A small studio with a high bar.
We build custom websites — and the apps behind them — for businesses that have outgrown the template stage. Designed and built by hand, by the person who then hands you the keys.
We started where most studios stop: not just brochure sites, but content-heavy publishing platforms and full web apps with logins, dashboards, payments and automations. That range is the point. Whether you need a site that finally matches your ambition or a tool that earns its keep while you sleep, the same hands design it, build it, and hand you the keys.
We do a few things differently — we build it custom and give it to you, we prove it’s fast with real numbers, and we move you off WordPress without losing a ranking. And there are no account managers, no junior hand-offs and no outsourcing: you talk to the person building your site, and we’ll always tell you honestly what it takes.
What sets us apart.
Built custom, owned by you
No page-builder lock-in, no monthly ransom. Clean, hand-written code — handed over at the end. The site is yours forever.
Fast, and we prove it
Real Google PageSpeed numbers, captured before and after. Your site earns its scores; we don’t just claim them.
Migrations without the fear
We keep your URLs, redirects and rankings intact. Moving off WordPress shouldn’t cost you a decade of SEO — with us, it doesn’t.
You talk to the maker
No account managers, no junior hand-offs, no outsourcing. The person who designs and builds your site is the person you email — senior attention from first call to launch.
Where we fit in.
The honest version — what the alternatives cost you, and what we do instead.
DIY templates
Wix · Squarespace · themes
The catch
Generic, slow and rented — you end up looking like everyone else, and you’re stuck on their platform.
With True Craft
Bespoke design, genuine speed, and a site that’s truly yours.
Big agencies
the full-service route
The catch
Months of theatre, account managers and lock-in — you pay for the overhead as much as the work.
With True Craft
The same craft with half the theatre: direct, weeks not months, a fraction of the cost.
Freelancers / offshore
the lowest-bid route
The catch
A quality gamble with no published proof and no range — and often no one around when it breaks.
With True Craft
Published Google PageSpeed proof, real range (sites and apps), and a process you can see.
The gap we own: Agency-grade craft, performance you can measure and full ownership — delivered fast, and direct.
Four steps, no surprises.
You always know where the project is and what happens next.
Discovery
We learn your business, your audience and your goals — and audit what you have now.
Design
A bespoke design built around your brand, signed off before a line of production code is written.
Build
Hand-coded in Next.js — fast, accessible and search-built from the first commit.
Migrate & launch
Every URL mapped, redirects verified, rankings protected. We launch carefully and watch the numbers.
Hi — I’m Pablo Mandado.
I built the first version of my own travel blog in 2014, taught myself to code along the way, and have been building sites for people and businesses ever since. But “web developer” is only a sliver of it.
I’m wired to pick something up and not stop until I’ve mastered it. I went from never touching a camera to selling photography to magazines and ad campaigns inside a year — with work in National Geographic. I spent over a decade on the road (twelve years of it, in three languages, is The Crazy Travel). And I spent a few years trading prediction markets — pricing probability better than the people setting the odds — and retired from it young.
Which is the part that matters for you: I build websites because I genuinely love the craft, not because I need the income. So I only take on work I care about, give it senior attention from the first sketch to launch, and obsess over the details the way I’ve obsessed over everything I’ve ever learned.
True Craft Lab is, deliberately, a studio of one. No account managers, no juniors doing the real work, no outsourcing — the person who designs and builds your site is the person you email, and you’ll always know exactly who did.
I’ve spent my life chasing hard problems and cracking them. So if you have a website, a tool, or an idea you’ve been told is too ambitious, too complicated, or flat-out impossible — that’s exactly the kind of work I want. Bring me your biggest challenge, and we’ll best it together.
Pablo Mandado
Let’s make you impossible to ignore.
Tell us where you are now and where you want to be. We’ll tell you honestly what it takes.
Projects from €4,000 · an honest quote, no obligation