Most developer portfolios show you pictures. A grid of screenshots, a few logos, the word "passionate" somewhere near the top. You scroll, you nod, you still have no idea whether the person can actually run a build for your business.
I'd rather show you numbers. I'm Matt Ebersole — I've been building for the web for over 20 years, the last stretch of it from Greer, South Carolina, serving Greenville, Spartanburg, and the rest of the Upstate. Here's what I've actually built, what it cost, and what the clients walked away owning. No mood-board language. Just the work.
Why the numbers matter more than the screenshots
A screenshot tells you a page exists. It doesn't tell you whether the thing behind the page works under load, whether the client can change it without calling me, or whether they're paying a monthly fee to keep it alive.
That last one is the question I think actually matters. So every project below ends the same way: with what the client owns, and what they pay per month to keep it running. The recurring number, in every case, is zero. That's not a coincidence — it's the whole way I work. I build systems clients own outright, and then I leave.
Project: Upstate Structural Repair — inventory that doesn't leak
Upstate Structural Repair runs crews and trucks across the Upstate. They needed to track inventory across a fleet without their field techs being able to see what anything cost — a real operational problem, because pricing visibility on a job site causes real headaches.
They came to me partly because they'd been burned. A previous setup had locked them out of their own system, and an off-the-shelf tool was leaking pricing to people who shouldn't see it — the two exact failure modes that renting software invites.
Here's what they own now:
- 137 inventory line items tracked across 8 trucks
- 3 enforced access roles — techs see zero pricing, by design
- Built in a 48-hour working demo, live in about three weeks
- Reused their existing Zebra and WASP scanning hardware instead of forcing new purchases
- $0/month. 100% client-owned — code, data, hosting, all of it
No subscription to me. There isn't one. If they never call me again, the system keeps running.
Project: Landmark Baptist — a church site they actually control
Landmark Baptist needed a real web presence — not a template they'd be locked into and not a platform that would start charging more next year.
What they own:
- 14 pages, 12 sermon recordings, and 61 prayer-list entries managed in-house
- $0/month, fully owned
It's a smaller build than the inventory system, and that's the point — owning your software isn't only for big operations. A church running on a $0/month site it controls is a church that never has to choose between its budget and its website.
The background behind the portfolio
Before I went independent, I spent 14 years at a single Upstate company, moving from Bench Technician all the way to Operations Director. That company ran a 100,000-square-foot warehouse and managed over 900,000 devices in its lifetime. I wasn't a developer they kept in a corner — I ran operations. I know what it's like when the system you depend on goes down at the worst possible moment, because I was the one who had to get it back up.
That's the part most web developers can't put in a portfolio: I've sat on your side of the table. I've been the operations person staring at a broken tool with a crew standing around waiting. It changes how you build.
What "fully owned" actually means
When I say a client owns their project, I mean all of it:
- The code — it's theirs, they can hand it to any developer
- The design — no licensed template they're renting
- The hosting — on infrastructure they control
- The data — it never lives on a platform that can hold it hostage
The opposite of this is the arrangement most businesses are stuck in: paying every month for access to something they'll never own, where the price only goes up and walking away means losing their data. I build the other thing.
How I price it (so there's no mystery)
I charge a flat $300 an hour for all work — one rate, stated publicly, no tiers and no negotiation. Half up front, payment before work begins, and when it's done, you own everything. The price is transparent for the same reason the work is owned: a person who sells you control shouldn't hide his own numbers.
If you want the straight answer on your project
This site is my portfolio — the receipts. If you've got a real project in the Upstate and you want to know whether a custom build beats whatever you're renting now, that conversation happens over at MattCreates, where I do the consulting work.
Tell me what you're trying to run and what it's costing you today, and I'll give you the honest answer — including "keep what you've got" if that's the truth.
Truth before tools. Order before growth. People before platforms.
→ See the consulting work and start a conversation at MattCreates.com.
Matt Ebersole is a web developer and operations specialist in Greer, South Carolina, with 20+ years building for the web and 14 years running operations for an Upstate company. He builds custom systems clients own outright — flat $300/hr, no subscriptions.