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Salt & Scale

For tradespeople & service-business owners · Houston, TX

Websites for the trades that book the work.

Fixed-price builds for solo operators and small crews. Owner-to-owner. No agency overhead, no junior work, no hourly billing.

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  • Shopify Partner
  • Anthropic Claude Partner
  • Vercel Partner
  • Adobe Commerce engineer

What we do

Salt & Scale builds the website your business actually needs: phone-first, mobile-first, fast, and easy to find on Google. Most builds ship in one to three weeks (Elevated Water Solutions: seven days, idea to production). One senior engineer, ten years in production web work. No agency middlemen, no junior hands on the code, no surprise fees.

How we work

  • Solo operator, owner-to-owner
  • Fixed-price, written quote upfront
  • One to three weeks, start to live
  • You own everything: code, domain, host

Who this is for

If you run the shop, this is for you.

  • Solo tradespeople & one-truck operators
  • Two- to ten-person service crews
  • Family-run plumbing, HVAC, electrical, roofing
  • Independent contractors and remodelers
  • Local landscaping, lawn & pool operators
  • Drain cleaning, pest control, locksmith shops

Built for

Mahi Plumbing Elevated Water Solutions Premier Door Innovations AIM Global Transport
Gabriel took the ‘Trophy Catch Plumber’ idea I had in my head and turned it into a site that actually feels like Mahi. First time I saw it I couldn’t talk for a minute.
AJ Owner, Mahi Plumbing · Houston, TX

Services

Two ways we work.

01 Primary practice

Websites for service businesses.

Brand sites, lead-capture forms, local SEO foundation, and mobile-first builds for plumbers, truckers, manufacturers, and every service business in between.

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02 Ecommerce

Ecommerce engineering.

Shopify Plus, Adobe Commerce, headless builds, custom apps, and integrations for brands needing platform-depth expertise.

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Selected work

Built and shipped.

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How we work

Diagnose. Build. Iterate.

01 Discovery

Diagnose before prescribing.

Goals, audience, constraints. Audit of current systems. You receive a written brief and a clear scope before any code gets written.

02 Build

Short cycles, visible work.

Design and development in week-long iterations with regular check-ins. AI accelerates scaffolding; every line is reviewed before it ships.

03 Launch

Ship, then iterate.

Deployed to Vercel with automated CI/CD. Post-launch performance monitoring and iterative improvements as the business grows.

Why Salt & Scale

Three things we do differently.

01

Principle

One senior engineer, end to end.

No handoffs. No junior work shipped. No agency overhead. Every line of code is written and reviewed by Gabriel personally. The same engineer who scoped the work and who'll be there a year after launch.

02

Principle

AI as a force multiplier, never a deliverable.

Anthropic Claude Partner. AI accelerates the build; ten years of production experience owns the quality. You get the velocity of AI development with the judgment of a senior engineer reviewing every output.

03

Principle

Production-grade fundamentals.

Hydrogen contributor. Shopify Partner. Vercel Partner. Built for Core Web Vitals, WCAG 2.2 AA, and real ROI, not Lighthouse vanity scores. The same engineering standards used at brands like Sanrio and PAX Labs.

Gabriel Rosales, Founder and Principal Engineer at Salt & Scale

Gabriel Rosales · Houston, TX

The engineer behind the work

One engineer, ten years, every line.

Gabriel Rosales is the founder of Salt & Scale, a solo consultancy in Houston building production-grade websites for service businesses. Ten years shipping commerce engineering for brands including Sanrio (at Corra), PAX Labs, and Hive Brands, currently a Sr. Customer Success Engineer at Adobe Commerce, and open-source contributor to Shopify’s Hydrogen storefront framework.

  • Shopify Partner
  • Anthropic Claude Partner
  • Vercel Partner
  • Hydrogen contributor
Read more about Gabriel

How pricing works

Fixed-price. Written upfront.

$1,500

Starting price, written upfront.

Discovery call → fixed quote in three business days. Starter sites from $1,500. Multi-service builds with local SEO from $3,000. The number you get is the number you pay.

1–3

Weeks, start to live.

Most builds ship in one to three weeks. Fastest so far: Elevated Water Solutions in seven days, idea to production. Written timeline before any code is written.

0

Lock-in. You own it.

Code in a GitHub repo you own. Domain in your name. Hosting under your Vercel account. If we ever part ways, you walk away with everything. No ransom.

Common questions

The questions owners actually ask.

Don’t see your question? Bring it to the discovery call, or just send an email.

  • Will this be too technical for me to manage day-to-day?
    No. After launch you get a one-page written guide for the few things you'll actually touch: updating phone numbers, adding service areas, swapping photos. Most owners spend less than 10 minutes a month on the site. For anything bigger, send a Loom or a text and I handle it.
  • How much does a site like this cost?
    Starter sites (4–6 pages, contact form, local SEO foundation) start at $1,500. Multi-service builds with service-area pages, a photo gallery, and reviews blocks run $3,000. Larger authority sites with city-page clusters or a blog start at $5,000. Every quote is fixed-price and in writing — the number you get is the number you pay, no change-orders unless you change the scope.
  • How long does it take to build?
    Most builds ship in one to three weeks from kick-off. The fastest so far, Elevated Water Solutions, went from idea to production in seven days. Bigger scope (15+ pages, custom integrations, multiple stakeholders) can push toward four weeks. Every project has a written timeline before any code is written.
  • Do I own the site or am I renting it from you?
    You own everything. The code lives in a GitHub repo you own. The domain stays in your name. Hosting is on Vercel under your account. If we ever part ways, you walk away with the keys to the whole thing. No platform lock-in, no ransom.
  • What if I want to change something after launch?
    Built into the workflow. Small tweaks (copy, photos, new service area) are usually handled within a few business days. Bigger additions get a quick written estimate. Most clients keep me on retainer for an hour or two a month.
  • What if I'm not happy with the design?
    You see the first design within the first week, before most of the code is written. Two rounds of revisions are built into every fixed-price quote. We don't go to launch until you say it's right.

From the field

Insights, not opinions.

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Ready to build something that books work?

One discovery call. A clear scope. A written proposal within three business days.

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