generator → 1,200+ location pages
├── QA: Playwright screenshots across viewports
└── Payment: Toss Payments (Korea)
No CMS. No backend unless client explicitly needs one. No subscription fees. Every site is a single HTML file that loads in under 800ms.
Pricing (first 10 clients, 30% off)
| Package | Price | Pages | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $260 | 1-page landing | 5-7 days |
| Business | $530 | Up to 5 pages | 10-14 days |
| Premium | $1,330 | Unlimited + AI + CMS + payments | 14-21 days |
The full pricing breakdown I published: 2026 web agency cost guide
Live portfolio (all in production)
NEMORIZZ — photobooth rental e-commerce
Drain Korea — 24hr emergency plumbing service
Stareum — celebrity booking + equipment rental platform (1,200+ SEO pages)
Isabella Blind — smart home AIoT brand site
SNAPOZ — premium photobooth landing
대한 건강사주 — health diagnosis SaaS
The SEO trick: programmatic location pages
For Stareum (the celebrity booking platform), I generated 1,219 location-specific landing pages programmatically. Python reads a CSV of Korean administrative districts, fills a Jinja2 template with district name + nearby popular artists + booking cost data. Each page gets unique metadata, schema.org JSON-LD, and internal links.
Result: 1,219 pages indexed by Google in 4 weeks. Target keyword rankings jumped from page 10 to page 1 for a dozen [city + celebrity booking] queries.
The full SEO checklist I used.
Why $0/month hosting is the real unlock
Most agencies charge $300/month "maintenance" because they built the site on WordPress + a VPS. That's $3,600/year the client bleeds forever.
Netlify free tier gives you:
- 100GB bandwidth/month
- Free SSL + CDN (Cloudflare-grade)
- Deploy previews + rollback
- Build minutes sufficient for 5+ sites
The only recurring cost to the client: a domain ($12/year). That's the business model small shops have been waiting for.
Domain purchase — where I send clients
Short guide: domain buying guide
- .com → Cloudflare Registrar (no markup, $9.15/year)
- .co.kr → Gabia (Korean local registrar)
What I learned
Marketing-first design beats aesthetic design. Every one of my sites started from ad funnel logic, not Dribbble inspiration.
SEO is a compounding asset. The 1,219 pages I generated once now drive 400+ organic visits/day with zero ad spend.
Speed is a moat. Agencies can't compete when you deliver in 7 days because their process overhead is 3 weeks minimum.
Open invitation
If you're building something similar — or you need a site built fast and cheap — the site is live:
- Main: zamhwa-studio.netlify.app
- Pricing: zamhwa-studio.netlify.app/#pricing
- Cost guide: zamhwa-studio.netlify.app/guide/cost-2026
- SEO checklist: zamhwa-studio.netlify.app/guide/seo-checklist
Happy to answer questions in comments about the stack, pricing, or SEO generator code.