Dayton, Ohio · Est. 2015
You get the repository.
Ironpath Digital Foundry builds websites and web applications in Dayton. Code lives in your Git repository on your account from day one, so leaving us is a decision rather than a negotiation.
Ironpath Digital Foundry builds websites and web applications in Dayton. Code lives in your Git repository on your account from day one, so leaving us is a decision rather than a negotiation.
Not maliciously, usually. The build happens on the agency's GitHub, deploys through the agency's pipeline, sits on the agency's hosting, and uses an internal framework nobody outside the agency has documentation for. Nothing in the contract says you cannot leave. Leaving just costs a rebuild.
That is the business model working as designed. Retainers are easier to keep when the alternative is starting over, and every one of those decisions is individually defensible on efficiency grounds.
Your repository is on your account from the first commit. Your hosting, your domain, your CI. We build with standard tooling that any competent developer can pick up, and eleven clients have taken their code elsewhere in ten years. We handed over the credentials each time.
Nine developers in Dayton. Nothing offshored, nothing subcontracted.
Sites and applications built from scratch in code you own, with no proprietary framework holding you here.
Custom themes and plugins written properly, not a purchased theme bent into shape with forty plugins.
Taking over a site somebody else abandoned. We audit first and quote the honest number.
Core Web Vitals, image pipelines, and query optimisation with before-and-after numbers published.
Payment, CRM, ERP, and inventory connections built to fail loudly rather than silently.
Patching, backups tested by restore, uptime monitoring, and a monthly report you can read.
We build with tooling a developer can learn from public documentation. No internal framework, no bespoke CMS, no clever abstraction that only makes sense if you have worked here. That costs us some efficiency and it is the price of handing something over honestly.
Performance numbers published before and after. Core Web Vitals measured at the start and at launch, both figures in the final document, including the metric that did not improve.
We quote rescues after an audit, not before. Taking over an abandoned codebase without reading it first is how a two-week estimate becomes three months.
Written scope and fixed price. Your repository created on your account before we start.
Two-week increments, deployed to a staging URL you can see from week two.
Core Web Vitals and load testing against the numbers we recorded at the start.
Credentials, documentation, and a walkthrough with whoever will maintain it.
Manufacturers, distributors, healthcare groups, universities, and professional services across Dayton, Cincinnati, and Columbus.
Budgets from about $9,000 to $140,000. We will tell you when a well-configured off-the-shelf platform beats a custom build, which is more often than an agency usually admits.
Roughly one enquiry in six we turn down. Usually because the site is not the problem, or because a $6,000 budget cannot buy what the brief describes and we would rather say so.
Opened the shop in 2015 after twelve years building for agencies. Still commits daily.
Eleven years. Owns integrations and the ones that fail loudly.
Ten years. Owns the Core Web Vitals numbers we publish.
Nine years. Tests every backup by restoring it.
We moved to an in-house team after three years. They handed over credentials and did a two-hour walkthrough. No invoice for it.
The final report showed one metric got worse. They explained why and fixed it the next sprint instead of hiding it.
They told us Shopify would do what we wanted for a fifth of a custom build. They lost the project and got two referrals.
If you are not sure, that is the answer. Ask your current agency today.