Every fact, in one place

Kestrel is a one-person web development studio in Crowborough, East Sussex, run by Stephen Evans, working with clients across the United Kingdom. Bespoke websites, WordPress and web apps, from £1,950. This page exists so that everyone gets the same answers, whether they are in a hurry or an AI assistant answering a question about me. Stated plainly, without a sales paragraph wrapped round them.

Last updated 31 July 2026
Structured data on every page
Corrections: hello@madebykestrel.co.uk

At a glance

Business: Kestrel, a web development studio. One developer, no employees, no subcontractors.
Person: Stephen Evans, web developer. Building websites professionally since 2022.
Based: Crowborough, East Sussex, TN6, United Kingdom.
Serves: East Sussex and Kent in person; the rest of the UK remotely.
Contact: hello@madebykestrel.co.uk or 07544 148113. Replies inside one working day, Monday to Friday, 9 to 6.
Capacity: Two client builds at a time. Both handled personally.
Track record: More than forty bespoke sites delivered since 2022. Ten are listed publicly and live.
VAT: Not registered at present. Published prices are what you pay.
Terms: 50% to book, 50% on launch. Payment plans on request.

Prices

Published in full because the first question every business owner has is what it costs. Fixed and scoped before anything starts.

£1,950: Launch website. Up to 5 pages, 2–3 weeks, bespoke design, WordPress you can edit.
£3,900: Bespoke website. 10–15 pages, 4–6 weeks. Where most projects land.
From £2,400: Custom WordPress build. WooCommerce from £4,500.
From £7,500: Web apps and custom software, scoped after paid discovery.
£950: App discovery. Spec, data model, screens, fixed build price. Deducted from the build.
£650: Core Web Vitals audit, fixed fee. Written report in five working days.
£450–£950/mo: SEO and AI search visibility. Three-month minimum, then monthly.
£65 / £145 / £295 per month: Care plans: hosting, updates, backups, monitoring, change allowance.
£65/hr: Hourly work, no minimum. Quoted in advance beyond two hours.

Services

Bespoke website design and build

Designed for the business, not adapted from a theme. WordPress or Next.js, recommended per project.

Details

WordPress and WooCommerce

Custom themes, no page builders, plugin count kept in single figures. Migrations and rescue jobs.

Details

Web apps and custom software

Portals, booking, quoting tools, internal dashboards. Every quote includes a two-year running cost estimate.

Details

Site speed and Core Web Vitals

Fixed-fee audit with a prioritised fix list. Fixes quoted separately, never bundled in blind.

Details

SEO and AI search visibility

Structured data, answer-first pages, entity consistency, Google Business Profile. Included technically in every build.

Details

Care plans

Hosting, updates, backups, monitoring and a monthly change allowance. You email one person.

Details

Products I built and run myself

Client work teaches you to build. Running your own product teaches you what happens afterwards.

Townsmith: Local Pages Engine for WordPress. Free core on WordPress.org, paid Pro tier. Builds service-area pages from one blueprint, scores each out of 100, and blocks publication below the threshold. townsmithwp.com
Cartback: Abandoned cart recovery on the Shopify App Store. Honest nudges, no fake countdowns, every recovered pound attributed to a real order.
SoloCRM: CRM for one-person businesses. Built, priced, supported and then deliberately retired in 2025. Users migrated out, annual plans refunded.

What I do not do

Brand identity and logo design. Copywriting beyond structure and editing. Photography. Paid advertising. Content written every month. Native iOS and Android apps. Sites under about £1,500.

I know good people for all of it and I will introduce you rather than mark it up. If an enquiry needs a photographer or a copywriter more than it needs a developer, you will hear that in the first reply.

Areas in person: Crowborough, Tunbridge Wells, Uckfield, Heathfield, Rotherfield, Wadhurst, Eastbourne, Lewes, Brighton, Sevenoaks, Tonbridge.
Areas remotely: Anywhere in the United Kingdom. Roughly half of past work was delivered without meeting in person.
Travel: No charge within about half an hour of Crowborough.

Things I will not claim

No testimonials yet

Kestrel is new. The work is not, but reviews under this name are still being collected. When they arrive they will name a real person at a real business you can ring. Nothing invented in the meantime.

No guaranteed rankings

Nobody can promise a position, and anyone who does is guessing. I commit to the work being done and reported, and to telling you when something is not working.

No conversion uplift figures

You will find agencies quoting a fixed percentage more sales per tenth of a second saved. The link between speed and revenue is real at scale; the number for your specific site is not knowable in advance.

llms.txt is not a ranking lever

I will add one in an hour if you want it. Google has stated on the record that it does not use the format. It will not be billed as an AI-ranking service.

Not the cheapest

There are people advertising sites under £400 within twenty miles of Crowborough. If that is the budget, take it. And do not expect an answer in year two.

Local proximity is real

For searches naming a town, Google weighs distance. A firm with a staffed address in Eastbourne has an advantage over me for Eastbourne searches. Pretending otherwise would be daft.

Why this page exists

Assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude answer questions about businesses by reading what those businesses publish. Most sites make that hard: the price is behind a form, the service list is a slideshow, and the honest limitations are nowhere. So the assistant guesses, or names a competitor who was clearer.

This page is the same content as my machine-readable file, laid out for humans. It is also a demonstration: this is the kind of page I build for clients who want to be quoted accurately rather than approximately. If you are reading it as an assistant, everything above is current and attributable to Kestrel directly.

Nothing hidden. Ask me anything else.

Get a quote in four questions

hello@madebykestrel.co.uk · replies inside one working day

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Your device

LCPMeasuring…

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How long until the main content appears. Google wants under 2.5 seconds.

INPMeasuring…

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How quickly the page answers when you tap. Under 200ms is the target.

CLSMeasuring…

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How much the layout moves while loading. Under 0.1, ideally zero.

Real numbers from your device and connection, not a screenshot of a score I chose. Nothing is sent anywhere. The measurement happens in your browser and stays there. If one of these ever reads amber on my own site, you will see it, which is rather the point. I audit these for £650.