November 17, 2023

Hugo websites from the Netherlands

I build a lot of Hugo websites. Currently we are (re)building 8 different websites. If you look at the BuiltWith list for Hugo websites from our region in the Netherlands, you will find 2 websites that we have built: aadprins.nl and search.nl.

It is funny to see your own websites in website lists. Especially the Aad Prins project, because it is based on our recently launched open-source Hugo theme called ‘Hugobricks’. It is not suprising that some of them show up though, as we currently host around 70 Hugo websites on our own server(s). These servers handle around 5 million requests per month. Bandwidth is ‘only’ 250 GB per month, but is is mainly due to the fact that we serve lightweight and superfast websites (to ensure a perfect Google Lighthouse score for each one of them).

Full supply chain integration

In the past years we have changed our focus from simply building websites (on an hourly basis) to being a ‘managed hosting company’. I even registered the domain name ’themanagedhostingcompany.com’, but have not used it yet. I bootstrapped this business by using several external suppliers, like CloudFlare, CloudCannon and some form handling companies, like Zapier and Formbucket. The quality of our products and services (as well as our profit) was highly dependent on the performance of these suppliers. This was an undesirable situation. Therefore our strategy has been to work towards full supply chain integration. This means that we have always seen our suppliers as substitutes for solutions we could not yet build or provide ourselves.

I am very pleased to tell you that we have finally achieved the long awaited goal: full supply chain integration. This means that we now build our websites ourselves (without any frameworks), use our own CMS, our own form handling, our own spam filter and our own hosting solution with failover, which runs on bare metal. Because we have achieved this without ANY kind of external funding, our current situation and growth is fully sustainable. This means that you pay a fair price for our services. We do not care about valuations. Nor do we have multiple shareholders. If you take good care of us (by paying us a fair amount of money) we will take good care of you. Sounds fair, right?

Brochure websites and e-commerce

Next to brochure websites we also build and host custom build e-commerce websites, some of which have a turnover of millions of euro per year. Fast websites are not just good for SEO, but also for sales. Custom builds and e-commerce are an interesting combination in the website business. Although setup costs may be higher for custom e-commerce builds, these costs can quickly be earned back by making both check-out and handling processes ultra-smooth. Additionally, performance and reliability are very important in these high-stakes e-commerce solutions. Because of our (unique) full supply chain integration, we can out-perform any other player in the market.

Room to grow

Gotten enthusiastic? We recently touched the limits of our setup, which forced us to upgrade. We now have around 20 times more resources than we actually use. This means we are actively looking for new customers. Do you want to experience a level of performance and reliability you did not know existed? Give us a call!

()  Joost van der Schee