About ATL Studio — SSM-Registered Web Designer, Penang

The short version

One Penang shophouse unit open and warmly lit at dusk, its five-foot way tiled, the units either side shuttered and dark. — A shop that is good in person and small online. That gap is the whole reason this exists.

I build websites for small businesses in Penang and around Malaysia. Everything is written as plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript — no page builder, no theme bought and adjusted — with 3D modelled in Blender for whatever the business actually sells, and both English and 中文 written rather than translated.

The thing that bothers me, and the reason the studio exists at all: a shop that is genuinely good in person often looks small online. Not because the owner does not care, but because the cheap option available to them looks cheap, and the good option is priced for a company with a marketing budget. There is a lot of room between those two, and this is an attempt to work in it.

How the prices work

Where the money does not go.

No office: No rent, no fit-out, no reception. An agency's quotation carries a share of a lease in George Town whether or not that lease helped your website.
No account managers: The person who takes the brief is the person who designs it and the person who writes the code. Nothing is explained twice, and nothing gets lost being handed over.
No subcontractors: Nothing is sent overseas and marked up on the way back. The design, the 3D, the code and the Chinese copy are all done here.
AI-accelerated, not AI-authored: AI tooling is used throughout the build the way a workshop uses a CNC: it removes the slow repetitive part, which is genuinely most of it. The design decisions, the copy, the structure and every fact on the page are still mine, and every build is checked by hand before it ships. This is the largest single reason a five-figure job in 2020 is a four-figure job here.
Ten to twelve a month: A deliberate cap, because the whole model falls apart if the quality drops. It is also why the free homepage offer has a limit on it rather than being unlimited and meaningless.

The question nobody asks out loud

What happens to my site if something happens to you?

It is the reasonable thing to worry about when you buy from one person, and it is worth answering before you have to ask.

A single brass key on a ring beside a plain unmarked envelope, on a weathered timber bench lit from one side. — Handover is this small. A key, and a copy of everything.

The domain is yours: Registered in your name or your company's, not mine, from the first day. You hold the login.
The files are yours: A copy of the whole site is handed over at launch, and again any time you ask. If a care plan lapses you still get them, free.
The code is ordinary: Plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript with the reasoning written into the files as comments. Any competent developer can carry on from where I stopped — that is exactly why it is not built on a proprietary builder.
Hosting is not a hostage: The site is static files. It runs on any host, and moving it is a file copy rather than a migration project.

Registration

A registered business, so the paperwork works.

Trading name: ATL Studio
Proprietor: Daniel Lau Ang Thye
SSM registration: 202603211073 (003878422-V)
Based in: Gelugor, Penang, Malaysia
Serving: Penang island and mainland, and clients anywhere in Malaysia
Languages: English, Bahasa Malaysia, 中文

Quotations, invoices and receipts are issued on that registration. The street address is not published here — it is on the paperwork, where it belongs.

So — what does your business do?

That is the whole first message. Twenty minutes on the phone afterwards, then a homepage you can look at before deciding anything.

Get my free page

You talk to the person who builds it.

Where the money does not go.

What happens to my site if something happens to you?

A registered business, so the paperwork works.

So — what does your business do?