Frequently Asked Questions

Individuals, small businesses, PyMES, and startups across Latin America and the United States. Our clients range from a florist in Heredia who needs a $150 landing page to a property management company in Alaska running a 76,000-line platform with 92 API endpoints and 17 third-party integrations. We serve real estate, hospitality, construction, e-commerce, publishing, and nonprofits. The only industries we won't touch are medical, government, and anything promoting hate speech or weapons.

San José, Costa Rica. We're a two-person studio — Lorenzo (lead dev + strategy) and Steven (data architecture + DevOps). We work remotely with clients across the Americas. Same time zone as US Central, so communication happens in real-time during business hours. All meetings are via Google Meet, recorded and transcribed so nothing gets lost.

Three things: (1) You work directly with the people who build your site — no account managers, no outsourcing, no handoffs. The person on the discovery call is the person writing the code. (2) We own our infrastructure — 14 applications running on our own server, managed through our own deployment platform. We control performance and security end to end. (3) You own everything — your code, your data, your domain. No lock-in, no proprietary CMS. We keep clients by doing good work, not by holding their site hostage.

Site builders work for basic pages, but they have real limits: slow load times, poor SEO control, no custom functionality, and you're renting — not owning — your site. When you outgrow the template, you start over. Our public-facing sites average 99/100 on Lighthouse performance. We build sites that are fully customizable, belong to you, and can evolve into full platforms when your business grows. For businesses that depend on their website to generate leads or revenue, the difference is measurable.

Vector started in 2018 with Lorenzo's first clients. Steven joined in 2020 and we formalized the company — launched the website, built out the infrastructure, and started taking on larger projects. The name comes from Lorenzo's love of 80s design — bold, VHS-era aesthetics. The logo bridges 90s editorial design with modern sensibilities. Seven years later, we've shipped 18+ projects and built an entire internal toolchain (Atlas, Orion, Vela, Lyra, Rigel) that powers our delivery.

Websites, online stores, mobile-ready web apps, booking systems, internal tools, dashboards, CRMs, APIs, and custom software. Our largest project has 76,500+ lines of code, 92 API endpoints, 40+ database tables, and 17 third-party integrations. Our smallest recent project was a book launch site with a custom Shopify theme — lean in features, but built to the same production-grade standard. Every project includes SEO setup, analytics, and bilingual support (EN/ES) at no extra cost.

Both — and we don't outsource either. Every project starts with design in Figma, then gets built with Vela, our proprietary design system with 385 components. Vela includes theme customization (dark/light mode, OKLCH color tokens), 16 curated font pairings, WCAG contrast checking, and 15 icon libraries with ~70,000 icons. The same team that designs your site is the team that codes and deploys it.

Yes — and it's not an add-on. Every site we build is optimized from day one: fast load times, clean URLs, schema markup, Core Web Vitals tuning, and mobile-first responsive design. Our public-facing client sites consistently score 99-100 on Lighthouse SEO. We also set up Google Analytics 4, Search Console, and help with content strategy and local SEO for LATAM and US markets.

Yes. We've migrated clients from legacy platforms to modern stacks — Americas Worldwide went from a restrictive setup to a scalable Laravel backend with complex business logic and payment integration. We plan migrations carefully to avoid downtime and data loss. If your current site is slow, hard to update, or has security concerns, a migration is usually worth it.

Our expertise is web-first. We build responsive web applications that work beautifully on mobile devices, and we can build progressive web apps (PWAs) that install on home screens. We have not deployed native apps to the App Store or Google Play. If your project requires a native mobile app, we'll be upfront about that and can recommend partners.

Initial contact → Discovery call on Google Meet (recorded + transcribed) → We map your needs against our services and define scope → Proposal with detailed SOW → Contract signing → Repository and project setup → Development with regular check-ins → QA and client review → Launch via our deployment pipeline → Handoff with documentation and monitoring confirmed. The whole process is tracked in our internal project management system, so you always know where things stand.

A simple site: 2–4 weeks. A content-heavy or bilingual site: 1–2 months. A custom web application or e-commerce build: 2–4 months. Our largest project (All Star Realty — 76K+ lines, 92 endpoints, 17 integrations) was built over several months. The biggest factor is how quickly we get what we need from you — goals, content, feedback. We set realistic timelines during discovery and stick to them.

Simple sites start at $150 with hosting included for the first year. A 5–10 page bilingual business site typically runs $800–$2,500. E-commerce ranges from $2,000–$8,000+ depending on catalog and integrations. Custom web applications with dashboards, auth, and databases start around $3,000 and scale from there — our enterprise-grade platform work runs significantly higher. Every quote is detailed and itemized after a free discovery call. No hidden fees.

A conversation. We'll ask about your business goals, who your customers are, what you want the site to do, and any constraints. If you have existing branding, content, or a site you like as reference, that helps. We handle the rest — you don't need technical knowledge. The more precise and timely your input, the smoother the project.

We handle it. If a feature is significantly outside the original statement of work, we price it on an hourly basis and document the addition separately. The original SOW defines boundaries clearly, so there are no surprises — you'll know exactly what's included and what would be extra before we start.

Yes. We share progress regularly and give you access to a staging site where you can see the real build as it develops. Every task is tracked in Atlas (our internal project management system), and updates flow through Orion to give you clear visibility on what's done, what's next, and what needs your input.

Your site is live, hosted on our infrastructure, and monitored with health checks every 30 seconds. We handle server maintenance, security updates, SSL auto-renewal, and backups. If something breaks, we fix it — you talk directly to the team that built it, not a ticket system. The only documented production incident in our history affected our internal CRM for ~3 hours, not a client site.

Yes. Every project comes with managed hosting on our own DigitalOcean infrastructure — 14 applications currently running on our deployment platform. You get fast SSD storage, CDN delivery via Lyra (our asset manager), SSL, and daily backups. You don't need to set up or manage a server. After the first year, hosting continues at a straightforward annual rate.

Absolutely. If your site has a CMS, you can update content yourself — we'll train you. For design changes, new features, or technical updates, we offer retainer hours or project-based quotes. We iterate constantly with clients and don't put hard caps on revision rounds — we believe in getting it right.

Yes. Your code, your data, your domain, your hosting — all yours. If you ever want to move to a different provider, you take everything with you. Source code is version-controlled in our self-hosted Git server with full commit history. We don't use proprietary systems or lock-in tactics.

We isolate the site immediately (take the container offline), assess the breach through commit history and access logs, restore from the last known-good deployment and database backup, rotate all credentials, harden the configuration, notify you with a full timeline, and document everything in a postmortem. This has never happened to a client site, but the playbook is tested — we've recovered our own internal systems from incidents and documented the entire process.