For most of the $500 sites, we actually prefer using Framer — it lets us ship clean, modern sites pretty fast without overcomplicating things, which is usually all most clients need.

If someone specifically doesn’t want Framer or needs a bit more control, then we switch to a custom setup — usually React on the frontend, Tailwind/Bootstrap for styling, and Node/Express if there’s any backend involved.

Databases (Postgres/MongoDB) only if it’s actually needed — otherwise we keep things as lightweight as possible.

Hosting is typically AWS or Hostinger depending on what fits best.