The stack we actually build with.
Every piece of tech under an Outerwave site, in plain English. What it is, why we chose it, what you get out of it, and where we deliberately do not use it. Opinion-forward, not a feature list.
- Tools listed
- 10
- Page builders
- Zero. By design.
- Picked for
- Speed + control
- Lock-in
- None. You own it all.
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Static-fast when you do not need a CMS.
Astro
Astro is the static site generator we reach for when a project does not need a CMS. Landing pages, microsites, concept builds, anything where content rarely changes and performance has to be perfect. Output is plain HTML and a sliver of JavaScript, served from the edge with no server in the loop.
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Managed WordPress hosting that does not cost $250/month.
Cloudways
Cloudways is managed VPS hosting on top of DigitalOcean infrastructure. It is the host we recommend for any WordPress site under roughly 250k pageviews per month. Faster than shared hosting, a quarter the price of Kinsta or WP Engine, with caching that actually works.
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git push, site updates. That simple.
GitHub Actions deploy
Every Outerwave site deploys through a CI pipeline: push to the staging branch, the staging site updates; promote staging to production, the production site updates. Zero downtime, well under a minute end to end. No SFTP, no plugin updater, no "how do I move this change to live?"
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CRM sync without the AppExchange tax.
Salesforce Web-to-Lead
Salesforce Web-to-Lead is a free Salesforce feature that takes an HTTP POST and creates a Lead record. We use it to sync Contact Form 7 submissions into Salesforce. No AppExchange app, no Zapier subscription, no per-record cost.
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Yoast without the bloat or the upsell.
Slim SEO
Yoast and RankMath turned the SEO plugin into a 5MB JavaScript-heavy upsell machine. Slim SEO does the same job in a 50KB plugin: schema, sitemaps, Open Graph, breadcrumbs, redirects. No dashboards, no traffic-light scores, no premium tier dangling features behind a paywall.
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The first phase of <mark>every</mark> build.
Static HTML
Every Outerwave project starts as custom HTML before it ever touches WordPress. We design directly in the browser, so what you sign off on is exactly what ships. Sometimes the static build is the final site; sometimes it gets wired into a CMS afterward. Either way, the design work is real code from day one.
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The right answer, until it isn't.
WordPress
Nearly every site we ship runs on WordPress. We've tried Payload, Sanity, and a handful of other modern CMSes. None of them survive contact with year-three maintenance. WordPress does.
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Custom fields without the bloat.
MetaBox
MetaBox is the custom-fields plugin that runs every Outerwave site. It replaces what Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) used to do, for half the weight, and none of the pro-license hostage drama.
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The boring form plugin we still recommend.
Contact Form 7
Contact Form 7 has been around since 2007. It's been mature for a decade. Every form on every Outerwave site runs on CF7. Not because it's flashy, but because it does one thing, does it well, and never breaks.
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AI that actually ships.
Claude API
Anthropic's Claude API powers two things on our sites: a customer-facing qualification chatbot (Haiku for speed and cost) and our internal content tools (Sonnet for quality). Both run on prompt caching plus tool use, and both pay back their cost in the first qualified lead they capture.
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Want this stack on your site?
Every Outerwave build runs on the tools above. Quick call, real estimate within a business day, no sales pitch.