The giveaway, in full.
A free website is still an agreement. The build is free, the hosting is $35 a month with us for the first 12 months, the drawing is the third Thursday of every month, and every word of that is written here rather than found out in month two.
The terms, all of them.
- 01
One website a month. Entries are read by a person before they go on the board. On the third Thursday of every month, at nine in the morning Central, the listed entry with the most votes is the one we build, and it comes off the board. Everybody else starts the next month at zero votes, so a lead is earned again each month rather than carried. The first drawing is Thursday, October 15 2026.
- 02
What is won is the Single Page tier off our published price list, $2,900, and nothing above it. One long scrolling page with a contact form, a map, structured data and analytics. No CMS. Two rounds of revision, live in 1-2 weeks once we have your words and pictures.
- 03
The site is hosted with us on Hosting Only, $35 a month, for its first 12 months. That is $420 over the year and it is the only money that changes hands. It is the published price of that plan, the same as anybody else pays: CDN hosting, SSL renewal, DNS management, uptime monitoring, weekly backups, and the deploy pipeline kept working.
- 04
Hosting Only includes no hours of changes. Nothing is free after launch except fixes to what we built, which are free for thirty days. Changes after that are billed by the hour at the plan rate of $125, and you can move up to a care plan with hours in it whenever you like.
- 05
The footer carries our mark, for as long as the site is hosted with us. The credit is what a free build is exchanged for, and it is the same term every discounted site here carries.
- 06
The domain is yours, registered in your name, and the source is yours to take. The hosting account is ours: that is what we are being paid for and what lets us keep the thing patched and online. After the 12 months the site can move to hosting you control, at no charge.
- 07
Enter your own business, or one whose owner has expressly agreed to being entered. Those are the only two, and the reason is the line above: winning commits that business to a real monthly bill, and nobody can agree to that for somebody else. We confirm it with the owner before a line is built, and an entry that turns out to be neither comes off the board whatever its votes say.
- 08
One entry per business, and the business has to be real, reachable, and something we can build well. There is no cash alternative and the build cannot be transferred or sold.
- 09
One vote a day each, spent on whichever business you like, and the same one can be backed again tomorrow. We can take an entry off the board, and we can throw out votes that were not cast by people. A round won by a script is not a round.
- 10
We can decline an entry without giving a reason, and we will say so rather than leaving it pending. Nothing on this page is a promise to build for anyone who has not been told they won.
What gets built, and what does not.
The prize is a real tier off the published price list rather than a figure invented for a giveaway. It is the Single Page build, $2,900, and it is the smallest thing we sell. Naming it is how you know what you are getting.
In it
- A design drawn for the business, never a purchased template
- Mobile-first layout, and Core Web Vitals passing on real hardware at launch
- AI-friendly by all nine checks: the assistants' crawlers admitted by name, an llms.txt generated from the site's own content, structured data from the same source
- Contact form with spam protection, sitemap, SSL, and accessible markup
- Hosted, monitored, patched and backed up by us, which is what the monthly figure pays for
- The domain registered in your name, and the source yours to take with you
- A thirty day window after launch where fixes are free
Not in it
- More than one page. A second page is the Essential tier, which is a different line on the price list.
- A blog, a shop, booking, payments, or a login. Quoted separately.
- Copy written for you, or a photo shoot. Bring your words and your pictures, or we will use what you already have.
- The domain name itself, which is bought in your name at what the registrar charges.
- Monthly hours of changes. That is the care plan above this one.
- Analytics and Search Console wired up. Both are free and both are yours to switch on, and we will do it if you ask rather than counting it as part of the prize.
$420 over the first year is what the hosting costs, and it is the only money that changes hands.
The questions a free website raises.
- Is the website actually free?
- The build is free: the Single Page tier, $2,900 on our published price list, at no charge. Hosting is not free and never is. The winner pays $35 a month for Hosting Only, the published price, for the first 12 months, which comes to $420 over the year. There is nothing else, no setup fee and nothing due up front.
- Do I need an account to vote?
- No. There is no sign-up, no email asked for, and nothing to confirm. Press the arrow and the vote counts. A cookie is set on your first vote, and only on your first vote, so that a browser gets one vote a day rather than one every time the page is reloaded. Nothing is stored about anybody who is only reading.
- How many times can I vote?
- Once a day, for whichever business you like, and you can back the same one again tomorrow. Sign in with your email and it is twice a day, and both can go to the same business. That is deliberate: a board where a vote is cast once and never again gives nobody a reason to come back, and a business with people behind it who turn up every morning is exactly what this is trying to find.
- How do you stop somebody voting for themselves fifty times?
- One vote a day per browser, and every vote is recorded with a one-way hash of the network it came from, so a pile of them from one place is visible to us before a winner is picked. It is not unbeatable and we do not pretend it is. What it means in practice is that winning by writing a script is something we can see and throw out, and we will.
- What if I do not want to wait?
- Then do not. The standing small business offer builds the tier above this one and puts it on a care plan with hours in it, for one monthly figure with nothing up front, and it starts the week you say go. It is on the offer page, and the price list is public.
- Can I enter a business that is not mine?
- Only if the owner has said yes, and the form asks you to declare which of the two you are. The reason is money rather than manners: winning commits that business to $35 a month for 12 months, which is $420 of somebody else's money, and nobody can agree to that on an owner's behalf without being asked. So have the conversation first. It takes five minutes, and it is the difference between a business that turns up to its own win and one that gets a phone call about a bill it never agreed to. If a business you own is already on the board and you want it off, write to us and it comes off.
- What happens to my entry if it does not win?
- It stays on the board and is in the running again at the next drawing, which is the third Thursday of every month, but its count goes back to zero. Every month is decided by that month's votes, so a lead is earned again rather than carried, and the people who backed you last month can back you again from the first morning. You do not have to enter twice. When an entry wins it leaves the board.
- What do you get out of this?
- A hosted site on a plan, a business we would not otherwise have met, and one more site in the world that passes the nine checks. We are not shy about it: one free build a month is a marketing budget, spent on work instead of on ads.