Who gets listed
A business makes the guide when its owner runs it from Apex, Cary or Holly Springs. That covers the restaurant on Salem Street, the electrician who works out of a truck and a home office, and the family dental office on Kildaire Farm Road.
National chains and franchise locations are left off, even when the franchise owner lives down the street. A franchise comes with a national brand's marketing behind it. This guide is for the businesses that don't have that. Small local groups with a few locations around the Triangle are fine.
The guide covers these three towns only. If a business has an Apex, Cary or Holly Springs address, it counts.
How endorsements are checked
An endorsement is a neighbor putting their name behind a business: first name, last initial and the town they live in. There are no star ratings and no anonymous reviews.
Every endorsement starts with an email address. We send a one-time link that expires in 48 hours, and nothing posts until it's clicked. One email address can endorse a business once. Endorsers confirm they've been a customer and don't own or work for the business, and we turn away throwaway email services and addresses on the business's own web domain.
Endorsements are open to people who live in Apex, Cary or Holly Springs. Every new one is reviewed after it posts. Anything that looks like a business endorsing itself, a pile-on from out of town, or a note that's really an ad comes down.
What "Featured" means
Featured listings get a longer profile with photos, services and a direct website link, and they appear first on their category and town pages. Every featured listing carries a Featured label.
Featured businesses are clients of Peak City Web Design, the Apex company that runs this guide, or businesses that sponsor it. Featured status never comes with endorsements - those only come from neighbors, the same way as everyone else's.
After featured listings, each page is ordered by number of neighbor endorsements. Ties are broken by how much public review activity a business has, which we use for ordering and never display.
Who runs it
Owned Here is run by Matt Kelley, who owns Peak City Web Design in Apex and has built websites for Triangle small businesses since 2009.
It started the way a lot of local recommendations do: a group of guys in Cary and Apex keeping a shared document of the plumbers, mechanics and roofers they'd used and would call again. This is the public version of that list, with a way to keep it honest.
Questions, corrections or a business we missed: peakcitywebdesign@gmail.com.
Where the listings come from
The first listings were compiled in October 2026 from public business information - names, addresses, phone numbers, hours and websites - and then filtered for national chains, franchises, closed businesses and places outside the three towns. We don't copy reviews, ratings or photos from anywhere.
Owners can update, claim or remove a listing at any time through the add or fix a listing form. Most fixes go live within two business days.
What we keep about you
When you endorse a business we keep your first name, last initial, town, optional note and the date. Your email address is used to send the confirmation link and is stored only as a one-way fingerprint, so the same address can't endorse a business twice. We never show it, sell it or add it to a mailing list.
To take down an endorsement you left, email us from the same address and we'll remove it.