The things people ask on the first call.

The build fee is one-time and it buys the site outright: designing it, building it and launching it. It is yours from the day it goes live. The monthly is what happens after launch, and it is a separate thing that buys none of the site: hosting, your domain, backups, security, maintenance, your business email and the content changes your plan includes. It starts at $79 and rises with the plan, and it runs for as long as I am looking after the site.

Hosting, the domain, backups, security updates, and the content changes included in your plan: one a month on Store Front, more on the plans above it. You send me the change and I make it. You're not logging into anything and there's no software to learn. It's a separate thing from the build fee, which pays for building the site and buys it outright.

The site is already yours, so nothing is taken away from you. What stops is my hosting of it. Tell me in writing, the fee ends at the end of the month you're in, and before I take it off my hosting I hand you a copy of everything: the files, your content and the setup, so you can host it wherever you like. I don't charge for that. Until it's hosted somewhere it won't be reachable at its address, which is simply what hosting is rather than a penalty. Your domain stays in your name throughout, so pointing it at new hosting is yours to do whenever you're ready. Tell me rather than just stopping the payments, or I treat it as an unpaid bill and chase it. One email to support is enough.

Yes, from the day it goes live, on every plan. The build fee pays for building it and buys it outright, so there's nothing else to pay and nothing to wait for. The monthly is hosting and looking after it, which is a separate thing and buys none of the site. Your domain is yours from day one, everything you gave me stays yours, and I hand back a copy of your content on request.

They're a range, and where you land depends on how much site you need. A three-page site for a barber shop sits at the bottom of Store Front; four pages with a contact form and a full service list sits at the top. The range is $220 on Store Front and on all three store plans, and about twice that on Main Street and Broadway, where there are more pages to write and build, so the figure you see is still close to the figure you pay. I confirm the exact number on the call, before anything starts. VIP builds are quoted per project, so those figures are where a tier starts.

Then I price that, rather than moving you up to whichever plan happens to contain everything you asked for. Say you want five pages, which is Main Street territory, but you also want customer logins, which is a VIP feature. You are not buying a VIP build to get the logins, and you are not buying twelve pages either. Tell me what the site has to do on the call and the quote is for that. It lands between two plans more often than it lands on one. The same goes in reverse: if half of what a plan includes is no use to you, say so and I take it out instead of charging you for it. What does not move is how the monthly is worked out, since that follows hosting and your update allowance rather than the build.

No. Shopify, Square, WordPress hosting, and plugin fees are billed to you directly by those providers, and they're separate from what you pay me. The same goes for Google Ads: my fee covers managing the campaigns, and the ad budget itself is paid straight to Google and never passes through me.

Nothing is billed before the call, where I agree on the plan, the price, and what's being built. Once the scope is agreed I take a deposit of around half the build fee and start work. The balance is due at launch, and the monthly fee starts from launch too, so you're not paying a monthly fee while the site is still being built.

It's $100 and it's what puts your build in the schedule. It covers the first stretch of work: the call, the structure, the writing and the first design, all before anything is live. It comes off the total rather than being an extra charge, so roughly half now and half at launch. Your quote states the exact figure.

A custom domain, website hosting, website backups, routine maintenance and your Google Business Profile setup are on every standard plan. Everything above that, meaning how many pages, which forms, and whether there's a blog or a gallery, is what separates the three.

The allowance sets your monthly, so the two always match, and it climbs by two at every step: one a month on Store Front and Shopify, three on Main Street and Square, five on Broadway and WordPress. Anything beyond it I price for you first. VIP builds are yours to update yourself, or you can hand the running back to me for a monthly fee.

Email or text me. New hours, a price change, a photo of the new sign. Send it over and I make the change for you. There's no dashboard to log into and no software to learn.

Every plan includes at least one and it goes up with the tier: one on Store Front and Shopify, two on Main Street and Square, three on Broadway and WordPress. Extra accounts are $49 to set up plus $29/month each. On a VIP build they're set up in your own name, so you hold them and pay the provider directly.

I do, from the call. You read it back and change anything that doesn't sound like you.

Send me whatever you already have: phone photos of the shop, the team, the work you've done. I'll tell you honestly if something isn't going to look good at full width, and I'll use stock images in the gaps until you have your own.

About two weeks for a standard site: a 30-minute call on day one, the build over the following week and a half, and launch from day fourteen. Larger sites, online stores, and custom builds take longer, and I'll give you a realistic date on the call rather than a hopeful one.

Yes. You get a working site to click through: real pages, real navigation, not a picture of a design. Two rounds of revisions are included before launch.

I rebuild rather than patch. Untangling someone else's code almost always costs more than starting clean. I keep your existing copy, photos, and search rankings and carry them over to the new site.

The call, and then whatever photos and details you have. I ask the questions rather than sending you a form to fill in, and if you don't know the answer to something I'll suggest one and you can tell me if it's wrong.

Shopify for the simplest route to selling online, if you don't mind a monthly platform fee. Square if you already take payments in person through Square. WordPress with WooCommerce for full control and no platform transaction fees. A custom VIP store if you need something a platform can't do: customer logins, trade pricing, subscriptions, internal ordering. I'll recommend one on the call based on how you actually sell.

It depends on the plan: twenty products loaded on Shopify, fifty on Square, and a hundred on WordPress. Past that it's $59 per additional twenty on Shopify, $69 on Square, and $79 on WordPress. You can add products yourself afterwards, and I'll show you how.

Yes, all three are part of the build, along with your store policy pages. You'll need to give me your business and bank details for the payment provider, because that part has to be in your name.

I set up your Google Business Profile, your service areas, and the pages people actually search for. Ranking first for a competitive term takes months of work, and I'll tell you honestly whether it's worth yours.

You do. It's registered to you or connected under your control, so if you ever leave you take it with you. The site itself is a different thing: it sits on my hosting, and the hosting is what the monthly pays for. After that the site is yours too, whether or not you carry on with me. Your domain is never held hostage to a bill, and I will not withhold it.

Tell me and I fix it. Hosting, security updates, and backups are handled for you as part of the monthly fee, so you don't need to know what a plugin is or log into anything. I can't promise a site is never offline, but keeping it up is my job, not yours.

Until 14 December 2027, on weekdays. From that date I do support and content updates at weekends only, and stop guaranteeing the response times that apply before then. What you get doesn't shrink: the same updates each month, the same fee, and hosting, backups and security keep running automatically. Only the days I work on them change. I'll remind you in writing at least 30 days before, and if it doesn't suit you, you can cancel with no fee and the rest of your nothing further payable.

You can walk away that day. From 14 December 2027, if I miss an included update by more than 21 days, go 14 days without replying, or leave your site offline more than 72 hours in a row, tell me in writing. I get 14 days to put it right. If I don't, you can end the plan immediately, I refund the unused part of the month, and the rest of your nothing further is payable. It doesn't apply if the cause was outside my control, a third-party outage, or something I was waiting on from you.

Yes, any time. Google Ads management is a fifth of what you spend, never less than $99 a month or more than $399: a $500 budget costs $100 to run, a $1,500 budget costs $300. Your ad budget goes straight to Google. Automated AI posting is $79/month per account. Setting up your social accounts is no longer a separate service, it comes with every VIP build.