# Studio 17 Designs

> Studio 17 Designs is a Melbourne web studio. We design and build fast, SEO-ready websites for Australian businesses — then keep them secure, up to date, and bringing in enquiries with a simple monthly care plan. We also build custom web apps for small businesses and SaaS products for founders. Founder: Darren Williams. Based in Melbourne, VIC, Australia; serving all of Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. Contact: hello@studio17designs.com.au.

## Key facts

- Founder and principal engineer: Darren Williams, 8+ years building software ([About](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/about))
- Website care plans: Essentials AUD $99/month, Growth AUD $199/month, Partner AUD $349/month plus GST, month-to-month, covering WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, and custom sites ([Care plans](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/services#maintenance))
- Custom web apps: AUD $3,000–$8,000 flat to build, AUD $150–$300/month to run; client owns the code ([Custom software](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/custom-software-for))
- SaaS builds AUD $25,000–$80,000 in 4–8 weeks; Vibe Code Rescue AUD $10,000–$40,000 ([Services](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/services))
- Stack: Next.js, React, TypeScript, Node.js, Supabase, PostgreSQL, Vercel, Tailwind CSS, Stripe, GitHub Actions, Vitest, Sentry
- Engagements are small and sequential: one to three clients at a time

## Services

- [Website Design & Build](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/services#websites): A fast, professional website that actually brings you customers. Built by engineers, not template-flippers.
- [Website Care & Maintenance](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/services#maintenance): Already have a website? We will look after it — hosting, updates, fixes, and changes for one monthly fee.
- [Custom Apps for Your Business](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/services#custom-apps): A web app built specifically for your business. Flat fee to build, monthly fee to run.
- [SaaS Builds](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/services#saas-build): Go from idea to production-ready SaaS without the engineering headaches.
- [Vibe Code Rescue](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/services#vibe-rescue): You built something real with AI tools. Now it needs production-grade engineering to scale.

## Custom app industries

- [Trades & Home Services](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/custom-software-for/trades): Affordable custom web apps for Australian plumbers, electricians, builders, and home-service businesses. Flat-fee build from $3,000 plus monthly support. Integrations: Xero, MYOB, QuickBooks Online, Stripe, Square, Twilio (SMS), Google Calendar.
- [Healthcare & Allied Health](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/custom-software-for/healthcare): Custom web apps for Australian clinics, physios, and allied health practitioners. Privacy Act-aware, integrates with your practice software. From $3,000 flat. Integrations: Cliniko, Halaxy, Power Diary, HotDoc, Best Practice, Stripe, Twilio (SMS), Tyro.
- [Professional Services](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/custom-software-for/professional-services): Client portals, secure document collection, and onboarding workflows for Australian accountants, lawyers, and consultants. Flat-fee build from $3,000. Integrations: Xero, Xero Practice Manager, MYOB, Karbon, FYI Docs, DocuSign, Stripe, Calendly.
- [Hospitality & Retail](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/custom-software-for/hospitality): Custom booking, loyalty, and ordering apps for Australian cafes, restaurants, gyms, and small retailers. Flat-fee build from $3,000 plus monthly support. Integrations: Square, Lightspeed, Vend, Stripe, Mailchimp, Twilio (SMS), Xero, MYOB.

## Compare

- [Website care plan vs DIY maintenance](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/compare/website-care-plan-vs-diy-maintenance): A website care plan costs AUD $99 to $349 per month and hands hosting, security updates, backups, and content changes to a web studio. DIY maintenance is free in cash but typically costs a business owner two to four hours a month, and most skipped updates are discovered only when a form stops working or the site goes down.
- [Custom-built website vs WordPress](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/compare/custom-website-vs-wordpress): WordPress powers roughly four in ten websites and is cheap to start, but a typical small-business install carries 15 to 30 plugins that each need updates and each can break the site. A custom-built site on Next.js has no plugin layer, loads faster, and is secured at the platform level, at the cost of needing a developer for structural changes.
- [Custom-built website vs Wix or Squarespace](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/compare/custom-website-vs-wix-squarespace): Wix and Squarespace cost roughly AUD $25 to $60 per month and let you launch in a weekend. A custom-built site costs more up front but you own it, it loads faster, and it is not limited by the builder's templates or SEO controls. The right answer depends on whether the website is a formality or a lead source.
- [Custom web app vs off-the-shelf software](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/compare/custom-web-app-vs-off-the-shelf-software): Off-the-shelf software costs AUD $30 to $150 per user per month and works well when your process matches the vendor's. A custom web app from Studio 17 Designs costs a flat AUD $3,000 to $8,000 to build plus AUD $150 to $300 per month to run, and is built around how your business actually works. For a team of five, the two options cost about the same over three years.
- [Small web studio vs freelancer vs large agency](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/compare/web-studio-vs-freelancer-vs-agency): A freelancer is cheapest and most personal but carries the highest continuity risk; a large agency offers depth but routes you through account managers and bills accordingly. A small studio such as Studio 17 Designs sits in between: you deal with the engineer who built the site, engagements are flat-fee, and a monthly care plan keeps the relationship going after launch.

## Glossary

- [Website care plan](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/resources/glossary/website-care-plan): A website care plan is a monthly service where a web studio hosts, monitors, updates, backs up, and makes changes to a business website for a fixed fee, so the owner never has to maintain it.
- [Core Web Vitals](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/resources/glossary/core-web-vitals): Core Web Vitals are three Google metrics that measure real-user page experience: Largest Contentful Paint (loading), Interaction to Next Paint (responsiveness), and Cumulative Layout Shift (visual stability).
- [Local SEO](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/resources/glossary/local-seo): Local SEO is the practice of making a business appear in search results for people in its service area, including the Google Maps pack, by optimising the website, Google Business Profile, and local citations.
- [Google Business Profile](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/resources/glossary/google-business-profile): Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is the free listing that controls how a business appears in Google Maps and the local pack, including hours, photos, reviews, and contact details.
- [Structured data (JSON-LD)](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/resources/glossary/structured-data): Structured data is machine-readable markup, usually JSON-LD using the schema.org vocabulary, that tells search engines and AI assistants exactly what a page is about: a business, a service, a FAQ, or an article.
- [SSL certificate (HTTPS)](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/resources/glossary/ssl-certificate): An SSL/TLS certificate encrypts traffic between a visitor and a website so the address shows https and a padlock; browsers flag sites without one as "Not secure".
- [Uptime monitoring](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/resources/glossary/uptime-monitoring): Uptime monitoring is an automated check, usually every one to five minutes, that confirms a website is reachable and alerts someone the moment it is not.
- [Page builder](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/resources/glossary/page-builder): A page builder is a drag-and-drop website tool such as Wix, Squarespace, or WordPress Elementor that lets non-developers assemble pages from templates, trading speed, control, and ownership for ease of editing.
- [Next.js](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/resources/glossary/next-js): Next.js is an open-source React framework, maintained by Vercel, for building fast websites and web apps with server rendering, static generation, image optimisation, and built-in routing.
- [Multi-tenant SaaS](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/resources/glossary/multi-tenant-saas): Multi-tenant SaaS is a software product where many customer organisations share one application and database while their data is strictly isolated, typically with a tenant ID on every record and row-level security.
- [Vibe coding](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/resources/glossary/vibe-coding): Vibe coding is building software by prompting AI tools such as Cursor, Copilot, or ChatGPT and accepting the output with little review, which produces working prototypes quickly and production problems later.
- [llms.txt](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/resources/glossary/llms-txt): llms.txt is a proposed standard: a Markdown file at the root of a website that gives AI assistants a concise, authoritative summary of the site and links to its key pages, much as robots.txt guides crawlers.

## Case studies

- [Setup Genius — AI-Powered Race Car Setup Management](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/portfolio) (https://setupgenius.com.au) — Motorsport / Racing Software. Race car setup is part-craft, part-science — and most of that craft lives in dog-eared notebooks, scattered spreadsheets, and WhatsApp screenshots passed around the pit lane. Engineers and drivers know what worked at a track last season, but pulling it back up at 7am on race day usually means flipping through pages or hunting through a phone gallery.
- [QuotX — Module-Based Quoting Platform for Cabinet Makers](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/portfolio) (https://quotx.com.au) — Cabinetry / Construction SaaS, in development. Small cabinet makers spend hours on every quote. Each job means measuring up, pricing carcasses, doors, hinges, drawers, finishes and edging from a stack of supplier price lists, then assembling it all into a document the customer can actually read. By the time a quote goes out the customer has often gone with whoever replied first.
- [Building a B2B Expense Management Platform from Scratch](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/portfolio) — Fintech / B2B SaaS. A two-person fintech startup had raised a small friends-and-family round and needed to turn their validated idea into a shippable product — fast. They had a detailed spec, a design file in Figma, and a hard deadline tied to a pilot with three paying customers. What they did not have was engineering capacity.
- [Stabilising a Marketplace Built with AI Coding Tools](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/portfolio) — Marketplace / Creator Economy. A solo founder had built a creator marketplace using Cursor and Claude. In three months of evenings and weekends, they had shipped something real — listings, user profiles, bookings, and a basic Stripe integration. It was live. People were using it. Then it started breaking.
- [Ongoing Engineering Partner for a Bootstrapped Project Management Tool](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/portfolio) — Productivity / SMB SaaS. A bootstrapped SaaS founder had been running a project management tool for small construction companies for two years. The product had paying customers, solid retention, and a clear roadmap of features their customers kept asking for. The problem was time.

## Key pages

- [Home](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/)
- [Services](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/services)
- [Custom Software for Your Business](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/custom-software-for)
- [Compare](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/compare)
- [Glossary](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/resources/glossary)
- [Portfolio](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/portfolio)
- [About](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/about)
- [FAQ](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/faq)
- [Contact](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/contact)
- [Sitemap](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/sitemap.xml)
- [Full version of this file](https://www.studio17designs.com.au/llms-full.txt)

## Optional

- [GitHub](https://github.com/studio17designs)
- [LinkedIn](https://linkedin.com/company/studio17designs)