Kitzee
Kitzee set out to become Thailand's independent review platform for building contractors. We rebuilt the platform underneath the ambition: a bilingual WordPress directory where homeowners search 40,000+ businesses in Thai or English, and every review is verified before it publishes.
A rebuilt bilingual directory platform that puts more than 40,000 Thai building businesses in front of homeowners, with verified reviews and membership tiers the Kitzee team runs itself.
What we were solving
Kitzee is a review platform for building services in Thailand: verified company profiles across more than 25 categories, from construction and plumbing to interior design, with reviews checked by the platform's own analysts before they publish. Hiring a contractor is an expensive leap of faith, and Thailand had no independent place to check who you were dealing with.
The platform Kitzee had could not carry the idea. Search buckled under a database of tens of thousands of businesses, so homeowners struggled to find anyone. Navigation fought the mostly mobile audience. The backend was a tangle of loosely connected pieces, and there was no verification workflow, which for a business built on trust is a missing foundation.
And everything exists twice. Every category, company name and address lives in Thai and English, and the platform had to search, filter and display cleanly in both.
Success meant a homeowner in Bangkok or Pattani typing a trade in either language and getting a trustworthy answer in seconds.
How we tackled it
Search that works in two scripts
A directory is only as good as its search, so that is where the rebuild started. We integrated Algolia to drive search across the full database, returning fast, relevant results whether the query is typed in Thai or English, with sidebar filters for services, locations and ratings. For a database of 40,000+ businesses, the difference between a search that works and one that nearly works is the difference between a platform and a phone book.
Trust built into the machinery
Reviews only mean something if people believe them, so verification became part of the architecture rather than a policy page. We built multi-stage verification for both sides of the marketplace: businesses prove they are who they say they are, homeowners register real accounts, and reviews pass a check before publishing. Membership tiers run on Paid Memberships Pro (free basic profiles, with a paid Pro Company level), and the design was refreshed around mobile use with a clean bilingual interface and a Thai/English switcher.
The data work that keeps a directory alive
The engagement did not end at launch, because a directory decays the day you stop tending it. Through 2025 and into 2026 we moved the platform off its original Thai Plesk hosting, rebuilt and re-imported the complete company database on staging before rolling it to the live site, refined the sidebar filters, ran security reviews and advised on Thai translation for reviews and guides. None of this is glamorous. All of it is why the platform still works.
What we delivered
Kitzee now runs live, bilingual and growing, positioning itself as Thailand's largest independent review platform for building service contractors. Homeowners search a verified database of more than 40,000 businesses across 25+ categories, in Thai or English, free. Companies claim profiles, collect reviews and upgrade to Pro when they want more.
Underneath, it is still the platform we built: WordPress with Beaver Builder, bilingual content management, Algolia search and a membership stack the Kitzee team runs day to day, with Chillybin still handling data, hosting and security two years on.
What we learned
A directory project is a data project in a web project's clothes. The build (search, profiles, memberships) is half the work. Importing, cleaning and re-importing a 40,000-row bilingual database without breaking live reviews is the other half.
Bilingual is not a translation task, it is an architecture decision. When every record exists in two languages and two scripts, search, filtering, forms and content workflows have to be designed for it from the start. Retrofitting Thai onto an English platform would have failed one unfindable company at a time.
The Chillybin team has been attentive and accommodating, working hard to bring our vision to life. We appreciate their efforts and support throughout the project.
