About
We build websites the right way — secure, fast, and built to last.
Secure by Design is a web development studio focused on building businesses a better alternative to WordPress. We use Go and PocketBase to create websites that are lightweight, maintainable, and genuinely secure — not just patched against the latest CVE.
We believe you should understand and control your own website. That means no lock-in, no opaque 'managed' environments you can't inspect, and no surprise plugin bills. Just well-crafted code and a content manager your team can pick up in an afternoon.
Our philosophy
Security isn't a feature — it's a foundation
Most websites are insecure by accident. They're built from composited third-party plugins, each one a potential entry point, and the security model is bolted on after the fact.
We start the other way around. Go is a memory-safe compiled language with no dynamic loading at runtime. PocketBase is a single self-contained binary — there is no sprawling PHP framework, no dependency manager to audit at 2am, no WordPress plugin directory to fear.
The result is a website with a minimal attack surface, fast response times, and a codebase small enough to reason about completely.
For businesses moving from WordPress
We handle the migration: content, images, SEO redirects, and anything else that matters. You keep your rankings; you lose the anxiety.
For businesses who want control without complexity
PocketBase gives you a real admin panel — you can manage pages, blog posts, products, or anything else — without needing a developer for every content change.
For businesses who want someone to just handle it
Our managed hosting means we watch the servers, apply updates when needed, keep backups, and are on hand when something needs to change.
The stack
Boring technology, in the best possible way
We choose proven, well-understood tools — not because we lack imagination but because reliability matters more than novelty when it's your business on the line.
Go
The server
A compiled, statically typed language from Google. Go binaries start in milliseconds, use minimal memory, and have no runtime dependencies. Deploying is copying a single file.
PocketBase
The backend
An open-source backend-in-a-binary. PocketBase provides the database, admin UI, file storage, and authentication — everything a dynamic website needs, with nothing you don't.
Tailwind CSS
The styling
Tailwind compiles to exactly the CSS your templates use — nothing else. No unused bloat, no external stylesheet requests, no framework to keep updated.
This site runs the same stack
This website is built exactly the way we'd build yours — Go serving server-side templates, PocketBase managing the content, and Tailwind providing the styles. The blog posts and testimonials you see are pulled live from PocketBase. What you're looking at is the proof of concept.