You own everything
Domain, hosting, database, code, and the customer data in it. Registered in your name. If you fire us on a Tuesday you keep working on Wednesday.
About
Not an agency. The person who builds it.
Vanta Web Studios is the software half of Vanta Fabricate, a Winnipeg company that designs and manufactures custom parts. We built the platform Fabricate runs on - the payments, the accounts, the order pipeline, the admin area - and then realised the same machinery is what most local businesses are actually missing.
So there is no account manager here, and no one to hand your project down to. You talk to the person writing the code, which is the main advantage a small studio has over an agency and the reason the timelines are honest.
We are early, and we would rather say that than pretend otherwise. What that buys you: direct attention, a fixed price we are motivated to honour, and a portfolio piece we need as much as you need the site.
How we work
Three commitments, in writing
These are on the page because they are the three things clients get burned on most often, and a promise you can point at later is worth more than one made on a call.
The price is the price
Fixed and agreed before we start. Scope changes get quoted separately and openly rather than appearing at the end.
We will talk you out of it
If a $200 template solves your problem, that is the advice you get. Selling someone a system they do not need is how a local reputation dies, and this is a small city.
The other half
Vanta Fabricate
Vanta Web Studios is a partner company of Vanta Fabricate, which designs and manufactures custom parts - a customer describes an object, we engineer it, and a production partner makes it.
That matters to you for one reason: we are not only a web studio. We run a business that takes orders, chases suppliers, handles refunds and answers customers. When you describe an operational problem, it lands on someone who has the same one.
Full disclosure, because you would find out anyway: Vanta Fabricate is our own company and it is early. We are showing you what was engineered, not a revenue chart. The reason it is worth your time is that everything your project needs - payments, accounts, email, an admin area - is already running in production here.
Fair questions
Everything people ask
Why not just use Squarespace or Wix?
If you are going to build it, do - they are good tools and we will tell you so on the first call rather than sell you something. The catch is finishing. We meet far more half-built drafts and three-year-old Facebook pages than we do finished Squarespace sites, and an abandoned site costs more trust than no site at all. Part of what you are paying for is that it gets done, and that it still works in a year. Past that, no builder will take a deposit, hold real availability rules, remember a returning customer, or talk to the software you already run.
Can AI not do this now?
AI builders have genuinely taken over the bottom of this market and we are not trying to compete there. What they do not produce is a payment webhook that verifies its signature, a permissions model that holds up, or a system that still makes sense when your business changes next year. We use AI tooling daily - it is a fast assistant and a poor engineer.
How much does it actually cost?
A Presence site is $1,500 fixed, plus $50 a month to keep it running. An online ordering build is $3,500 fixed, plus $100 a month once it is taking payments. Anything outside that starts at $5,000 and is quoted on its own. The audit that tells you whether any of it is worth doing is free. On comparisons, honestly: the hosted ordering platforms already operating in Winnipeg - iOrders, Clover, DoorDash Storefront, Square Online - run roughly $100 to $200 a month, so over three years the money is close to a wash and the real difference is that you own what we build. The American platform selling restaurants this same pitch charges $249 a month plus 5% of every order, or $499 flat, which is the number usually quoted at you; it is true, and it is not the local one.
How long does it take?
Live in two to three weeks. The build itself is about a week; the rest is calendar time waiting on your menu, your photos and your Stripe verification. We tell you at scoping exactly what we need from you and when, because that is the only part that actually decides the date.
What if I already have a website?
Common, and often the cheapest option is to keep it and build the functional piece alongside it. We will look at what you have before recommending a rebuild, because a rebuild is the expensive answer and it is not always the right one. If what you have is a draft you stopped working on, that is the usual case and a Presence build is what fixes it.
What happens if you disappear?
A fair question to ask anyone small, and the reason everything is in your name. Your code sits in a repository you own, on hosting you control, using Stripe and Supabase accounts registered to you. Any competent developer can pick it up. We document it so that they can.
Tell us what is slowing you down.
Half an hour, no charge, no obligation. If a template solves your problem we will say so - that answer is free too.