Top 20 — South African Small Business Awards 2025
Named in the Top 20 at the 17th annual South African Small Business Awards, hosted by the National Small Business Chamber.
Read the coverage (opens in a new tab)
NSBC Top 20, 2025
Enterprise-grade websites and software — priced for South African SMEs
Small businesses have always been handed the leftovers of enterprise IT — undocumented builds, vague quotes, nothing you actually own at the end. We came up through IT service management and compliance, so we build to the standard large corporates pay a fortune for, then publish what it costs. That combination is the whole company.
PayJustNow available on websites and online stores — three interest-free instalments, no interest and no fees.
You do not have to take our word for any of this
Medi Diary launches in September: Patient-owned health record built for SA’s NHI era
ITWeb covers the launch of Medi Diary, the patient-owned health record founded by Janice Naidoo and incubated at Solis & Luna.
Read the article (opens in a new tab)SysAid — Channel partner
Channel partner for SysAid, the AI-native IT service management platform used by more than 5 000 organisations worldwide — so we can implement either of the two leading ITSM platforms rather than selling whichever one we happen to resell.
View the partner listing (opens in a new tab)Xurrent — Certified implementation partner
Accredited partner for Xurrent, the enterprise service management platform — the same ITSM discipline we bring to everything we build.
View the partner listing (opens in a new tab)Businesses we have worked with
Our position
The technology gap in South Africa is not talent. It is access.
Large companies get documented systems, security reviews, proper handovers and a price agreed up front. Smaller businesses get a quote after three meetings, a site nobody can maintain, and a developer who disappears. There is no technical reason for that difference — only a commercial one. We built this studio to remove it, and these are the four things we do differently.
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We publish our prices
Almost no studio in this market will tell you what a website costs without your phone number first. Ours are on the site, in rands, excluding VAT, with PayJustNow on the website and store packages. The number in the proposal is the number on the invoice.
See every price -
We build to enterprise standards, at SME scale
We did not arrive at this from design. We came through IT service management — service catalogues, incident management, ITIL 4 process design, POPIA compliance — and we still do that work for clients. It is why what we hand you is documented, monitored and secure rather than merely attractive.
Certified partner: SysAid, Xurrent
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We ship our own software
Most agencies have never had to live with a product after launch — support it, patch it, answer for it at two in the morning. We have. Building and running our own platforms is why we estimate honestly and why we hand over code you can take to somebody else.
Built and launched by us: Medi Diary, Luna Switch
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We tell you where the AI is
We use AI to write code faster, and we say so plainly rather than quietly charging you for hours it saved us. That speed is the reason these prices are possible at this standard — the saving is already in the number you can see. A studio that is vague about this is usually billing for it.
Exactly how we use it
What we build
Three ways to work with us, priced up front
Everything is custom-built. We do not resell a template with your logo dropped into it, and we do not quote a number that changes once you have signed.
Business website
R5 500 excluding VAT
or 3 × R1 833 with PayJustNow
A complete, custom-built business website. Not a recycled template with your logo dropped into it.
- Up to 7 pages, designed around what your customers actually need to decide
- Mobile-first — most South African traffic is on a phone, so that is where we design
- SEO foundations: clean structure, meta data, sitemap, Google Search Console setup
- AI-answer-engine ready: structured data and an llms.txt so ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews can quote you correctly
- Enquiry forms with POPIA consent, plus a privacy policy draft
E-commerce store
R7 500 excluding VAT
or 3 × R2 500 with PayJustNow
Everything in the business website, plus a working shop that takes South African payments.
- Everything in the business website package
- WooCommerce store, configured properly rather than left on defaults
- South African payment gateways — PayFast, Yoco, Ozow or PayGate
- Courier and delivery rules, including local rates and collection
- Product schema so your items are eligible for Google Shopping results
Custom software
from R15 500 excluding VAT
Software built for how your business actually works, when off-the-shelf will not do it.
- A scoping session that ends in a written specification you own
- Fixed-price phases, so you are never signing a blank cheque
- Web applications, client portals, dashboards and internal tooling
- Integrations with the systems you already run
- AI features where they earn their place — document handling, classification, assistants
Why us
Six reasons to trust a studio you have not met
We came from IT service management, not marketing
Most web studios start with design. We started by fixing how businesses run their IT — service catalogues, incident management, ITIL 4 process design. So we build sites that are documented, monitored and maintainable, and we know what happens when they break at 2am.
We build and own real software
Medi Diary and Luna Switch are our own products — designed, built, launched and, in Medi Diary’s case, protected by a South African provisional patent. A studio that only ever bills for other people’s ideas has never carried the risk of shipping.
POPIA is built in, not bolted on
Consent captured properly at the point of collection. A privacy policy your forms actually link to. Retention rules that delete data when it is no longer needed. We sell POPIA compliance as a service, so it would be strange to skip it on our own builds.
We use AI, and we tell you exactly how
AI tooling handles the mechanical parts of a build — scaffolding, boilerplate, repetitive markup. A human reviews all of it and we are accountable for all of it. That is the honest reason a full custom site is R5 500 and not R25 000.
You own everything, from day one
The domain is registered in your name. The hosting account is yours. The source code is handed over. If you ever want to move to another developer, you can — nothing is held back as leverage.
We are still here after launch
Luna Cyber Guard keeps the site backed up, monitored and behind a firewall, with email filtering on top. Optional, quoted monthly, cancellable. Plenty of clients take it; plenty do not, and that is fine.
Proof
Software we built and put our own name on
Anyone can show you a portfolio of other people’s projects. These are ours — we designed them, built them, carried the cost and launched them.
Medi Diary
LaunchingPatient-owned health records for South Africa
An offline-first, AI-assisted health record that belongs to the patient rather than to any single practice. Covered by ITWeb, protected under South African provisional patent 2025/10081, and built to POPIA and HPCSA expectations from the first line of code.
Offline-first architecture · Encrypted sync · Role-based practice portal
South African provisional patent 2025/10081
Luna Switch
LaunchingDeal pipeline intelligence, automated
A deal-flow platform with AI agents that score pipeline health, chase missing documents and keep a client portal current in the client’s own language. Built end to end in-house — product, platform and browser extension.
AI agents · Deal-health scoring · Multilingual client portal
Client work you can go and look at
A bond originator’s website, built to be found and trusted
A complete custom WordPress build for a South African bond originator: four live finance calculators, structured data written for Google’s local and AI results, POPIA-shaped enquiry forms with explicit consent, and downloadable home-buyer guides.
- Four calculators — repayment, affordability, bond and transfer costs, deposit — with SARS transfer duty tables kept current
- A connected JSON-LD graph typed for a financial service, so Google and AI answer engines can resolve who FinCraft is
- POPIA consent captured at the point of enquiry, with a privacy policy the forms actually link to
- Core Web Vitals treated as a requirement, not an afterthought: no jQuery on the front end, deferred scripts, lazy images
Buy and download
Toolkits you can use this afternoon
The documents we were asked for so often that we wrote them down properly — POPIA, ITIL 4, ISO/IEC 20000 and a fill-in workbook for building your own website. From R395 excluding VAT, delivered the moment payment clears.
POPIA Compliance Toolkit
R795 excluding VAT
Everything a South African SME actually needs to hold under POPIA — the registers, notices, consent wording, request procedures and breach plan, written to be adopted rather than decoded.
- POPIA in one page — the eight conditions in plain language
- Information Officer registration walkthrough
- Personal information inventory template
- Privacy notice template you can adapt
ITIL 4 Incident Management SOP
R495 excluding VAT
A working incident management procedure built on ITIL 4 — priority matrix, response targets, escalation path, major incident handling and the communication templates that go with them.
- Purpose, scope and definitions
- Impact × urgency priority matrix
- Response and resolution targets by priority
- The nine-step incident process, end to end
Service Catalogue & SLA Pack
R545 excluding VAT
Define what you actually provide, and what "fixed" means, before the argument rather than during it. Templates for both the business and technical catalogue, plus a complete SLA.
- Business vs technical service catalogue, explained
- Service entry template with worked examples
- Service hours and support tier definitions
- Full SLA template with target tables
All 5 toolkits Instant download · licensed for use inside one business · the price comes off a project quote
Straight answer
Yes, we use AI to write code. Here is exactly what that means.
AI tooling does the mechanical work of a build — scaffolding, boilerplate, repetitive markup, first-draft tests. It is very good at that and very fast. It is not left alone with your project.
- A human reviews every line before it reaches you, and we are accountable for all of it.
- The architecture, the security decisions and the compliance work are ours, not a model’s.
- We never publish AI-written claims about your business without you reading them first.
- The time saved goes into your price, not our margin. That is why a full custom build is R5 500.
How it works
From first call to live site
A website usually takes two to three weeks from the day we have your content. Software depends on scope, and we will tell you honestly what that looks like before you commit.
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01
Conversation
A free call. What the business does, who you are trying to reach, and what the site or system has to achieve. If we are not the right fit, we say so here rather than three weeks in.
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Written proposal
Scope, price, timeline and what is excluded — in writing, before anything is paid. Our fixed prices mean the number in the proposal is the number on the invoice.
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03
Design and build
You see it early and you see it often, on a private staging link. We use AI tooling to move faster through the mechanical work — every line of it reviewed by us before it reaches you.
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Launch
Search Console, analytics, structured data validation, speed testing and a backup in place before we point the domain. Then a walkthrough so you can run it yourself.
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Afterwards
You own the site, the domain, the accounts and the code. Take it elsewhere whenever you like — or keep us on for care and Cyber Guard. Both are fine.
The other half of what we do
IT service management, POPIA and security
This is where Solis & Luna started, and we still do it. It is also why the websites we build are boringly reliable — the same discipline goes into both.
Luna Cyber Guard
Managed protection for the site we built you — advanced email filtering, website monitoring and firewall, and automated cloud backups with a 30-day archive. Quoted monthly.
POPIA compliance toolkit
The policies, registers and consent wording a South African business is actually required to hold, in a form you can adopt rather than a template you have to decode.
ITSM setup and ITIL 4 process design
Service catalogues, SLAs, incident and change management built on ITIL 4 — including full Xurrent implementation as a certified partner.
IT helpdesk setup
A working service desk for an SME: tooling, ticket flow, priority matrix and the handful of processes that stop everything becoming an emergency.
Fractional CIO retainer
Senior IT leadership by the month, for businesses that need the judgement but not the salary. Strategy, vendor decisions, budget and risk.
The ITSM Power Hour
Sixty focused minutes on one problem, with a written summary afterwards. The cheapest way to find out whether you need us at all.
Insights
Guides for South African businesses
Hello world!
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing!
Questions people ask before they hire us
What does a website cost in South Africa?
Solis & Luna builds a complete custom business website for R5 500 excluding VAT, and an e-commerce store for R7 500 excluding VAT. Both are fixed prices for the scope agreed in writing before work starts, and PayJustNow is available on both — three interest-free instalments. Custom software starts at R15 500 excluding VAT and is quoted per project, because complexity genuinely varies.
Why are you cheaper than other agencies?
Two reasons, and neither is that we cut corners. We use AI coding tools for the mechanical parts of a build — scaffolding, boilerplate, repetitive markup — which removes days of work that a client used to pay for. And we are a small studio with low overheads rather than an agency with account managers between you and the person writing the code. A human still reviews everything and we are accountable for all of it.
Do I own the website when it is finished?
Yes, entirely. The domain is registered in your name, the hosting account is yours, and the source code is handed over at the end. If you want to move to another developer later you can take everything with you. We do not hold accounts or code as leverage.
How long does a website take?
Roughly two to three weeks from the day we have your content — text, logo, images and any product information. The content is almost always what determines the timeline; the build itself is faster than most people expect. Custom software depends on scope and we phase it, so you see working software early rather than waiting months.
Is the website POPIA compliant?
Every site we build captures consent explicitly at the point of collection, links its forms to a real privacy policy, and deletes enquiry data on a retention schedule. Solis & Luna sells POPIA compliance as a service, so this is not an add-on we upsell — it is how we build by default. Full organisational POPIA compliance goes beyond a website, and we can quote for that separately.
What is PayJustNow and how does it work here?
PayJustNow splits the amount into three equal monthly instalments with no interest and no fees. Solis & Luna offers it on business websites and e-commerce stores. You pay the first third to start, and the remaining two over the following two months.
Do you work with businesses anywhere in South Africa?
Yes — Solis & Luna works nationwide. Clients are in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban, Cape Town, Gqeberha, Bloemfontein, Polokwane and plenty of smaller towns. Websites and software are built over calls and a shared staging link, so location makes no difference at all, and branded promotional stock is couriered anywhere in the country.
What happens after the site goes live?
You get a walkthrough so you can update your own content, and the site is yours to run. If you would rather not, Luna Cyber Guard covers backups, monitoring, firewall and email filtering on a monthly basis. It is optional and cancellable — plenty of clients take it and plenty do not.
Tell us what you are trying to build
A short message is enough to start. A person reads every enquiry and replies within one working day — and if we are not the right fit for your project, we will say so instead of selling you something.