Phosis
The idea, since 2003
Change everything.
Dynamic, manageable websites in plain HTML / CSS.
The idea
Build in real HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Then make it dynamic without giving any of it up.
You write the site exactly the way you want it, in the languages the web actually runs on. Phosis turns it into a living, content-managed site through a handful of simple attributes, hydrated at request time by our render engine. Your developers keep complete control of the markup. Your non-technical team gets a clean editor they can actually use.
Nobody has to make the usual choice between flexibility and autonomy. You get both, which it turns out is what everyone wanted all along.
At a glance
No advanced programming required.
If you can write HTML and CSS, you can build on Phosis.
User-friendly writing and editing.
A clean editor your least technical teammate can actually use.
Totally flexible.
Any theme, any layout, any design. No house style imposed on you.
Power built in.
The things other platforms sell as plugins come standard.
Inherently secure.
Safe by architecture, not by patching.
How it works
Four moving parts, and not one more than you need.
Plain HTML goes in. A fast, content-managed, data-driven site comes out. The complexity stays under the hood, where it belongs.
<ul data-phosis-container="Team">
<li>
<img data-phosis-object="Photo"
data-phosis-object-attributes="src"
src="ada.jpg" alt="Ada Lovelace">
<h3 data-phosis-object="Name">Ada Lovelace</h3>
<p data-phosis-object="Role">Founder</p>
</li>
</ul>One template, plain HTML. The placeholder content previews in a browser, then hydrates in Phosis.
Hydrated by the render engine — once per row of your data, or ten thousand.
Page templates
Define the shape of a page.
Containers
Hold the blocks of content that fill it.
Object templates
Decide how each piece of content renders.
Data sources
Feed it all, so one template can power one page or ten thousand.
The honest time breakdown
A recent, seven-page, interaction- & data-rich site we built ran about two weeks of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript work, and only 6.5 hours inside Phosis. You spend your time where you already live. Phosis handles the rest, then hands the keys to your non-technical team.
What's built in
The boring, essential things, already handled.
Most platforms sell these back to you as plugins. In Phosis they come standard, because a site shouldn't ship without them.
Fast by default.
Distributed caching, a load balancer, CDN-hosted files and media, and clean HTML output that search engines love.
Unhackable by architecture.
No server-side code runs on the public layer, so the most common attacks have nothing to land on. Managed firewall and DDoS mitigation sit in front of everything.
Spam-free by design.
Little Bot Peep is adaptive, captcha-less spam detection. He reads behaviour instead of making your visitors prove they aren't robots.
Housekeeping by standard.
Free SSL, drafts and scheduled content, automatic sitemaps and Open Graph tags, JSON and XML access, multi-domain routing, full-text search, and daily backups with automatic database failover.
The proof
This isn't a prototype. It's quietly been winning for years.
Those sites rank because Phosis makes them fast and clean by design. No growth-hacking séances required.
The moat
Twenty-three years on, and still the only one of its kind.
Greg first sketched Phosis in 2003. In the two decades+ since, no one else has built a platform that makes freeform HTML and CSS fully data-driven and manageable without programming. That isn't for lack of trying so much as architecture: the big builders would have to tear their platforms down to the studs to do what Phosis does, because their whole model is the very themes Phosis refuses to require. That's not a head start anyone closes quickly.
Skin in the game
We don't just sell this. We bet our own companies on it.
Every site we run for ourselves runs on Phosis — the same platform we're handing you. Our holiday-entertainment company, our sibling company's upcoming expo, our founder's own work. We've staked our professional web presence on it for years, which is a level of confidence no sales page can fake.
The people already using it tend to get a little emotional about it.
“Several of our franchisees have had websites on Phosis for years, with remarkable results.” Read moreRead less
In that time, they grew their businesses to the point of replacing all traditional digital marketing with a content and SEO strategy focused entirely on their own websites, content they wrote themselves, directly in Phosis. What they budget for web designers is a fraction of what they paid to maintain custom themes on platforms like WordPress, and how fast Phosis sites load has boosted their SEO.
“Phosis has continued to be a favorite tool of the workday.” Read moreRead less
Its sleek design makes for a visually stunning platform, and its user-friendly capabilities benefit everyone, from those confident with technology to those who are not. What's most appealing is its consistency: you can always depend on the functionality and the quality of the results.
“Phosis turns the impossible and the impractical into the easy and the efficient.” Read moreRead less
Through Phosis, so much control has been put into our hands, with the ability to effortlessly adjust any of our sites at will. Thank you to Mattermind for this incredible tool.
What's next
Phosis is opening up.
It started as an idea in 2003, became a real platform in 2016, and has run in production ever since. Now we're getting it ready for everyone — solo creators through full agencies, same platform, priced for where you are.
On the way
- A visual builder
- Importing existing HTML automatically
- Nested containers for true atomic design
- External data sources
- Login-gated content
- And so much more
Want in?
If you'd build on it, join the waitlist and you'll be among the first through the door. If you'd back it or partner on it, we're talking with a small number of people about Phosis's next chapter — reach out directly.
Reach us directly