Affordable web design for small business
This article isn't for everyone. It's for the small business owner who needs something online, has very little budget to do it, and isn't in a position to hire a designer right now. Maybe you're just starting out and the money isn't there yet. Maybe the business is a side project and a £1000+ website isn't something you can justify.
I'm a web designer, so writing this is a little against my own interests. But I talk to a lot of people in exactly this situation, and pointing them towards an overpriced template subscription or a platform that locks them in doesn't feel right.
The template trap
The first thing most people in this situation do is sign up for WordPress, Wix or Squarespace, find a template that looks roughly right and spend the next several weeks trying to make it look like something they actually want. I've seen this go wrong more times than I can count.
The problem isn't the platforms themselves – they're fine for what they are. The problem is that templates are designed to look good in screenshots and work for everyone in general, which means they work for nobody in particular. You'll spend hours adjusting colours and fonts, uploading images that don't quite fit the layout, trying to remove sections you don't need and add things the template wasn't built for. The result is usually something that looks like a modified template, because that's exactly what it is, and the whole process takes far longer than it should.
There are also costs that aren't obvious upfront. WordPress on its own is free, but the theme you actually want costs £50, the plugin you need to make the contact form work costs another £30 a year, and then there's hosting on top. Wix and Squarespace bundle everything together more cleanly, but you're looking at £15–25 a month for a plan that doesn't show their branding on your site, which adds up to £180–300 a year for a one-page website. And if you ever want to leave, you can't take your site with you – you'd be starting from scratch on a new platform.
The AI website builder trap
There's a newer category of tool that's been heavily marketed at exactly the audience I'm describing here: AI website builders, often bundled with hosting plans from companies like GoDaddy, Hostinger and various others. The pitch is appealing – answer a few questions, and AI generates your website in minutes.
The reality is more complicated. Many of these tools lock you into their specific hosting platform from the start, meaning the site you build can't be moved elsewhere without rebuilding it completely. The first-year pricing is often heavily discounted to get you in the door, then rises significantly at renewal. Some charge separately for SSL certificates – the basic security that makes your site show as secure in browsers – which should really be included as standard. And the content they generate is generic by definition: the same stock phrases and filler text that every other business using that tool gets, with your name dropped in.
The deeper problem is that you don't own anything. You're renting a website on someone else's platform, and if they change their pricing, change their terms, or simply close down, you're starting over.
What I'd actually recommend
Here's the thing that's changed in the last couple of years: the AI tools that are genuinely useful – Claude, ChatGPT and similar are very good at writing code. And a simple one-page HTML website is exactly the kind of thing they can produce cleanly, in one go, ready to upload to a web host. No platform lock-in, no subscription, no template that looks like everyone else's. Just a file you own.
I'd suggest opening Claude or ChatGPT and using a prompt along these lines – adjust the details for your own business:
"Build a complete one-page HTML website for my business. Everything should be in a single HTML file with the CSS included in a style tag at the top – no external files, no frameworks, no JavaScript libraries. The business is called [your business name]. We are a [brief description of what you do] based in [your location]. Our main services are [list your services]. Our phone number is [number] and email is [email address]. I will add my logo later as a file called logo.png – please include an img tag for it at the top of the page. Use a clean, professional design with a white background and [your preferred colour, e.g. dark navy] as the accent colour. The page should have a header, an about section, a services section and a contact section with our details. Make it fully mobile-responsive."
What you'll get back is a complete, working HTML file. You can paste it into a plain text editor, save it as index.html (or ask AI to do it for you), and that's your website. You can double click on the file and it will open in your browser. If you have a logo, save it as logo.png and keep it in the same folder as your index.html file – that's what tells the browser where to find it. If anything looks wrong or you want to adjust something, ask the AI to change it and it'll give you an updated version.
It won't be perfect. The AI doesn't know your business the way you do, so you'll need to read through the copy it generates and rewrite anything that sounds off. But as a starting point for a small business that needs something online quickly and cheaply, it's genuinely good.
Getting it online for almost nothing
A plain HTML and CSS website doesn't need database hosting or a complex server setup – it's just files, which makes the whole thing much cheaper to get online.
Start by registering a domain name if you don't already have one. It'll cost around £10–15 a year from a registrar like Namecheap or 123-reg – that's the only thing in this whole process you'll actually pay for.
For hosting, I'd recommend Netlify. You sign up for a free account, drag your HTML file into the browser, and it's online in about 30 seconds. SSL is included automatically and there's no monthly fee.
Connecting your domain is the one step that feels more technical than it is. In your Netlify account, go to Domain settings, add your custom domain, and Netlify will give you a couple of nameserver addresses. You then log into your domain registrar, find the DNS or nameserver settings, and replace the existing values with the ones Netlify gave you. Their own documentation walks you through it clearly. Changes usually take effect within an hour or two.
That's it. A working website, your own domain, no ongoing subscription costs, and complete control over your files.
When this stops being enough
This approach has limits, and I want to be honest about them. A one-page HTML site won't rank particularly well in search results on its own, it can't handle a blog or a content strategy, and it won't grow with you as the business gets more complex. When you're ready to invest in something more considered – a site that's actually built around how your business works and what your clients need to see – that's when it makes sense to talk to a web designer who builds custom websites for small businesses.
But if you're at the stage where you just need something online that looks decent and tells people what you do, this will get you there without spending money you don't have yet.
If you get stuck at any point – the file won't upload, the domain connection isn't working, something looks wrong – feel free to get in touch. I'm happy to point you in the right direction, no strings attached.