A small studio that ships.
Ascend is a small digital studio in Sofia. We design and build websites and web apps, and for the last two years we have also been building the AI automation that runs behind them.
We started in 2014 with one opinion we still hold: most agencies promise more than they deliver. So we kept the studio small, turned down work we couldn't do well, and got good at the work we took on.
Twelve years and seventy-odd projects later, the bar is the same. Websites you can edit yourself on a Tuesday afternoon, and AI that does a job instead of a demo.
Six things we won't compromise on.
Twelve years of taking on projects taught us which ones we should have turned down. These are the rules we work by now.
Ship something small first.
We launch a small public version within four weeks. A real working site, not a wireframe. It proves the foundation holds before we add features, and it shows you we're worth the rest of the budget.
The team that designs it, ships it.
The people who start your project are the ones who launch it. We don't hand off to another team. That rule is the reason we stay small.
Editable on a Tuesday.
Every website we build can be edited by someone non-technical without calling us. We use boring, well documented CMSes and hide the menus you don't need. If you need us for a content update, we got something wrong.
AI must earn its keep.
We don't add AI for the wow factor. We add it when it removes a real, measurable chore, like answering the same DM 40 times a week or keying in supplier invoices. If a regex would do the job, we write a regex.
Honest "no"s.
We turn down about a third of the projects we're asked to quote. Wrong scope, wrong timeline, or we're simply not the right people for it. A fast no saves both sides time, and it's why the projects we do take get our full attention.
Fixed scope, fixed price.
We quote upfront. If the scope changes, we quote again. We don't bill fixed projects by the hour, because hourly billing rewards slowness and makes everyone nervous. You should know the price before we write a line of code.
Twelve years, briefly.
A short timeline of what we've been up to. Not all of it, only the moments that mattered.
Studio founded.
We register DigiCard EOOD in Sofia. The first office is a kitchen table and the first client is a friend's dental clinic. The first invoice still hangs on the wall.
SoftGroup launches.
Our first major European client, a pharma serialisation company. Multilingual, regulated, and the first project where we had to hand operations over properly. It taught us to write documentation we would actually read.
50 projects shipped.
Fifty sites live and being edited by real teams. We also turn down our first project, a fintech with a six week deadline. Best decision of the year.
AI practice begins.
We ship our first RAG chatbot for a manufacturing client and learn that the production version is 90% data plumbing and 10% prompt. We start saying "AI automation" out loud.
Discard ships.
Our biggest project so far: e-commerce, SaaS and AI for a Bulgarian premium card brand, seven months from kickoff to launch. It's the one we'll be pointing at for years.
Who we build with.
We're a studio, not a reseller. These are the platforms and partners we know well enough to recommend without hedging.
Tell us what you're building.
We answer every enquiry within three business days, even when the answer is a polite "we're not the right fit". Send us a sentence about what you're working on and we'll take it from there.