A website designer on the ground in London.
For London and South East businesses that want an in-person brief without an Old Street studio bill. Shivam is on the ground in London. Phil delivers from Nottingham. £999 to build, £99 a month to look after — a tenth of the typical Shoreditch quote.
One-off, all-in. Brief, design, build, copy assist, deploy. No discovery fee, no design-phase upcharge, no surprise add-on.
Hosting, monitoring, security, backups and every small content / copy / image change. No hourly billing on changes.
A typical Soho or Shoreditch quote runs £8–£30k for the same shape of site. Same outcome, ~10× less, with Shivam local for the in-person.
Brief usA London business should pay London prices for things only London does.
A standard SMB website built by a Soho or Shoreditch studio comes back at £8,000 to £30,000. A specialist boutique with a recognised name takes it higher again. The website itself is rarely the differentiator at that price — the buyer is paying for the studio’s office, the account-manager layer, the design-by-committee revision cycle, and the City address on the invoice. London prices make sense for things only London does. A website isn’t one of them.
Moonlabs splits the buy. Shivam is on the ground in London — the same Shivam who runs the Investment pillar at the Academy, ex-Deutsche Bank (99th-percentile modeller). He takes the in-person hello when the brief is central. Phil in Nottingham delivers the build — same Laravel + Tailwind stack we use on Homemove, home.co.uk and homedata.co.uk — and travels in for build-critical meetings. £999 to build, £99 a month to look after.
Six things a London brief gets you.
Shivam, locally
Shivam Haria is on the ground in London (ex-Deutsche Bank, owns Investment at the Academy). He takes the in-person hello when the brief is in central or inner London. Useful especially if your business has anything investor-facing about it.
Phil, when delivery matters
Phil travels in from Nottingham for build-critical meetings — the staging review, the launch sign-off. King’s Cross is 1h 45 min from him; he can be in Soho by lunch on a planned day.
London + Home Counties cover
Central London zones 1–2 are doorstep for Shivam. Outer London, the Home Counties, Brighton, Cambridge and Reading are inside a planned half-day visit. The whole South East commuter belt is realistically covered.
AI-native delivery
Phil was trained AI-native by James and Louis from week one of ChatGPT. The build runs with AI tooling under senior operator supervision — four times faster than a London studio cadence, no slop on what ships.
London local SEO done right
LocalBusiness schema with the right London address and postcode, Google Business Profile pass, per-area landing pages where the buyer journey calls for them ("[service] Shoreditch", "[service] Canary Wharf"). The foundation, day one.
Code that stays yours
The site is built on a stack you own — Laravel + Tailwind in a git repository handed over from day one. If you want a London developer to take it over later, they can. No exit fee, no lock-in, no proprietary platform.
Eight London-area zones. Who’s in front of you on the day.
Shivam covers the central and inner zones locally. Phil travels in for delivery briefs and the South East commuter belt. Here’s how it splits in practice.
Whoever takes the brief, Phil delivers the build. Shivam stays involved on commercial / investor-facing aspects; Phil owns the timeline, the staging URL, and the WhatsApp thread you message when something needs changing.
Brief on Monday in London. Live by the end of the week.
Brief
Shivam meets you in person somewhere walkable from your office. Plain-English conversation about the business and the site. One-page spec back the same day for sense-check, in WhatsApp.
Build
Phil delivers the build across one working week from Nottingham — same Laravel + Tailwind stack we use on our own businesses. Staging URL by mid-week for a 15-minute review; Phil travels in for the staging walk-through if the build calls for it.
Run
£99 / month from launch. New service, new team member, new opening hours, refreshed photography — email or WhatsApp Phil, he ships it. No hourly billing on edits. Shivam stays in the loop for anything investor-facing.
A million ways this could look. None of them templates.
Every site we build is designed to spec, branded for one client. No shared theme between brands. No component kit we recycle. Your site won’t look like anyone else’s because nobody else got your brief.
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Designed to spec. Every page laid out fresh against your brief — not a pre-made template with your logo dropped in. -
Branded to you. Typography, palette, motion language and component shape all chosen for this brand, not a previous client’s. -
Yours forever. Code lives in a git repo that is yours from day one. No platform lock-in, no proprietary CMS, no exit fee.
The London buyer’s questions.
Will Shivam from Moonlabs be my point of contact?
Often, yes — for the first meeting. Shivam is on the ground in London and tends to take the in-person hello if the brief is central. He owns Investment at Moonlabs (ex-Deutsche Bank, 99th-percentile modeller) so he’s particularly useful if your business has anything investor-facing in it. Day-to-day delivery is then handed to Phil in Nottingham — he runs the build, owns the timeline, and is who you message when you need a change shipped.
If Phil is the delivery operator, why is Shivam in London?
Most London briefs want a face across the table on day one. Shivam lives in London — he can do that without anyone needing to get the train up. Phil travels in for build-critical meetings (staging review, launch sign-off) and runs the project remote in between. For some buyers Phil takes the whole brief in person; for most, Shivam does the first hello and Phil takes the project from there. We confirm on the first call which it’ll be.
How is this different from a Soho or Shoreditch web studio?
A typical London studio quote for an SMB website sits between £8,000 and £30,000, with a three- to four-month timeline and an account-manager hierarchy in between the buyer and whoever’s actually building. A boutique with a recognised name can go higher. We’ve removed the studio overhead: one senior operator running the project end to end, one working week from brief to launch, £999 to build and £99 / month to look after. London-quality outcome on the back of a Soho dinner budget.
Do you cover the Home Counties / Cambridge / Brighton / Reading?
Yes. The whole South East commuter belt sits inside a credible half-day visit from central London. Phil travels in to King’s Cross or Euston, then jumps the train out to Brighton (1 h), Cambridge (50 min) or Reading (30 min) on the same trip if your office is there. For pure Home Counties briefs (Surrey, Kent, Herts, Bucks) Shivam often drives or trains from London directly. We confirm on the first call who’s coming and when.
Will the site rank for "[my service] London" searches?
Local SEO is baked in: LocalBusiness structured data with the right London address and postcode, a Google Business Profile pass with photos and category fixes where you don’t already have them, per-area landing pages where the buyer journey calls for them ("[your service] London", "[your service] Shoreditch", "[your service] Canary Wharf"). London search is competitive — we don’t promise top-of-Google in a quarter — but the technical foundation is properly there from day one.
What if I want to take the site somewhere else later?
You can, any time. The code lives in a git repository that is yours from day one. Cancel the £99 / month with one month’s notice and we hand over the codebase and deployment instructions; another developer (in London or anywhere else) can take over from there. No exit fee, no stranded content, no platform you cannot leave.
A London brief, on Soho-dinner economics.
Tell us about the business and where in London you are. Shivam will come back inside 24 hours with a meeting slot — at your office or somewhere walkable.
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