A Website Maintenance Company

Not a Weight Loss Camp

Just a fun small group of dedicated managers, communicators, consultants and developers from Northern Virginia doing cool stuff for cool clients

FatLab: A Website Maintenance Company
& WordPress Support Agency

Founded by Shane Larrabee, a web development veteran of over 20 years, FatLab is a WordPress support company focused on providing the absolute best client support experience. We’re on-call to handle systems monitoring, security patches, upgrades, bug fixes, site enhancements, content updates, and many more website maintenance services.

FatLab will not try to sell you a new website. We keep sites up and running so your business is up and running. Our focus is on why we can support you and your site more efficiently and more effectively than our competitors.

FatLab uses a robust online web support ticket system for clients to create and track support requests 24/7/365. In addition, each of our clients is served by a primary account manager.

We are not a typical web design company, in that our primary services are website support services and not design and development services. Of course, we do website design, building, and custom web applications but the focus is always long-term support versus one-off projects.

Ritz and Dolores BMW Mini

A U.S. WordPress Support Company

FatLab is a registered Limited Liability Company (LLC) in the state of Virginia and was founded in downtown Washington, DC. Our client base extends through the United States and Canada with about 70% of our clients being based in the major business centers of the East Coast: New York, Baltimore, DC, Atlanta, and Miami.

We can put on a tie and meet in the board rooms of K Street or sports shorts and a fleece (when it’s 50 degrees and raining) and meet over a cup of coffee in Seattle. Or we could just meet online and get some work done… your call.

A Small Company with BIG Infrastructure

Cloudways Gold Agency Partner FatLab is a Gold Cloudways Agency Partner. Cloudways is a leading provider of managed infrastructure.

Through this partnership, FatLab has access to dedicated infrastructure at 5 major cloud providers, 24×7 server monitoring, and access to a dedicated server and network engineers.

Our unique partnership affords us priority support and solutions for all our client’s needs. We are not reselling some cheap shared plan, this is the real deal!

We can deploy, scale, and react to any situation at a moment’s notice. We offer no-cost WordPress site migrations and free SSL certificates are included with all our website maintenance packages.

Each site is protected additionally with a real-time firewall, 30-day (minimum) backups, and 24/7/365 monitoring.

While many companies like ours lease a shared VPS and load their clients up on a budget plan, we have made some large investments into secure hosting solutions for our clients.

We have worked with some great clients over the years.

Women in Pensions Network
Lupus Research Foundation logo
food processing services association logo
adfintas health logo
Pause for Thought logo
cpma logo
American India Foundation logo
American Chiropractic Association
Santesys Solutions
astrojump logo
webb mason logo
Andigo Media
Talkaphone logo
piece of cake digital marketing logo
Braun Film
streetsense logo

The FatLab Name

FatLab was named for Shane’s overweight black Labrador. His name was Guinness and he was part of the Larrabee family for about 12 years before passing on.

One of the sweetest animals you ever could meet, he was a great companion and will live on in our logo.

The Company was named FatLab because with a name like that we could do anything from website support to opening a brewery… It could happen.

Guinness the Fat Lab

About FatLab

FatLab is a Virginia, USA limited liability company and was founded in 2010 by Shane Larrabee. At the time Shane had over a decade of website development experience and had owned and operated several businesses in the Washington, DC area including Larrabee IBC and Project BIG fish.

When FatLab was founded website maintenance companies were hard to come by. It seemed everyone wanted the glory of new designs and builds. Things have changed but we would like to think we were among the originals.

Today we are WordPress experts and offer many services including:

  • Website Support
  • WordPress Maintenance Services and Plans
  • Managed Secure Hosting
  • Website Development
  • Speed Optimization

Our Mission

Today FatLab provides website support, hosting, maintenance, and development services to small businesses, large corporations, agencies, and nonprofit associations in the United States and Canada.

We know that finding a web developer or digital marketing firm is not a challenge, finding a good one is a little harder, and finding one that understands sophisticated communications strategies and provides incredible client service – is just about impossible.

This is where our team of veteran communicators, managers, and developers comes in. We have built a high-end website maintenance agency with a client-centric focus.

A Modern Company

No Cubicles Here

FatLab has taken a unique approach to building a team and work environment. The goal is: Let’s prove this “internet thing”.

We live in a world where our Alexandria, VA office number is answered from anywhere we might be whether that be in Washington, DC, Virginia, Costa Rica, Seattle, or anywhere.

We work East Coast business hours but that doesn’t always mean we are on the East Coast. From centralized code repositories, ticket systems, video chats, and VOIP phone systems, we have built a system that allows us to work from wherever we are AND wherever you are. This whole “internet thing” may just actually work.

BTW, this website support agency was doing this long before it became the “new normal”.

Shane Larrabee, Founder, FatLab Web Support

Shane Larrabee

Principal, Web Developer, and Janitorial Services

Washington, DC / Costa Rica

Shane Larrabee founded FatLab, LLC in 2010 after over a decade of web development experience working at a web design agency, studios, agencies, and other businesses.

Shane specializes in back-end development (PHP) within content management systems such as WordPress. Shane has been focused on WordPress development for well over 10 years. Most of Shane’s development time is working on theme and plugin development.

More than a developer, Shane considers himself a problem solver for his clients – hence the unique support-focused business model.

Shane has developed and supported sites for an uncountable number of organizations around the world including political campaigns, governments, trade/issue/member-based associations, and many small and large businesses.

From the Fortune 500 to the smallest startup, to national PACs to grassroots movements, and from K Street to Wall Street – his experience spans the gamut. Shane lives in Brasilito, Costa Rica with his wife and daughter, works East Coast business hours, and makes regular trips back to the Washington, DC area for work

A Little More to Do with Shane

Key note and Party in Washington DC

A Keynote and a Party

Pointing Your Domain to FatLab

Website Video Backgrounds (and Drone Fun)

FatLab, LLC Acquires Talents of SkinnyLab

FatLab, LLC Acquires Talents of SkinnyLab

Ritz Penaranda

Ritz Penaranda

Managing Director

Virginia

Ritz is our Managing Director and a Project Manager with over 14 years of website project management experience. She brings a great dynamic to both our team and clients with a “let’s get it done” attitude for every project she manages. She has a real love for solving a client’s problems, finding the right play, implementing a smart solution, and then seeing the results.

Having worked in the association and nonprofit world in the past, Ritz is particularly good at looking at a project from the client’s perspective. She has exceptional customer service skills and can build long-lasting relationships.

Posts About and Related to Ritz

This Team Goes Back a Long Ways!

This Team Goes Back a Long Ways!

Meet Ritz, Managing Director

Meet Ritz, Managing Director

Business Meetings Don't Have to Suck (Costa Rica)

Business Meetings Don’t Have to Suck (Costa Rica)

Our Web Support System

Web support is more than an email address

One of the most common things we hear from clients who are considering leaving their current provider: unresponsiveness. Our entire system is built around a fast response time and client service.

At FatLab Web Support we have worked hard to put together a support desk system that allows us to be responsive to our clients’ needs. Regardless of the urgency level, we know it is important that you get confirmation when your support request has been received. That is why we put a true system in place, not just a generic [email protected] email box to be checked on occasion.

We receive instant notification of your issue (24/7)

When you create a ticket, it immediately notifies us via email, regardless of your maintenance plan, and sends an alert to our mobile phones and tablets. You can track the progress of your tickets online, via email, or even give us a call.

Average initial response time: under two hours.

Worried about reaching us? Don’t be.

We are available via multiple communications channels.

  • Phones
  • Online ticket system
  • Email

We work hard to keep you up to date.

As a web support company, we make it our priority to keep you regularly updated on the status of your web support request. With each update, you will receive an email and a record will be made to the ticket. In addition, the system securely archives all communications and time for easy reference.

Full Transparency: All communications are kept online.

With a complete history of communications regarding a specific issue, we are able to review an accurate history if questions were to arise on the same or future task.

Full Transparency: All billing information is available to you 24/7/365.

Keeping Billing Clear and Honest

Full Transparency: Granular task-specific billing.

All billable time is recorded for every task and in full view of you, the client. In addition, all invoices will reference each completed ticket by number and the total time billed. At any time, you can review the amount of time applied to your account.

FatLab Hosts Client and Friend Happy Hour in McLean, Virginia

FatLab Hosts Client and Friend Happy Hour in McLean, Virginia

The FatLab Web Support Team is Back Together For the first time in years, thanks to obvious global issues, I...

Key note and Party in Washington DC

A Keynote and a Party

I’m coming back to DC, and I could not be more excited! Thanks to global events I haven’t done a...

First Day of the New Year: SNOW DAY

First Day of the New Year: SNOW DAY

Washington DC Area Gets Snow A snowstorm has delayed our office opening on the first day of 2022. Now you...