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For Partners

Take on Japan projects
without building a team
in Japan

FrontierLine is a Tokyo web production company. We work as the invisible Japan-side partner for agencies, studios and producers outside Japan — Japanese localization, WordPress engineering and ongoing maintenance, delivered under your name. Our technical work is public, so you can check it before you hire us.

Start a conversation → See what you can verify

Scoping and estimates are free, and we always put the price in writing before starting. We work in writing only — email, Slack or your ticket system — with no calls or video meetings.

Three reasons to pick us over another offshore team

"White label", "we meet deadlines", "we're flexible" — every proposal you receive says that. What we can add is that ours is checkable before you commit anything.

01

We are the Japan side you do not have

Launching a site in Japan is not a translation task. It is Japanese copy written by native speakers, Japanese typography and line breaking, hosting and domains inside Japan, and email that actually reaches Japanese inboxes. We are a Tokyo company doing that work every week — you can take on Japan projects without hiring in Japan or opening an entity here.

02

You can read our code before you hire us

Every studio says it writes clean code. Ours is public: we develop and maintain a plugin listed in the official WordPress.org directory, which means it passed the same global review your own team would be held to. Implementation approach, code quality and support tone — all of it is verifiable before you send us anything.

03

One contract covers design through backend

Coordinating a designer, a front-end contractor and a backend contractor across a nine-hour time difference lands on your producer, not on your vendors. We are a nine-person team — 2 directors, 3 designers, 4 engineers — covering design, front-end, CMS, PHP backends and AI implementation in-house. Largely the same people for over ten years, so quality does not swing between projects.

What you can verify before hiring us

Almost all of our production work arrives through agencies, so we publish none of it (which means your projects will not be published either). Instead we put our own products in public, where anyone can inspect them.

Reviewed by WordPress.org

Frontierline Forms

wordpress.org/plugins/frontierline-forms/

Our own plugin for Contact Form 7: confirmation screens, multi-step forms, conditional logic, database logging, CSV export and spam handling. Anyone can read the source and the support history in the official directory.

Bilingual EN / JA product

MichiStops

michistops.com

Every roadside station in Japan mapped in English and Japanese, with filtered search and suggested driving routes for inbound travellers. Planned, built and operated by us — the clearest proof that we ship for English-speaking audiences in the Japanese market.

1,145 roadside stations
47 prefectures
62 driving routes

Public data at page scale

LOCALnavi

localnavi.jp

Living information for 49 Tokyo municipalities, structured from official government open data as the primary source. Waste sorting rules, care facilities and administrative procedures — a data pipeline and page-generation system we run ourselves.

49 municipalities
22,990 waste items
12,754 care facility records

In-house AI product

AI search readiness audit

aiseo.frontierline.work

Our own tool that scores how well a site is prepared to be cited by generative AI search. We use AI to make production faster and pass that time back to you as shorter lead times and lower prices. Final quality checks are always done by a person.

Interaction samples, priced

Implementation showcase

frontierline.co.jp/showcase/

Particle fields, scroll choreography, magnetic UI, view transitions and WebAudio, published with indicative prices. When your client asks "can we do this movement?", we would rather show you the running thing than describe it. (Japanese interface, live demos.)

What changes when you work with us

The goal is not that you have one more subcontractor. It is that your delivery setup gets one step lighter, and the range of work you can quote gets one step wider.

For your producers

One point of contact, across the time difference

Production management and QA stay on our side. No chasing three contractors, no reconciling their answers, no absorbing delays yourself. One contract, one invoice, one person answering — in English, in writing.

For your pitch

"Yes, we handle Japan" becomes something you can say

Japanese localization, inbound and multilingual builds, high-volume page generation, forms and search systems, public data, AI implementation. Work you have been passing on because you had no one to execute it becomes work you can quote.

For your client

It stays your project, start to finish

We deliver white label. Our name appears nowhere, and we never publish the work — not in a portfolio, not in a case study, not on this site. Your relationship with your client is untouched by us.

What usually goes wrong offshore
With us
Offshore teams that go quiet for days
A written update every Japan business day, and a reply within one business day
One question costs a full day to the time difference
Written specs and recorded walkthroughs by default — nothing waits on a call being scheduled
A freelancer who disappears mid-project
A registered Japanese company since 2015, with scope and liability in writing
Japanese that reads like it was translated
Japanese is our first language. We write it, we do not convert it
Decisions made on a call that nobody wrote down
Every decision lands in writing and is still searchable months later
Quality that changes from project to project
Largely the same nine people building together for over ten years
Your project turning up in their portfolio
We publish nothing. Our own client work is not on this site either

Services and indicative pricing

All figures are in USD and exclude tax. They are starting points — scope moves the number, so the real price always comes back as a written quote. Full site builds and larger systems are quoted on an engineer-day basis at USD 450 per engineer-day, adjusted for the work involved. Invoicing is through PayPal in USD, so there are no wire fees or bank paperwork on your side. The menu below covers what agencies outside Japan ask us for most.

Most requested

Japanese localization of an existing site

USD 1,800 ~ / site (excl. tax)

We take a site that works in your market and make it work in Japan: Japanese copy written by native speakers rather than translated, typography and line breaking that reads correctly, forms and validation adapted to Japanese input, and the layout adjustments that Japanese text density always requires. Delivered on your stack, or rebuilt on ours if that is faster.

  • Native Japanese copy, not word-for-word translation
  • Japanese typography, line breaking and layout fixes
  • Forms, validation and date or address formats adapted
Ask about this →

Japan-side setup

Japan hosting, domains and email deliverability

USD 600 ~ / site (excl. tax)

The part that is hard to do from outside Japan. We set up hosting inside Japan, handle domain acquisition including co.jp, and configure SPF, DKIM and DMARC so notification and auto-reply mail actually lands in Japanese inboxes rather than spam. If mail is already failing on a live site, we diagnose it and send you a report you can forward to your client unchanged.

  • Hosting and domain setup inside Japan
  • SPF / DKIM / DMARC and SMTP configuration
  • Deliverability diagnosis with a forwardable report
Ask about this →

From your design files

WordPress theme and custom plugin development

USD 1,200 ~ / project (excl. tax)

Theme implementation from your design files, custom post types and admin screens built around how the client actually works, and original plugins for requirements no existing plugin covers. We write to WordPress.org review standards daily, so what we hand back is code your own team can pick up later without a rewrite.

  • Theme build from Figma, XD or design files
  • Custom post types and tailored admin screens
  • Original plugin development, documented for handover
Ask about this →

Same-week start

Contact Form 7 work and mail troubleshooting

USD 400 ~ / form (excl. tax)

Confirmation screens, multi-step input and conditional logic on Contact Form 7 — the areas the plugin does not cover on its own and we solved in our own product. We also take "the client says the emails stopped arriving" as a job: SMTP, DNS, plugin conflicts and host-side sending limits, checked in order until the cause is named.

  • Confirmation screens, multi-step and conditional logic
  • Root-cause diagnosis for undelivered mail
  • Migration from discontinued Japanese form plugins
Ask about this →

White label, monthly

Maintenance, updates and security under your name

USD 180 ~ / site / month (excl. tax)

We do the work behind the maintenance contract you hold. Scheduled updates staged on a test environment first, backups, uptime monitoring, tracking of newly disclosed vulnerabilities and small fixes. The monthly report arrives in a format you send to your client under your own letterhead. Multiple sites can be handed over as one arrangement.

  • Updates verified on staging before production
  • Monthly report you can issue under your own name
  • Small fixes included, up to one hour per month
Ask about this →

How we work together

We will not approach your clients

This is a commitment, not a preference. We never solicit an end client we met through you. Our work comes from agencies, studios and producers, and that model breaks the moment we compete with the people who bring us projects. We are glad to put it in the contract.

We stay invisible

Deliverables, documentation and monthly reports come in a form you can pass on unchanged, under your name. When your client asks a technical question you would rather not answer alone, we write the answer in a form you can send on under your own name. NDAs signed on request.

We work entirely in writing — no calls, no meetings

This is a deliberate policy, not a limitation we apologise for. Everything runs over email, your Slack or your ticket system, in English. Written specs, annotated screenshots and recorded screen walkthroughs instead of meetings. Nothing important is decided in a conversation nobody can search six weeks later, and a nine-hour time difference stops being a cost. You get a written update every Japan business day (JST, UTC+9) and a reply within one business day. If your process depends on standing video calls, we are the wrong partner and would rather say so now.

A company, not a person

FrontierLine Inc. has been incorporated since 2015 and producing since 2010, remote-first the entire time. Two directors, three designers, four engineers. Scope, liability and invoicing are written down, and we can join your Slack as guests so the work sits where your team already is.

What we do not do

The worst outcome for you is hearing "we can't" after the project has started. So here it is up front.

Phone and video meetingsOn-site or embedded staffPhotography, video and droneCopywriting as a standalone service24/7 server monitoringLegal, tax or entity setup in Japan

We turn these down. Being honest about the edges of what we do is what keeps your risk low. If a project includes one of them, we are still happy to take the web production part on its own — just tell us where the line sits.

How to start

  1. 01

    Tell us about the project

    A URL and a few sentences on what you need and by when is enough. Projects with no spec yet, or no site yet, are fine — that is often where we are most useful.

  2. 02

    Scope and quote

    We come back with scope, price, a delivery date and the payment terms — a PayPal invoice in USD unless you tell us otherwise. There is no charge up to this point, and we never start work before you have the number in writing.

  3. 03

    Build, deliver, keep supporting

    We build and hand over. Updates, additions and small fixes after launch stay available — most partners keep us on for the maintenance side once the first project ships.

Frequently asked questions

Will you ever contact our client directly?

No. We do not solicit an end client introduced through you, during the project or after it. If you would like that stated formally, we will sign a non-solicitation clause or a separate memorandum.

How does the nine-hour time difference actually work in practice?

We are in Japan (JST, UTC+9) and send a written update every Japan business day, with replies to questions inside one business day. We work from written specs, annotated screenshots and recorded screen walkthroughs rather than meetings, which is what stops a single question from costing you a whole cycle. Because nothing depends on finding an hour both sides are awake for, the nine-hour gap works in your favour: you brief at the end of your day and read the result at the start of the next.

Do you join calls or video meetings?

No. We work entirely in writing — email, your Slack channel, or your ticket system — and that is a fixed policy rather than a scheduling preference. In practice it means specs, decisions and handovers are all documented and searchable, and recorded screen walkthroughs cover anything easier to show than to describe. Agencies that run on standing video calls are not a good fit for us, and we would rather establish that in the first email than in week three.

Is the Japanese written by native speakers?

Yes. Japanese is our first language and the copy is written in-house, not translated. If you already have translated Japanese copy, we will review it and rewrite the parts a Japanese reader would recognise as machine or non-native output — that review is included in a localization project.

Can we deliver the work under our own name?

Yes, white label is our default. Deliverables, technical documentation and monthly maintenance reports all arrive in a form you can hand to your client unchanged. We sign NDAs on request and we never publish the work.

Do you work outside WordPress?

Yes. Design, front-end implementation including WebGL and GSAP work, CMS builds, PHP backends, multilingual sites, search and form systems, and AI implementation are all handled in-house by the same nine-person team. Full builds are quoted on an engineer-day basis at USD 450 per engineer-day, adjusted for the work involved.

Can you take over a site someone else built?

Yes, and it is a large share of what we do. Sites with no documentation, or where the original developer has become unreachable, are normal for us. We start with an assessment of the current state and tell you what is safe to change before quoting the work.

Is there a minimum engagement?

No. A single form fix, one plugin bug, or a one-page job is welcome. If you expect to send work regularly, tell us — we adjust rates for ongoing volume.

How does payment work from outside Japan?

We invoice through PayPal in USD, and that is our standard for every client outside Japan. You pay from the invoice email with a card or a PayPal balance — no international wire fees on your side, no IBAN or SWIFT paperwork, and no waiting on a correspondent bank. Invoices carry our company details and are fine to file for your own accounting. If your finance process cannot use PayPal, tell us while we are quoting and we will sort out an alternative before any work starts.

Tell us what the project is

A URL and one sentence about what you need is enough to start.
Scoping and estimates are free, and we will not chase you with follow-up emails.

Start a conversation