A new website in a day or two: how we work
We often build a complete website in a day or two. This is how we work, what drives the price, and why we rarely pick WordPress.
Niamh runs a mobile nail business just outside Bristol. She wanted a pale pink website she wouldn't have to keep updating. We got the brief in the morning and the site was live that evening (niamhnails.co.uk). That's not unusual. Most of the sites we build for small businesses are live within a day or two, because we know what's needed and leave out the rest.
What drives the price
It depends on what the site has to do. A simple business site with home, about, services, contact and some local visibility on Google is a small job. An online store, or anything with logins, booking and payments, is a bigger one.
You get the price before we start, broken down so you can see what you're paying for. It usually pays to start simple and add more when you need it.
WordPress or something else?
We've built websites on most things: WordPress for the Hos Naboen restaurant, a light static setup for Wreck Cutting at Kristiansand Bygg, and our own builds for Niamh and others.
WordPress fits when you want to edit everything yourself, need a specific plugin that already exists, or when the budget drives everything. It's cheap to start with, and almost any developer can work in it.
The downside shows up over time. The core, the theme and every plugin need regular updates, and each plugin is another door someone can try to walk through. A site that was fine last year can be slow, hacked or broken by an update this year if nobody is keeping an eye on it.
Why we usually recommend emdash
We prefer to build on emdash, a newer CMS that runs on Cloudflare. It's young, with fewer ready-made extensions and a smaller community than WordPress. If you need a specific WordPress plugin, it may not exist yet.
In return the site loads almost instantly, there are no plugins needing security patches every week, and it costs less to own over time because fewer things can break. This website runs on emdash, and so do most of the ones we build now.
We carry the risk of new tech, not you. We've used it ourselves, we run it ourselves, and we fix it if something creaks.
Need a new website?
Tell us what your business does and what the site needs to do, and we'll suggest the simplest way there and tell you what it costs before we start. Get in touch, or see the projects we've built.