Independent studio · Since 1995

Digital products, platforms, and systems.
Built with three decades of judgment.

Ivylane designs, builds, and operates software — custom tools, automations, customer portals, commerce, and the products you'll find below. Technologies change. Knowing what to build, what to skip, and what will still be standing in ten years is the part that compounds.

On the web since 1995 · Products we build, we also operate · This page loads in under a second — test it yourself

Capabilities

Organized around problems, not services.

Nobody wakes up wanting "software development." They want a process to stop living in spreadsheets, an idea tested before it's expensive, a system modernized before it fails. We think, design, and build — the same hands, start to finish.

All capabilities, with honest boundaries

Where projects actually start

Most projects don't arrive as a spec.
They arrive as a sentence.

“We've been doing this in spreadsheets for years.”
“I wish customers could just do this themselves.”
“I've had this idea for ten years.”
“Somebody retypes this every single week.”
“I got a quote years ago and shelved the whole thing.”
“I don't know if this is a website, an app, or what.”

Any of those is a complete brief. Part of the job — often the most valuable part — is working out what the thing should be, then finding the smallest version that's genuinely useful. We scope down before we scope up. Sometimes the answer is a two-day automation, not a six-month build. Sometimes it's an off-the-shelf product we'll point you to. We'll tell you either way — that advice is free.

And the economics have shifted: AI-assisted development has made the project you shelved because it cost too much probably affordable now. We wrote up exactly why, without the hype.

Since 1995

Technologies change.
Good judgment compounds.

Ivylane has been building on the web since 1995 — before Google, before broadband, before most of today's agencies existed. Eight technology eras later, the lesson isn't nostalgia. It's pattern recognition: which shifts matter, which are expensive noise, and what will still be standing when the cycle turns.

1995

The early web

Hand-written HTML. Everything since is still, underneath, a document and a link.

1998

Ecommerce

The first carts and payments. Trust and speed mattered more than features. Still true.

2004

Search

Being findable became existential. Structure beat tricks then; it beats tricks now.

2008

Mobile

The screen shrank; the sites that survived were the ones built simply.

2012

Cloud & SaaS

Owning servers stopped making sense. Owning your data never did.

2016

APIs

Software became plumbing between systems. Integration became the product.

2023

Generative AI

Building got cheaper. Judgment didn't. That gap is where we work.

31
Years online
4
Products we build & operate
<1s
This page's load time
1 day
Typical reply time

The full story, without the timeline nostalgia

Start a project

Describe the problem.
Plain English is perfect.

You don't need to know whether it's a website, an app, or an automation — working that out is part of the service. You'll get a real reply within one business day, from the person who'd build it: an honest take, and a written estimate if it's practical.

  • A written estimate in plain English before any work starts
  • You own the domain, hosting, data, and code from day one
  • Direct line to the person doing the work — no handoffs
  • An honest "don't build this" when that's the right answer

Prefer email or a call? richard@ivylane.com · (315) 927-1211

No obligation · Reply within one business day

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