SiteMonk

STUDIO PICKS

Tools for good work. Thoughtfully chosen.

Good judgment includes knowing what to build with, and what to leave to specialists. These are the services, frameworks, and infrastructure we choose around the work your business needs.

Explore our picks

THE SHORTLIST

Every tool has a role.

Start with the problem your business needs to solve. Choose a foundation that fits the work, from everyday services to the technology behind a custom application.

Business services

Let specialists handle content, delivery, communication, payments, and commerce.

01 Content & publishing

Sanity

Your content, with room for your own design.

Visit website — Sanity

Core capabilities

  • Structured content & APIs
  • Customizable editing Studio
  • Hosted content & image delivery

A good fit for

A business that publishes articles, case studies, or other content regularly and wants an editing experience separate from its website design.

Why we recommend it

A good publishing experience deserves a specialist. Sanity handles the content infrastructure, so we can focus on a clear editor and a website that feels like your business.

Before you choose: The website and editing experience still need to be built. Choose a plan around editors, content volume, and traffic.

02 Performance & protection

Cloudflare

A stronger foundation for your website.

Visit website — Cloudflare

Core capabilities

  • DNS & global CDN
  • DDoS protection & security tools
  • Pages & Workers hosting

A good fit for

A business website that needs efficient delivery, managed hosting, and protection against common web threats.

Why we recommend it

Running a global network is its own discipline. Cloudflare gives us a managed foundation to build on, with fewer servers for you to worry about.

Before you choose: Protection depends on the plan and configuration. Good infrastructure works best with a well-built website.

03 Email & teamwork

Google Workspace

Professional email. Familiar everyday tools.

Visit website — Google Workspace

Core capabilities

  • Business email on your domain
  • Drive, Docs & shared calendars
  • Meet & account administration

A good fit for

A small team that needs company email, shared files, and a consistent way to work together.

Why we recommend it

We would never build our own enterprise email service. Your team's daily communication belongs with a provider dedicated to keeping it running well.

Before you choose: Subscriptions are generally priced per user. Plan for account ownership, access permissions, and any email migration.

04 Payments & billing

Stripe

A considered way to get paid online.

Visit website — Stripe

Core capabilities

  • Online payment processing
  • Hosted Checkout & Payment Links
  • Invoicing & subscription billing

A good fit for

A service business taking online payments, a team sending invoices, or a business with recurring subscriptions.

Why we recommend it

Payment infrastructure deserves specialist care. Stripe offers established payment tools, so we can concentrate on making the customer journey clear and easy to use.

Before you choose: Country, business eligibility, payment methods, and fees matter. Confirm them before designing the payment flow.

05 Commerce & retail

Shopify

The store, and the work behind the store.

Visit website — Shopify

Core capabilities

  • Online storefront & checkout
  • Products, inventory & orders
  • Apps & point-of-sale options

A good fit for

A retailer selling products that needs a dependable workflow for its catalog, orders, and day-to-day store operations.

Why we recommend it

When selling products is the core business, the store deserves a dedicated commerce platform. We are happy to recommend Shopify when it serves you better than a custom build.

Before you choose: Allow for the plan, paid apps, and payment fees. Its storefront and checkout customization have platform boundaries.

Frontend development

Static content where it fits. Rich interactions where the work needs them.

06 Content-first websites

Astro

Give your content a light, readable home.

Visit website — Astro

Core capabilities

  • Build-time HTML generation
  • Interactive islands where needed
  • React and other UI integrations

A good fit for

Public business websites, landing pages, articles, and documentation where search visibility and a light first page matter.

Why we recommend it

We favor static HTML for public content. Astro lets us add interactive features selectively, keeping the rest of the page simple to deliver and maintain.

Before you choose: For a dashboard with frequent navigation and changing data, we usually choose a React application. Server rendering earns its place when indexable content needs to change per request.

07 Interactive applications

React

Interfaces that keep up with the work.

Visit website — React

Core capabilities

  • Reusable UI components
  • State-driven interactions
  • A broad ecosystem of supporting libraries

A good fit for

Customer portals, dashboards, booking flows, and business applications with frequent interaction.

Why we recommend it

For an application, smooth navigation and useful local state matter. React gives us a consistent way to build those interactions and reuse components as the product grows.

Before you choose: React is a UI library. Routing, data fetching, and rendering still need deliberate choices; a simple content page may need much less JavaScript.

08 Styling & design systems

Tailwind CSS

A shared language for the details.

Visit website — Tailwind CSS

Core capabilities

  • Utility-based styling
  • Responsive and interaction variants
  • Theme variables for shared design decisions

A good fit for

Websites and applications that need consistent spacing, typography, colors, and responsive behavior across many components.

Why we recommend it

We use a small set of design tokens to keep decisions consistent. Tailwind helps us apply them close to the component, making visual changes easier to understand.

Before you choose: Utilities do not replace a design system. Shared tokens and reusable components still need care to prevent each page developing its own style.

09 Development & builds

Vite

Shorter feedback loops for better work.

Visit website — Vite

Core capabilities

  • Local development server
  • Hot module replacement
  • Production builds and plugin integrations

A good fit for

React applications and frontend projects that need a focused development and build workflow.

Why we recommend it

Quick feedback makes it easier to refine real screens and interactions. Vite gives the team a clear development workflow without dictating the application's architecture.

Before you choose: A build tool does not provide authentication, APIs, or production hosting. Those responsibilities need their own implementation and deployment plan.

10 UI foundations

shadcn/ui

Useful components, with the source in your hands.

Visit website — shadcn/ui

Core capabilities

  • Component source added to your project
  • Accessible interaction foundations
  • Customizable styles and composition

A good fit for

Custom applications with forms, dialogs, menus, and other recurring controls that should follow one coherent design system.

Why we recommend it

We prefer components we can inspect and adapt. shadcn/ui gives us a starting point while keeping the final behavior and visual language under the project's control.

Before you choose: Owning the source also means maintaining it. Accessibility, updates, and fitting the components to your design tokens remain part of the work.

11 Navigation & server data

TanStack Router & Query

Keep the route and the data in step.

Visit website — TanStack Router & Query

Core capabilities

  • Type-safe application routing
  • Server-state fetching and caching
  • Prefetching and targeted data refresh

A good fit for

React applications where people move between lists, details, filters, and editing flows throughout the day.

Why we recommend it

A working screen should have a useful URL and a clear data lifecycle. Router and Query help us preserve navigation context and refresh the data that actually changed.

Before you choose: Router and Query are separate libraries. Cache keys, refresh rules, loading states, and errors still need to reflect the business workflow.

Backends & APIs

A focused API layer and a clear home for core business rules.

12 Lightweight APIs

Hono

A small, deliberate front door to your backend.

Visit website — Hono

Core capabilities

  • Web-standard request and response handling
  • Routing and composable middleware
  • Support for Bun, Node.js, and edge runtimes

A good fit for

Focused APIs and a backend-for-frontend layer that connects a browser application to protected business services.

Why we recommend it

We favor a thin API layer with explicit routes. Hono fits that role, keeping browser-facing concerns together while the core backend concentrates on business rules.

Before you choose: A framework is not a security boundary by itself. Authentication, request validation, rate limits, and trusted upstream calls must be designed and verified.

13 JavaScript runtime

Bun

A focused runtime for the connecting layer.

Visit website — Bun

Core capabilities

  • JavaScript and TypeScript execution
  • HTTP server capabilities
  • Package manager and test tooling

A good fit for

A small Hono service, API integration layer, or backend-for-frontend that spends much of its time waiting on upstream services.

Why we recommend it

For a thin integration layer, we favor an asynchronous runtime close to the frontend toolchain. Bun is one practical option; the business backend and database usually deserve more performance attention.

Before you choose: Verify dependencies and runtime behavior before choosing it. Deployment, monitoring, process supervision, and resource limits still need an operating plan.

14 Business backends

Laravel

Structure for the rules your business runs on.

Visit website — Laravel

Core capabilities

  • Eloquent ORM and database migrations
  • Validation and authorization
  • Queues and scheduled work

A good fit for

Business systems with accounts, orders, billing workflows, background jobs, and relational data.

Why we recommend it

We value a clear place for business rules and data ownership. Laravel provides a mature foundation for that work, with thin controllers and reusable services keeping the code understandable.

Before you choose: Queries, queues, and deployment need ongoing care. We usually keep a lightweight browser-facing proxy separate instead of making the business framework do every job.

Infrastructure

Choose how the application runs with maintenance, recovery, and cost in view.

15 Web serving & routing

nginx

Serve the simple parts. Route the rest clearly.

Visit website — nginx

Core capabilities

  • Static file serving
  • Reverse proxying
  • TLS termination and response configuration

A good fit for

Server deployments that need to deliver static pages and assets, then route API requests to the right application process.

Why we recommend it

We like explicit delivery boundaries: static content served directly, dynamic requests sent to the application. nginx gives us control over that split and the surrounding request limits.

Before you choose: Trusted client IPs, request limits, host rules, and cache headers require careful configuration. Long-lived asset caching only fits files whose names change with their content.

16 Cloud compute

Amazon EC2

Room to run your own application stack.

Visit website — Amazon EC2

Core capabilities

  • Configurable virtual server instances
  • VPC networking and security groups
  • Instance choices for different workloads

A good fit for

Applications that need control over their runtime, long-running workers, or a custom server stack within AWS.

Why we recommend it

EC2 is a practical choice when control over the server earns its maintenance cost. We size it to the workload and favor private application servers behind a deliberate public entry point.

Before you choose: You still own operating-system updates, monitoring, and application recovery. Review compute, storage, data transfer, and load-balancer charges together; AWS does not imply a fixed monthly bill.

17 Managed relational databases

Amazon Aurora

Keep the data dependable as the business grows.

Visit website — Amazon Aurora

Core capabilities

  • MySQL- and PostgreSQL-compatible engines
  • Managed backups and replication
  • Provisioned and Serverless capacity options

A good fit for

An AWS application with relational business data that needs managed database operations and a considered availability plan.

Why we recommend it

Database operations deserve dedicated care. Aurora can take on part of that infrastructure work, while we keep schema design and query behavior explicit and use read replicas for suitable reporting workloads.

Before you choose: Aurora is part of Amazon RDS, with its own architecture and billing. Check engine compatibility, recovery requirements, capacity, storage, and I/O costs; a smaller RDS database may be enough.

WHAT EARNS A PLACE

Our taste goes beyond the interface.

01

Depth of expertise

Focused tools and services, with documentation and an ecosystem that support real work.

02

Clarity in everyday use

Tools your team can understand, with workflows that make the daily work easier.

03

A sensible long-term fit

Costs, maintenance, and ownership that make sense for the business you are building.

These are our recommendations, not a stack every project needs. Open-source tools still need implementation and maintenance. Third-party subscriptions and cloud usage are separate from SiteMonk’s services unless your proposal says otherwise.

The right tools start with your business.

Tell us what you need to publish, sell, or simplify. We will help you choose a practical way forward.

Let’s talk about your business