How long does a Manila project actually take?

Three days for a business site, seven for a store, ten for a custom application. That holds because the process is fixed rather than improvised and because your content exists on day one. What stretches a build is almost never the code — it is waiting for copy, logos and photographs, so those are requested before the clock starts.

What payment methods can my Manila checkout accept?

For Philippines: GCash, Maya, PayMongo, and Dragonpay. The right combination depends on your average basket and your customers, and picking wrong is expensive — the payment method a buyer expects but cannot find is one of the most common reasons a checkout is abandoned at the final step.

Can you fix my existing site rather than rebuild it?

Often, yes, and it is usually the cheaper answer. Speed problems, a broken mobile layout, a form that silently fails or missing structured data are all fixable on the site you already have. I will tell you which of the two you need after looking, and a rebuild only gets recommended when the fix would cost more than starting again.

What hours will you be available to us in Manila?

My working day lands at 12:00–21:00 in your time, which is roughly 6 hours inside a normal Manila working day. In practice you can raise something in the morning and have it answered the same morning, and a scheduled call is easy to place at a civilised hour for both of us.

Will the site actually rank in Manila search results?

The build handles what is technically controllable: crawlable HTML, correct headings, structured data, fast pages, a clean sitemap and Search Console set up on day one. Ranking also depends on your competitors, your domain's age and the links pointing at you, which no developer controls. Anyone guaranteeing a position is guessing or lying.

Do you provide ongoing maintenance after launch?

Thirty days of snag fixes are included after launch at no extra cost — anything that does not work as specified gets fixed. Beyond that there are monthly plans for updates, backups, monitoring and small changes. They are optional and cancellable; a site handed over properly does not require a retainer to keep running.

Do you build on WordPress or something custom?

Whichever the project justifies. WordPress when you need to edit content constantly and want a familiar admin. A static build when speed and security matter more than a plugin ecosystem. Custom PHP and MySQL when the logic is genuinely yours. The choice is explained in the quote with its trade-offs, not presented as a foregone conclusion.

Philippines · Philippines

Web developer in Manila

Websites, online stores and technical SEO for Manila businesses — built remotely from Islamabad, quoted in PHP, scoped in writing before anything starts.

If you are searching for a web developer in Manila, you are probably at one of two points: an existing site that stopped producing enquiries, or no site and a business that has outgrown a social media page. Those are different jobs with different prices, and conflating them is how people end up paying for a rebuild when a fix would have done.

What working with a Filipino client actually changes

These are the terms that differ by country rather than by town. They apply to every business in Philippines, Manila included, and they are the substance of what this page is claiming.

Quoted and invoiced in	PHP — never a converted figure presented at the end
Tax position	VAT at 12%
Your customers' data sits under	the Data Privacy Act of 2012
Lawful transfer mechanism	a DPA meeting NPC requirements for outsourced processing
Checkout can realistically use	GCash, Maya, PayMongo, and Dragonpay
My day, in Manila time	12:00–21:00 — about 6 hours inside a normal working day

One thing worth knowing about building for Philippines

GCash and Maya are wallets rather than card rails, and cash-on-delivery is still a meaningful share of Philippine e-commerce. Both need to exist in the order model or the store only serves a minority of buyers.

Why Manila sites are built to be edited by you

A site you cannot update is a site that decays. Prices go stale, staff leave, the opening hours are wrong for six months. So the parts of a Manila build that change often — text, images, prices, opening hours, team members — are editable by you without touching code or paying me.

That is a design decision with a cost: it takes longer to build an editable block than a hard-coded one. It is worth it because the alternative is a maintenance dependency that benefits me and not you, and a developer whose income depends on you being unable to change your own opening hours is not aligned with your interests.

Healthcare and clinics in Manila

Clinics carry a compliance weight most businesses do not. Appointment forms collect health information, which is a special category under Data Privacy Act of 2012, and it cannot be emailed to a generic inbox or written to a plain-text log. That constraint has to shape the build rather than be bolted onto it afterwards.

Beyond compliance the deciding factor is reassurance: practitioner names, registrations a patient can verify, honest pricing, and what actually happens at a first appointment. Anxiety is why people delay booking, and a site that reduces it outperforms one that merely looks modern.

A redesign that quietly deleted the rankings

The classic disaster: a new site launches, looks far better, and organic enquiries fall off a cliff within a fortnight. The cause is almost always identical — the URLs changed and nothing was redirected, so every page that had accumulated years of authority now returns a 404.

Preventing it is a redirect map built before launch: every old URL to its closest new equivalent with a 301, and anything without an equivalent pointed at the nearest relevant page rather than the homepage. If your Manila site is being redesigned by anyone, ask to see that map. If it does not exist, that is the entire risk in one document.

Hiring a developer who is not in Manila

A Filipino business hiring outside the Philippines is usually doing it for price, and price is the least interesting reason. The more durable one is availability: a one-person supplier answers you directly rather than through an account manager who has to check. That is an advantage on a small project and a genuine liability on a large one, which is why I turn down projects that need a team.

What I build for Manila businesses

Fixed-scope, fixed-price, quoted in PHP. The full list is on the services page.

E-commerce website development I build online stores end to end — catalogue, cart, Stripe checkout, order emails and the technical SEO that gets them found. Six of the fifteen sites I have shipped are e-commerce builds, and every one of them takes real payments. From $150 · 7 days Technical SEO audits and implementation Most SEO audits hand you a 60-page document and an invoice. I am a developer first, so I find the problems and then fix them in the codebase — crawlability, indexation, schema, Core Web Vitals, and whether AI answer engines can read your site at all. From $80 · 3 days Business website development Most small business websites fail at one job: turning a stranger who searched for your service into a phone call. I build the version that does — three days, mobile-first, live on your own hosting, with the enquiry form tested before anybody sees it. From $80 · 3 days Custom website development A template is the right answer more often than developers like to admit. This page is about the times it is not — when the thing your business does has a shape no theme author anticipated, and forcing it into one costs more in permanent workarounds than building it properly would have cost once. From $200 · 10 days Web application development A website presents information. An application does work — it holds state, enforces rules, and produces something at the end. Most businesses that need the second one are running it on a spreadsheet nobody is allowed to sort, and paying for that in errors rather than in software. From $200 · 10 days

What I am not claiming about Manila

A location page is the easiest place on a website to imply something untrue, so here is the other side of it plainly:

I have no office, postal address or phone number in Manila
I cannot meet you in person, and if that is a requirement you should hire locally
I am not claiming existing clients in Manila specifically — my live work is listed on the work page and you can check it
Nothing on this page is a guarantee of search rankings, which no developer can honestly offer

Manila web development — common questions

How long does a Manila project actually take?: Three days for a business site, seven for a store, ten for a custom application. That holds because the process is fixed rather than improvised and because your content exists on day one. What stretches a build is almost never the code — it is waiting for copy, logos and photographs, so those are requested before the clock starts.
What payment methods can my Manila checkout accept?: For Philippines: GCash, Maya, PayMongo, and Dragonpay. The right combination depends on your average basket and your customers, and picking wrong is expensive — the payment method a buyer expects but cannot find is one of the most common reasons a checkout is abandoned at the final step.
Can you fix my existing site rather than rebuild it?: Often, yes, and it is usually the cheaper answer. Speed problems, a broken mobile layout, a form that silently fails or missing structured data are all fixable on the site you already have. I will tell you which of the two you need after looking, and a rebuild only gets recommended when the fix would cost more than starting again.
What hours will you be available to us in Manila?: My working day lands at 12:00–21:00 in your time, which is roughly 6 hours inside a normal Manila working day. In practice you can raise something in the morning and have it answered the same morning, and a scheduled call is easy to place at a civilised hour for both of us.
Will the site actually rank in Manila search results?: The build handles what is technically controllable: crawlable HTML, correct headings, structured data, fast pages, a clean sitemap and Search Console set up on day one. Ranking also depends on your competitors, your domain's age and the links pointing at you, which no developer controls. Anyone guaranteeing a position is guessing or lying.
Do you provide ongoing maintenance after launch?: Thirty days of snag fixes are included after launch at no extra cost — anything that does not work as specified gets fixed. Beyond that there are monthly plans for updates, backups, monitoring and small changes. They are optional and cancellable; a site handed over properly does not require a retainer to keep running.
Do you build on WordPress or something custom?: Whichever the project justifies. WordPress when you need to edit content constantly and want a familiar admin. A static build when speed and security matter more than a plugin ecosystem. Custom PHP and MySQL when the logic is genuinely yours. The choice is explained in the quote with its trade-offs, not presented as a foregone conclusion.

Also covering Philippines

Same terms, same currency, same process — these are the other Philippines towns with a page here.

Where this page sits

This page covers Manila. Every other town in Philippines is listed on the Philippines coverage page, and the full worldwide list is at all locations.

Before you enquire: pricing is published rather than quoted on request, how I work covers the process end to end, the work page lists live client sites you can open, and vendor information answers the procurement questions.

Building something in Manila?

Send the brief and you get a reply within one business day — questions or a scoping call, quoted in PHP. If it is not a project I should take on, I will say so then rather than after a deposit.

Start a project WhatsApp

Response: Replies within 1 business day
Hours: Mon–Fri, 09:00–18:00 PKT — overlaps 05:00–14:00 UK, 00:00–09:00 US Eastern
Booking: Booking projects from October 2026