Case Study
The Whole Thing,
From Day One.
How Full Stack Media took a members-only golf network from a name on a page to a live, verified platform: the brand, the marketing site, the member portal, the database behind it, the automated email that runs it, and the social accounts building the audience.
Brand & IdentityUI/UX DesignWeb DevelopmentWeb App DevelopmentDatabase ArchitectureMarketing AutomationSEO & AIEOSocial Media ManagementConsultancy & Advisory
3
Products in one build — site, member platform, back office
48
Pages and screens shipped
10
Automated email journeys, live from launch
Every Layer, Ours
A network built whole, from a blank page.
When Hosted Rounds came to us there was a name and a business model. No identity, no site, no product, no data, no audience. We built every layer of it: the brand, a server-rendered marketing site, a fifteen-screen member platform, the Firebase architecture underneath, ten live email journeys, and the social accounts now growing the network.
Brand & Identity
Logo system, palette, type and tone of voice — drawn to fixed ratios, documented at AAA contrast for body text
Marketing Site
Custom Next.js, server-rendered, mobile-first, WCAG AA from the first commit
Member Platform
Fifteen screens behind the login plus a ten-screen application and verification flow
Firebase Engine
Firestore data model, auth, security rules and privileged server-side access via the Admin SDK
Marketing Automation
Ten transactional email journeys through Resend, each toggleable from admin settings
Social Media
Accounts created and run from zero, built for steady organic growth over vanity numbers
The Challenge
A two-sided network.
A hard first build.
Hosted Rounds is a members-only network for UK golf club members to host each other as guests at their own clubs. A visitor round at a good British course costs around £145. As a member's guest it is often £40, and the platform never touches the money.
Two-sided networks are a hard first build. Members have to be verified as real club golfers before admission or the proposition collapses. Hosting and playing have to stay in balance. Contact has to be consent-first, because the members worth recruiting are the ones who do not want their inbox opened to strangers. And it all has to look like something a club committee would happily be associated with.
When Hosted Rounds came to us there was a name and a business model. No identity, no site, no product, no data, no audience. Our job was all of it.
"A name and a business model at the start. A working members' network at the end."
The brief, in essence.
About the client
Client
Hosted Rounds
Industry
Membership network · Golf · UK
Location
United Kingdom
Launched
August 2026 · Live, and in active development
Live site
hostedrounds.co.uk
What We Did
Brand before pixels.
Then the whole system.
We built the identity from a blank page, then wrote the rules that keep it consistent: construction ratios, degradation thresholds, a documented palette and a tone of voice. The logo ships as SVG drawn to those ratios, so it holds from a 1024px app icon down to a 16px favicon without being redrawn. Contrast pairings are documented at AAA for body text, because members read this on a phone in sunlight on a first tee.
The marketing site is a custom Next.js build, server-rendered and mobile-first, with WCAG AA contrast in from the first commit rather than retro-fitted later. The club directory is the part built to earn traffic: every club record carries a deep data schema, from course architect to guest policy, with source URLs and a human verification timestamp attached so nothing goes live unchecked. Multi-course venues resolve as a hub with a page per course, structured data is emitted only for verified records, and the sitemap revalidates hourly so a newly live club enters the index without waiting for a deployment. You can browse it at the Hosted Rounds club directory.
Behind the login sit fifteen screens, plus the ten-screen application and verification flow that gets members there. All of it is a responsive web app: mobile-first, properly sized touch targets, no desktop-only interactions, so it can be wrapped for the App Store and Play Store later without a rebuild — the same app-ready discipline behind our Budget Expert iOS build.
The mechanics are where the complexity sits. Reciprocity runs on an append-only token ledger that settles only once both parties confirm a round went ahead. Ratings are double-blind, released when both sides have submitted or after seven days. Privacy is enforced in code rather than by convention: private fields are stripped by a single public-profile function before any member is shown to another.
Underneath sits a Firebase architecture we designed from nothing, with security rules, server-side privileged access through the Admin SDK, and cached reads that keep the public club pages fast without letting them go stale. Ten transactional email journeys run through Resend, live from launch and each one toggleable from admin settings. The back office that sits on top — live KPIs, a token-float view, and a verification queue where approving an applicant credits their first token and sends the right email in a single click — is the same kind of operator-first internal tooling we built into the Collective Beauty portal.
How we worked
01
Brand before pixels
We started with the business, not the homepage. Positioning and audience first, then the identity, then the interface — so every design decision downstream had something to answer to.
02
Designed in full before it was built
The marketing site, the ten-screen join journey, the fifteen-screen member area and the admin pattern were all designed screen by screen before a line of production code — so the build never had to guess.
03
Built as one system
Forty-nine shared components, one token set and one type system across the public site, the member app and the back office. Ten and a half thousand lines of TypeScript, forty-eight routes, one coherent product.
04
Launched behind a gate, then opened it
The platform went up behind a holding page for private testing and was checked end to end with real accounts and real email before the gate came off. Empty repository at the start, a working network at the end.
The Live Site
Server-rendered, mobile-first, WCAG AA from the first commit.
hostedrounds.co.uk
The marketing site homepage, live at hostedrounds.co.uk.
The Results
Most launches ship in phases. This one shipped whole.
10,500+
Lines of TypeScript across one coherent product
49
Shared components, one token set, one type system
AAA / AA
Contrast: AAA for body text, AA on every control
Hosted Rounds launched with the whole thing standing: a marketing site that converts, a verified join journey, a working member platform, a live database, ten automated email journeys and an admin back office capable of running the network from the first application. The technical foundations are where they should be — contrast documented at AAA for body text and AA across every interactive element, structured data emitted for verified club records only, and analytics consent-gated before launch rather than bolted on after.
The club directory is built to compete on the club-level queries the incumbent golf sites currently hold on thin content. The platform is newly live, so the numbers that matter — members verified and rounds hosted — are still being written. What exists is the machine that produces them.
Looking Ahead
We built it.
We are the ones growing it.
The next phase is growth: bringing clubs and hosts onto the Hosted Rounds platform region by region, the referral engine that turns every verified member into a recruiter, organic search on club-level queries, and the social accounts we are building from zero.
Beyond that sits the roadmap the architecture already anticipates — subscription billing, a host tier ladder, and the native app wrap the responsive build was designed to make straightforward. We built it. We are still building it. And we are the ones growing it.
What's next
Growth, region by region
Bringing clubs and hosts onto the network area by area, keeping hosting and playing in balance as it scales.
The referral engine
Turning every verified member into a recruiter, with organic search on club-level queries feeding the top of the funnel.
Billing, tiers and a native wrap
Subscription billing, a host tier ladder, and the App Store and Play Store wrap the responsive build was designed to make straightforward.
"We came to Full Stack Media with a name and a business model. We now have a brand, a website, a working platform and the automation to run it. They did not just build what we asked for, they understood what the network had to be before it could work at all."
HR
Alex
Founder, Hosted Rounds
Insights
Latest insights.
Topical thinking on web development, SEO, paid media and AI adoption.
I'm in!
Where do I start?
Let's map out your digital inventory, eliminate bottlenecks, and build a scalable ecosystem designed for long-term growth.
Next Case Study
Collective Beauty