Where we came from.
- Founded
- January 2001
- Home office
- Danielson, Connecticut
- Shopify stores built
- 300+
- On the Wayback Machine
- Since 2004
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2001
It started with text.
Justin Porter started Text Connects in January 2001, while he was still in high school, building websites for local businesses like Woodstock Building Associates. Homework was the other business. In those early days, before we were building websites full time, it was simply text that connected people on the interwebs. That’s where the name comes from.
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2004
A website with a login.
Our 2004 homepage announced “New Web site Launched 4/1/04.” It had a client login, a Get a Quote button, news about a website upgrade for Daniel Webster College and a housing application we were building for colleges. We also resold Macromedia Contribute so clients could edit their own pages.
The archive kept the layout but lost most of the images. -
2009–2011
Connecting your business to the world.
By the late 2000s we were a small-business technology shop in Northeast Connecticut: websites, IT support, server and help desk services, and hosted Microsoft Exchange email from $15 a month, with a free copy of Outlook 2007.
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2012–2014
Your website can be beautiful.
The 2012 redesign called us “a full service technology company” and put our current projects front and center for the first time: websites, email and hosting, on-site and off-site technology management, and even audio and video setups for homes and businesses.
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2015–2016
Your full-time IT department.
For a few years the focus was managed IT: being the IT department for businesses that didn’t have one, with specialties in legal, PCI and HIPAA compliance, managed Wi-Fi, and partners like Microsoft, Twilio and Cisco Meraki.
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2018
What can we help you with today?
E-commerce moved to the top of the list. The 2018 homepage gave visitors four paths (e-commerce, managed IT, training and hosting), the menu led with “What is Shopify?” and Shopify app development, and our Express Send app for Zenfolio photographers had its own link. The menu that year also added our free Shopify meetups in Stamford and Boston.
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2019
Your local Shopify experts.
In 2019 the homepage said it plainly: “Text Connects provides E-Commerce and Custom Application development for companies big and small.” As Shopify Experts in Development we were working with brands like Swarovski, Cabana Life, Beauty Bioscience and Anatomie, and we’d just launched ADORE Jewelry’s new store. We were hiring, too.
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2021–2024
Extraordinary e-commerce solutions.
The purple “Extraordinary E-Commerce Solutions™” homepage arrived at the end of 2021, along with the TEXT|CONNECTS Development Agency wordmark. Behind it, the work got bigger: Shopify Plus stores, ERP integrations, B2B and wholesale stores, and custom apps for clients like LENOX and Campania.
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2025–2026
A mega menu for everything we do.
The 2025 version organized the work into Work, E-Commerce, Development, Training and Resources, added industry experience pages and put our latest projects on the homepage: LENOX, Campania, GEMLUX and Jennifer Miller Jewelry.
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2027
Engineering for complicated commerce.
See our workWhich brings us to this site. Twenty-five years in, we’re mostly Shopify, not only Shopify: we build commerce around how a business actually sells, connecting storefronts, systems and operations. Still from Danielson, Connecticut. Still a little scrappy.
