About Pleco
Pleco builds owned web infrastructure for small hospitality and arts businesses.
The idea
Owned, not rented
A lot of the tools a person or a business depends on are rented, not owned. You log into someone else’s platform, your data lives on their servers, and they take a cut, or hold the keys, for as long as you keep using it. Pleco builds the other version: infrastructure you own outright, built once, serviceable by anyone, with the data in your hands.
That comes down to three commitments:
- Software as a trade. You hire a builder the way you’d hire a plumber, and you own the result, not a subscription to someone else’s platform.
- Programs as appliances. Bought once, built from standard parts, serviceable by any technician. No lock-in, no metered access to your own tool.
- Full data sovereignty. You hold your own data: the member list, the bookings, the donor records.
What that means in practice
Appliance, not platform
- Bought once, not metered. A platform bills every month forever and takes a cut of every sale. An appliance is paid for, then it’s yours.
- Standard parts. Built from open tools any competent developer can service. You’re never stuck with the shop that built it.
- Runs on accounts you already own: your Square, your Stripe, your domain.
- Your data lives with you. Members, bookings, donors: exportable, in a database you hold the keys to.
- Repairable, not disposable. When something breaks, a technician fixes it. You don’t migrate.
What Pleco builds
Client builds and Haptera
- Client builds. Websites, membership programs, and back-of-house tools, built for one business and handed over. Recent work: Sunset Wine and Tapas and Puddletown Theatre Collective.
- Haptera. Membership and club programs that run on a business’s own Square or Stripe. Built once, open-source core, no platform cut. haptera.pleco.dev
How we work
Build it to hand over
The work is built to be handed over. That means standard parts, documented, in a repository with the client’s name on it. Anyone can service it, and leaving costs nothing.
How we operate
The company
Pleco LLC is an independent build company in Portland, Oregon. It runs on commercial revenue and consulting. It is not VC-backed.
Pleco also maintains Promise Pipeline, an open-source civic accountability project licensed AGPL-3.0.
Founding
Who
Founded 2026 by Conor Nolan-Finkel.
Contact
For a quote on a build: hello@pleco.dev