Websites that work the night shift.

Fishtown Development is a two-person software studio in Philadelphia. We build websites with booking, payments and AI assistants built in, for owner-run businesses. Then we keep them running.

Start a project See the work (09)

Fishtown, PHL · --:--:--

02The problem

Most small-business websites are brochures. They sit there. They don't answer the phone at 2 a.m., take the booking, chase the invoice or tell you what's working. So you do all of it.

a.The call you missed because you were on the job.
b.Bookings through someone else's template, and their fees.
c.Five tools that don't talk to each other.
d.A developer who vanished after launch.

03The fix

One studio. The site, the system and the upkeep.

i. The site

Designed and written for your customers, fast on a phone and built from scratch. Never a template.

ii. The system

Booking, payments, chat, a voice line and an owner dashboard, wired into the site so the work happens without you.

iii. The upkeep

After launch, you send a change request. We track it from ask to live. Same two people, every time.

04Why it matters

What changes on a Tuesday.

The phone gets answered.

A sewer crew can't pick up from inside a drain. Their site chat takes the job details and books it while they work.

Atlantic County Sewer Pro

Bookings come direct.

A boutique hotel stopped sending guests through a broken template. Live availability, real prices, their own checkout.

Hotel Luz

Paperwork files itself.

A painter photographs a receipt in the truck. It's read, categorized and filed before the next job.

609Painter

You own the software.

A Pilates studio left its booking subscription for software built around how it actually runs.

The Balance Room

05Ours

Two we built for ourselves.

Studio software

FitKeyOS

Website, booking, payments, teacher pay and front desk as one piece of custom software for Pilates, barre and yoga studios. Not a subscription you bend your business around.

See FitKeyOS

Data loss prevention

PromptFence

A browser extension that stops sensitive data from leaking into public AI tools. It catches secrets, personal data and source code before they hit the prompt box.

Visit PromptFence.io

06Services

What we make.

Design, copy and build, from scratch. Fast on a phone, readable by search engines and AI answers, and accessible to everyone who visits.
- Design
- Copywriting
- Technical SEO
- WCAG 2.2 AA
Classes, rooms, quotes and memberships, booked and paid for on your own site. Card or bank, with receipts and refunds handled.
- Class + room booking
- Memberships
- Stripe
- Gift cards
Site chat and a voice line that know your business, take the enquiry and hand real people the details. In more than one language if your guests need it.
- Site chat
- Voice concierge
- Bilingual
- Lead capture
The work behind the website: receipts read from a photo, payroll runs, weekly reports and a dashboard that shows what's actually happening.
- Receipt reading
- Payroll
- Reports
- Dashboards
Automated checks plus a manual review against WCAG 2.2 AA, a report that ranks every issue, and the fix for each one.
- WCAG 2.2 AA
- Manual review
- Fix list
- Re-test
Launch is the start. Send a change request from your dashboard and watch it go from ask to live. No tickets lost in someone's inbox.
- Change requests
- Hosting
- Monitoring
- Search health

07How it works

Five steps. No mystery.

01
Call

Thirty minutes, free. Tell us what's slowing you down. We'll tell you honestly whether software fixes it.
02
Scope

A written plan: what we build, what it costs and when you'll see it. You approve it before anything starts.
03
Build

You get a live preview link early and leave comments right on the page. No surprise reveal at the end.
04
Launch

Domain, email, payments, search listings and redirects from the old site, switched over with a fall-back plan.
05
Run

We stay. Change requests get tracked to done, and you get reports that say what's working.

08The studio

No middlemen.

Small on purpose. There's no sales layer with a dev shop behind it. The people on the call are the people writing the code.

JJ

Founding Senior Engineer

Leroy

Founding Solutions Engineer

i.
You talk to the builders.
No account manager relaying messages. Ask a question, get the answer from the person who wrote it.
ii.
We don't leave after launch.
Every site on this page is still ours to keep running, and it shows in how we build them.
iii.
Built around you.
Your prices, your schedule, your way of working. Not a subscription you bend your business around.
iv.
Accessible by default.
We built an accessibility audit service. Every site we ship is held to the standard it checks for.

09FAQ

Fair questions.

01What do you actually build?

Websites, and the software behind them: booking, payments, memberships, site chat, voice lines, owner dashboards, back-office automation and accessibility fixes. Some clients need one of those. Most need a few that talk to each other.

02Who is this for?

Owner-run businesses where the owner is also the one answering the phone: studios, hotels, trades, professional services and public programs. If you have more work than hours, we're a fit.

03How much does it cost?

It depends on what you need, so we don't publish a price list. After a free 30-minute call you get a written scope with the price on it, and nothing starts until you approve it.

04How long does it take?

The timeline is in the written scope. Either way, you see a live preview link early and can comment right on the page, so there's no big reveal at the end.

05Can you move me off the tools I'm using now?

Yes. We've moved businesses off booking subscriptions, broken hotel templates and page builders, bringing their customers, bookings and history across.

06What happens after launch?

We stay. You send change requests from your dashboard and each one is tracked from ask to live. Hosting, monitoring and search health are part of it.

07Do you only work in Philadelphia?

We're based in Fishtown, Philadelphia. The work on this page runs from New Jersey to San Juan, and all of it happens just as well over a call.

10Selected work