About
One person, so nothing gets lost between departments.
No account manager, no handoff between the person who sold it and the person who builds it. You're talking to the person doing the work.
Craftvane is run by Jay Lapshov, based in San Jose, California. Day to day, Jay runs growth and operations for a San Jose remodeling company, which is where the automation behind Craftvane's retainer, the missed-call text-back, the review requests, the reminders, first got built and tested. Not on a demo account. On a real business with real customers calling, where a broken automation means a real person does not get called back.
That is the whole origin of this. These tools work, they are not particularly hard to set up, and almost no small business is running them, usually because the person who would set them up is the same person answering the phone. Craftvane exists to be that person for somebody else's business.
The build is a static site: no WordPress, no plugins, nothing to patch at 11pm because a security advisory came out. It is hosted on Netlify, which is genuinely cheap and genuinely fast, and I am not marking it up. The chatbot runs on Claude, configured with your business's own information rather than a generic script, on an API key issued under my account so you never have to go set one up.
The honest tradeoff of building it this way: you cannot log in and edit the site yourself. That is deliberate. Content changes come to me and are included in the retainer, which means they actually get done, instead of sitting in a CMS you have to remember how to use. If self-editing is important to you, say so early and I will tell you straight whether I am the right fit.
Working with one person
The real tradeoff, both directions
The upside
What you get
- The person who quoted it is the person building it, so nothing gets lost in a handoff
- No account manager relaying your request to someone you never speak to
- Changes happen the day you ask, not the sprint after you ask
- No agency overhead priced into your build
The downside
What you don't
- I am not available at 2am, and I will not pretend to offer 24/7 support
- I take a limited number of builds at a time, so there may be a wait
- No in-house photographer, videographer, or brand studio
- If you need a large coordinated team, an agency is genuinely the better answer
Straight talk
When you should not hire me
You need a store with hundreds of products. Real e-commerce wants Shopify. I would be building you a worse version of something that already exists and costs less.
You need to edit the site daily. A newsroom, a busy events calendar, a menu that changes every day. That wants a CMS, and my setup would fight you.
You want an app, a login, or a customer dashboard. Different discipline, different budget. I build marketing sites.
Referrals already fill your calendar. If you are turning work away, a website is a lower priority for you than for someone trying to grow, and I would rather say that than take the money.
The fastest way to judge whether this is any good is not to read about it. Open the two sites on the work page, load them on your phone, and see how they feel.