Northlight · Sydney

You don't have to know what's broken. Working that out is the first thing we do.

Most businesses can feel it long before they can describe it. Things take longer than they should, jobs need chasing, and nobody can point at exactly where. Tell us the messy version and we'll read it back to you properly.

Describe it in one messy sentence One box, your own words, and you get our read on it free — how the work actually runs and what's breaking.
No email address, no call to book, and it'll say if you don't need us for it.

quarryco.app

dealsignals.app

Live right now — not mockups.

6things built and still running

355sites built and live, one per business

50/50half to start, half once it's working

Sydneystudio — you deal with whoever built it

6 things built and still running· 355 sites built and live, one per business· Half to start, half once it's working· You use it before you pay the rest· Sydney studio, you deal with whoever built it·

01Plainly

What we make

Three priced things, and a fourth for work too big to put a number on. You'll usually want one of them, and we'll tell you which on the first call.

What most take

Website

Designed, built, hosted and looked after — so you never think about it again.

from $1,490_{to build} then $79 a month

Rather not pay up front? $199 a month, nothing to start. Same website, we just carry the build for you.

Custom website, designed around your business
Live within days — you see it before the second half is due
Hosting, SSL, backups and your domain
Unlimited changes, whenever you want them
An enquiry form that emails you every message
Get found — set up so Google and AI assistants like ChatGPT actually recommend you
Need a change? Text us — a real person replies, not a ticket queue
Half to start, half when it goes live
Cheaper than the monthly-only way from month 13 — about $2,800 less over three years

Get your free demo

Website + a tool

For a business where the website isn't the bottleneck — the admin around it is.

from $2,900_{to build} then $129 a month

Or $399 a month with nothing up front — same build, financed.

Everything in Website
One working tool built into your site. Pick one:
An instant quote calculator, priced off your own rates
Online bookings that can't double-book you
A price from a photo, sent while they're still reading
Changes to the tool included, same as the site

Get your free demo

Custom software

When the job is bigger than a tool on a website — the thing you were about to hire someone to do.

from $4,500_one-off

Quoting, scheduling, chasing payment — one screen, not five tabs
Built around how you actually work, watched first
Half to start, half once it runs
We keep it running from $850 a month
Fixed price, agreed before a line is written

Describe it in a box

Bigger than any of that?

Multi-site rollouts, a product that needs inventing, research and reports behind a login, a whole brand from scratch. We take that work too — it just can't be honestly priced from a web page. Tell us what it is and we'll give you a fixed number before anything starts.

Talk to us

Add to any of the three

Small jobs we do well, priced so you don't have to think hard.

Does ChatGPT recommend you? Run the free scan — see what AI says about your business today. If it's wrong or silent, we fix it. Free scan

Google Business Profile Set up properly — categories, photos, and reviews flowing in on their own. from $149 one-off

Photo day Half a day shooting your shop, your work, your people — for the site and socials. from $349 one-off

Missed-call text-back A missed call gets an instant text so the job doesn't ring the next name on Google. from $49/month

Local pages that rank Honest suburb-and-service pages added gradually every week, on autopilot. from $99/month

Social starter Profiles set up + a month of posts drafted for you — you just approve. from $199/month

Not sure which? Describe the problem in one messy sentence and we'll tell you which of the three it is — or that it's none of them. That's free.

02The read

Nobody describes it well the first time

And they don't need to. Written badly is fine — badly is how it actually sounds in someone's head. Here's the shape of it.

Typed into the box

“honestly we're just drowning. every job needs chasing, nothing's where it should be, and if Kim's off it all stops.”

Read back

Work arrives in three different places — email, the phone, and whoever happens to be at the desk — and it only becomes real once somebody types it into one list. Everything that gets chased is something that never made it into that list.

Which is why it stops when Kim is off. Kim isn't doing the chasing because she's thorough. She's doing it because she's the only place the three versions meet.

An example of the shape, not a client — we don't publish anyone's words but our own. The box on the next page does this with yours.

03Why we diagnose first

The most useful thing we do is sometimes tell you not to bother.

A fair share of what people describe to us isn't a build at all. It's a setting in something they already pay for, switched off. We say so, there's no invoice, and we've just spent an hour making ourselves nothing.

We do it anyway, and not out of good manners. Anyone can claim they'd be honest with you. Doing it before you've paid for anything is the only version of that claim worth listening to — and it's why the read comes first, free and before a conversation, rather than after a proposal.

The read is first

What's actually happening, in plain words, before anyone talks about building anything.

Fixed price, paid in halves

Agreed before a line is written. Half to start, half once it's working — never an hourly rate that drifts.

You use it early

Rough but working, so you're reacting to something real instead of a mockup.

We keep it running

It's ours to look after. Things break; you get the person who built it, not a ticket queue.

DealSignals

A South African tool that reads public business-broker listings and picks out the ones whose own wording says the owner is on the way out — an emigration sale, a retirement, a partnership split, a forced sale. It reads the reason off the listing rather than guessing it, then scores and files them in one terminal.

South African market, not Australian — worth saying plainly, because it's the market the thing was built for. The screen below is the product's own sample view; it masks company names until you subscribe.

live ScrapersScoringPython

DealSignals — the off-market intelligence terminal, scored and filterable

·Also running

InstantPresence

Type a business name and it builds the whole online presence out of what's already public about them — site, copy, social — in about a minute.

The quoting and lead tools

A photo-to-quote tool and a lead inbox with a pipeline behind it, both built on the same stack and both still up.

06At volume

355 sites, built before anybody was asked to pay

Our website engine builds a real, finished site for a business out of what's already public about them, then puts it live at its own address. Three hundred and fifty-five of them are sitting on our servers right now, one per business, each a working site rather than a template preview.

One of 355 sites built and hosted by the website engine

One of the 355. Built automatically and hosted live — finished and waiting at its own address before the business has had a single conversation with us.

Search for your business

08Working with us

How it goes

The read, before you speak to anyone. One box, your own words, no email address. You'll know what we think is happening before you've decided whether to ring us.
Then a fifteen-minute call, and we mostly ask questions. If the honest answer is a setting in software you already pay for, that's what you'll hear, and there'll be no invoice.
If it's a big enough decision, the hard look first. Before anybody spends anything on building it, we go looking for the ways it breaks and hand you the list, worst first. $750, and it comes off the build in full — it's not a step everything needs, and we'll say so if yours doesn't.
A fixed price before anything starts. Not an hourly rate that drifts. You know the number and it doesn't move.
Half to start, half once it's working. The first half books the work and clears the time. The second isn't due until the thing is built, running and you've used it yourself — so you're holding half the money the whole way through.
Then we look after it. Things break. When they do it's ours, and you get the person who built it rather than a ticket queue.

09How you pay

Half to start. Half once it's working.

The honest fear about handing a build to a small studio is paying and getting nothing back. So the second half doesn't move until the thing exists, runs, and you've opened it yourself.

Websites from $1,490 built. Custom software from $4,500. Websites are $199 a month, or $1,990 a year.

Scope sets that number, not hours, and we work it out with you before anything starts. Under that floor it usually isn't a build at all — and we'd rather tell you so for nothing than quote for it.

Half to start

The only money ever ahead of the work.

Half on completion

Not due until it's built and running.

You use it first

The actual thing on your screen, not a demo.

One fixed number

Agreed before a line is written.

The hard look — a week spent trying to break the plan before you commit. $750, and it comes off the build in full if you go ahead. The build price is the same either way.

10Honestly

Who this isn't for

If you want the cheapest possible version of something, we're the wrong studio — we quote one fixed number and it's rarely the lowest one you'll get. If you want a team of ten and a twelve-month roadmap, also wrong: we're small on purpose and we build one useful thing at a time.

And if the honest answer is that a setting in your existing software fixes it, we'll tell you that and there'll be no invoice. We'd rather be the people who said so than the people who charged for it.

11Also

Still building websites, too

If a website is the actual problem, that's still $199 a month, built before you pay. We just stopped pretending it's the answer to every question, because most of the time the expensive problem is happening behind the scenes rather than on the homepage.

12Also

And when the site itself has to do the selling

Some businesses aren't fixing a broken process. They're trying to look like the most expensive option in their category, because they are. For those we build in real 3D — the thing you sell, on the page, turning as you scroll. Not a video of it. The object.

Four working examples →

12Start

Say it badly. That's the whole ask.

There's one box on the next page and no form around it. Write the bit of the week everyone avoids the way you'd say it out loud — “we retype orders from email into Xero twice a day and half the time something's wrong” — and you'll get back how we think the work actually runs, what's breaking, the one question we'd ask, and the thing we'd build. Before you speak to anyone, and without leaving an email address.

Describe it in one messy sentence

And if the honest answer is that it's a setting in software you already pay for, it says that instead. That's the one we'd rather you found out here than on a call.