Wix Patriots  ·  Wix Certified Legend Partner

TreasureMaps

Architecture & build plan

Prepared for Derek A. DeMarco
22 August 2026  ·  Caribbean coast, Costa Rica
50 → 200 listings  ·  EN / ES / DE / FR  ·  web now, apps later
Where we're starting

Four numbers decide
the entire build.

50 → 200
Listings
Launch → year one
4
Languages
EN / ES / DE / FR
Dec/Jan
Launch target
Explicitly not rushed
2
Front ends
One shared backend

Nothing in this deck is a generic recommendation. Change any one of those and the plan changes with it.

First, the good news

Two hundred listings is
small. That saves you money.

I came in assuming I'd be telling you that you need a separate database outside Wix. Your numbers say you don't.

Wix query ceiling

A thousand records per query. You'll be at two hundred. Five times the headroom before it's a conversation.

Translation ceiling

Collections over ten thousand items stop being eligible for translation. You'll be at two hundred. Nowhere near.

What that avoids

External database infrastructure, a second hosting bill, a second thing to keep running. All of it unnecessary at your scale.

So I'm not selling you infrastructure you don't need. If another quote includes a separate backend for a two-hundred-listing directory, they either didn't ask how big it gets or they're padding the invoice.

Risk one of three

Wix translates your words.
Not your customers'.

What the built-in system covers

Menus, buttons, page copy, category names. Three or four hundred phrases you write in the editor. Translated once, done.

It also requires every collection to have a dynamic page attached, and any collection created after setup has to be added by hand.

What it never touches

A hotel owner in Puerto Viejo logs into the dashboard you're building and types his description in Spanish, six months after that translation workflow ran.

At two hundred listings that's roughly thirty thousand words of your most valuable content, existing in one language only. A German visitor gets a German menu wrapped around Spanish listings.

The fix is a write path, not a plugin. When an owner saves, the backend translates and stores all four versions in the record before it publishes, with owner override on each. A few dollars a month to run. But the record needs four language fields from the first entry, because adding them across a hundred and eighty live listings means re-entering every one by hand.

Risk two of three

The first fifty businesses
are harder than the code.

An owner won't pay to join a directory with no travellers. Travellers won't use a directory with no listings. Every marketplace hits this wall.

If listings appear only after payment

You launch with an empty map. Every sales conversation asks a business to take a leap of faith on something unproven. Most decline. The ones who don't churn when nothing happens.

If the map is full on day one

You seed every business on the coast yourself as a free basic listing before launch. Then you're not selling presence, you're selling the upgrade. Photos, ranking, the TOP PICK badge, promotions. Each owner gets a claim-your-listing link. Claiming is free. Upgrading isn't.

Not in your spec, and it reshapes the data. Listings need an owner state of unclaimed, claimed or subscribed, plus verification and an admin queue. Free if it's in the schema now. A migration across every record if it isn't.

Risk three of three

Where the rules live decides
whether the app is a rebuild.

Website

Wix Studio pages. Presentation only. Renders what it's handed.

The engine

Who ranks where, what each tier unlocks, translating on save, approving reviews, verifying claims, search. Every rule written once, here.

iOS / Android

Calls the same layer via Wix's REST APIs and JavaScript SDK. New front end, no new logic.

The usual mistake

Rules get written into page code because it's faster and works fine on a website. Then the app needs every one of them written again, in a second language, kept in sync forever.

Two details worth naming

Ranking must be a stored score that recalculates when a subscription or review changes, never a live page-load calculation. And your TOP PICK badges are the product you're selling, so they come off the tier automatically with an override you control.

Your market, not your website

The Caribbean coast runs on
a different calendar.

JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEP
OCT
NOV
DEC
Driest, busiest, Easter peak Strong second window Softer
Why Dec/Jan is right

Christmas fills Puerto Viejo and pushes rates to their yearly peak. Then February to April is the driest, most reliable stretch, running into Easter. You'd launch just ahead of your market's best run.

Why that matters commercially

Businesses renew on what they saw in their first season. Slip past April and you're billing Caribbean owners through May, June and July, their quiet months. Next good window is September.

And a free positioning idea

Every guide online says visit Costa Rica December to April. On your coast that's wrong for three months a year. Being the platform that gets this right is the argument that sells subscriptions in Puerto Viejo.

The numbers underneath it

What the platform
has to carry.

$1.2k / mo
50 listings
at a cautious $25 blend
$5.0k / mo
200 listings
same cautious blend
$60k / yr
Run rate at
your own target
$900
Lifetime value of one
business retained 3 yrs
I've deliberately been conservative

Twenty-five dollars blended, not forty. Small businesses on the Caribbean coast are not paying US directory prices, and I'd rather show you a number that survives contact with reality than one that flatters the proposal.

What it tells us to build

Fifty listings does not pay for a business. Two hundred does. So every decision serves the road from fifty to two hundred, and nothing gets built for the state of fifty. That's what shapes the plan on the next slide.

The plan

Designed once.
Built in two stages.

Two weeks

Design

The whole database is designed now, including the fields German, French and the map will need later. Empty fields are fine. Missing ones are what cost you a rebuild.

Live for December

Launch

Everything needed to seed the coast, sign businesses and take recurring payments. English and Spanish.

When revenue supports it

Scale

German and French switch on across the whole catalogue. Map, itineraries, promotions.

Why not all at once? A French translation pipeline is worth nothing until you know fifty Costa Rican businesses will pay. An itinerary builder is worth nothing across fifty listings. Building those in October is guessing. Building them in April is responding to what actually happened.

Investment

What you pay,
and when.

Starts Monday
2 weeks
Design
Complete database design, the four-language write path, tier and ranking rules, claim-and-seed flow, and the API the apps will use later. A document you own whoever builds this.
$2,400
One payment
Sept to December
~10 weeks
Launch
Traveller accounts, directory, search, reviews, favourites. Seeded listings and claim flow. Business dashboard, subscriptions, tier ranking, automatic badges. Per-listing stats for owners. Admin console. English and Spanish.
$9,600
3 × $3,200
Spring, optional
~8 weeks
Scale
German and French across the whole catalogue. Map and location search, traveller itineraries, promotions and events, full owner analytics, documented API layer.
$7,800
2 × $3,900
$12,000
Total to be live and taking subscriptions in December. Spread across four payments over four months.
$19,800
Everything, if and when you want Scale. Largest single payment at any point is $3,900.
Next

What happens
this week.

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