Building for the Pacific Northwest Since 1996
Black Moon Designs went online in December 1996, when most businesses were still wondering whether they needed a website at all. We’ve been building software for local businesses ever since. Here’s how we got from there to here.
Three Decades in Four Chapters
EARLY 1990s
Custom Systems
Before the web took off, our designers and engineers were building custom systems for advertising agencies, medical offices and other specialized businesses, integrating off-the-shelf applications or writing software to each client’s specifications.
1996
On the Web
blackmoon.com launched with a simple promise: from simple home pages to complex corporate intranets, we realize your concepts. We started building websites for businesses across the Puget Sound region.
1998
Our Own ISP
Now Black Moon Designs, Inc., working from our office in Snohomish, we invested heavily in our own server infrastructure to become an Internet Service Provider, hosting client websites on servers monitored around the clock and connected to multiple internet backbones.
2000s – TODAY
Software & Services
We grew into an Application Service Provider, taking on outsourced corporate and internet services. Today that same experience powers our custom application development, legacy modernization and cloud integration work.
From the Archive
Our original logo and website banner, recovered from the late-1990s version of blackmoon.com. Black background, chrome lettering, and a “Powered by Microsoft BackOffice” badge at the bottom of the page. It was very 1998.
Web Hosting, 1998 Edition
Our 1998 price sheet is a reminder of how far things have come. Client sites ran on a dual Pentium Pro Compaq server running Microsoft IIS 4, and “generous” meant something very different.
Basic Business Website
$50 per month
- An address like www.blackmoon.com/~yourname
- 10 MB of disk storage
- 500 MB of monthly traffic, roughly 325 visits a day
- FTP and Telnet access for updates
Virtual Business Website
$75 per month
- Your own domain, www.yourname.com
- 25 MB of disk storage
- 1 GB of monthly traffic, roughly 650 visits a day
- Domain registration billed by InterNIC: $70 for two years
Today a single photo from your phone is bigger than that entire 10 MB plan. The commitment hasn’t changed, though: we told clients in 1998 that we knew they were putting their business in our hands, and we still take that seriously.
Early Clients
From global brands to neighborhood businesses, these are some of the organizations we worked with in our first years, as listed on our 1998 website.
- Advanced Radio Telecom
- Amish Country Originals
- Bank of America
- Carribean Embroidery
- Check-Ride
- Cole & Weber
- Edgar Martinez
- Esperanza International Foundation
- Hi-Line Electric
- LifeCenter Northwest
- Microsoft Corp.
- Mirror Software Corp.
- Nigel Neale
- Northwest Racing Enterprises, Inc.
- OpenSpace
- PitStop.com
- Punch Networks Corp. (Kangaroo Inc.)
- Reflex Communications, Inc.
- Research International
- Shandwick
- Thomas Liddle
Still Building, Still Local
Some of the systems we build today replace the very kind of software businesses commissioned in the ’90s. If you’re running on something that’s showing its age, we’ve seen it before, and we can help.