Built by an agency
that hated the
rebuild
Castly is the in-house tool DawnForge Studios built after spending too many hours duplicating work that should never need to be done twice. This is the origin of that frustration, and the compiler we built to end it.
The problem had a name: the handoff
At DawnForge Studios, every WordPress project had the same shape. A designer would spend days producing a precise HTML/CSS prototype: hover effects, custom animations, exact typography, the works. Then an Elementor rebuild would take an equal number of days, widget by widget, inevitably losing fidelity along the way.
The hover effects died. The pseudo-elements vanished. The custom spacing became a best-guess approximation. And the client would notice, even if they couldn't articulate what was wrong. They just felt it was not quite the thing they had approved.
After one particularly bruising project where the Elementor rebuild took longer than the original design, we asked a simple question: why does this need to be done manually at all?
The answer is Castly: a compiler that takes the HTML you already have and produces a native, fully-editable Elementor page: real containers and widgets the client can modify themselves, without ever touching code. First it was our internal agency tool. Now it's a product.
We delivered a prototype the client loved. Then we rebuilt it in Elementor and it came back slightly wrong. The button hover was gone. The card animation was gone. The exact font weight was gone. We spent four more hours restoring things that should never have been lost.
The HTML you designed is the page that ships
Our mission is simple: eliminate the gap between what a designer codes and what a client receives in Elementor. Not bridge it. Not minimise it. Eliminate it entirely.
We believe the handoff should be a compile, not a rebuild. A designer who invested eight hours in a precise HTML prototype should not have to watch an Elementor developer spend eight more hours re-creating it from scratch, losing fidelity with every step.
Castly is the infrastructure that makes that belief operational. Success, to us, is when the compiler emits real containers and widgets instead of an embedded copy, when every compile is captured and verified at desktop, tablet, and mobile before you export, and when the client opens their WordPress editor and finds every widget in the right place.
The principles behind the product
Fidelity is non-negotiable
If something loses fidelity during compilation, it is a bug, not a known limitation. Effects with no Elementor control ride scoped custom code before we ever reach for a fallback.
Verify, don't assume
Every compile self-validates (content coverage, media coverage, and per-device checks) because "looks right" is not a deliverable standard. Numbers are honest. Eyeballs are optimistic.
One workflow, not a toolchain
You should not need three plugins, two scripts, and a Slack thread to move HTML into Elementor. One tool, one compile, one output.
Editable or it doesn't count
The output is native containers and widgets your client can open and edit, not an iframe, not a screenshot. The rare HTML fallback is always listed in the handoff report.
Privacy by default
The code you compile is yours. It is processed to produce your Elementor output, not sold, not used to train anything. Full stop.
Ship honestly
We publish measured fidelity numbers and never claim pixel-perfect. What won't reproduce natively is documented in the handoff, and no feature is listed until it ships reliably.
The numbers behind the claim
Castly ships with its own QA. These are current measurements against real Elementor imports, not marketing estimates.
Measured against real Elementor imports across a 100-site stress corpus, three devices per compile. Simple pages routinely score 97–99. Castly is built and run by DawnForge Studios, the agency that needed it first.
Building toward zero-friction delivery
The compiler handles HTML → Elementor reliably today. Here is where we are taking it next.
Native-first compilation
Real containers and widgets by default; effects without an Elementor control ride scoped custom code. The last-resort HTML fallback is always listed in the handoff report.
Self-validation + Fidelity Report
Every compile checks content coverage, media coverage, and dropped structure, and produces a client-ready side-by-side report with per-device scores.
One-click WordPress import
The Castly WP plugin talks to the engine and imports pages, templates, and the design-system kit directly. No clipboard, no manual JSON step.
Update & Sync
Recompile a changed mockup onto a page your client has already edited; a three-way merge keeps their manual edits intact.
Elementor V4 (Atomic) target
The compiler already emits Elementor's new atomic elements behind a flag. It graduates to a first-class target once its scores match the classic output.
Deeper dynamic & WooCommerce coverage
Loop grids, product widgets, and dynamic tags already map via annotations on the Agency tier, and we are extending detection so more of it happens automatically.