How to make a website for your business, and what happens when it grows

Most advice on how to make a website for your business covers the first afternoon. Pick a builder, pick a template, add your logo, press publish. That part is not hard any more.

What the guides skip is the next few years. The business adds a page for a new service, then a shop, then a mailing list, then perhaps a second site for a second brand. Each step costs something, and each platform charges for it differently. This guide covers both halves: the ways to start, and what happens when the business grows.

It is written for a small business owner, not a developer. If “how to build a website from scratch” means writing the code yourself in HTML and CSS, you want a code editor and a web host, and nothing in this guide is aimed at you.

First, decide who will look after it

Before you choose a platform, decide who will keep the site up to date. Somebody has to change the opening times, add new products and notice when a page breaks. On some platforms that is a few minutes a month. On others it is a regular job.

If the answer is “nobody, really”, that rules out more options than any feature list. Our guide to the best website builder for a small business starts from the same question.

The ways to start

Wix and Squarespace both start you with a template. You choose one that looks close to what you want, then swap in your own words and photos. Wix lets you drag a picture or a box of text to any spot on the page. Squarespace keeps you inside its layouts, which makes it hard to end up with a page that looks wrong on a phone. Squarespace vs Wix compares the two in more detail.

WordPress starts with a choice of host. You rent space (SiteGround’s StartUp plan was £1.99 a month for the first year on 21 October), install the free WordPress software, pick a theme and add plugins for anything the theme does not do. It gives you more room than anything else here, and more to keep updated. Wix vs WordPress sets the two side by side.

Bernard has three ways in, all from the same Add a new site screen in your account:

• Move a site you already have. Bernard brings across your pages, words and pictures from Wix, Squarespace, WordPress and most other platforms, and rebuilds them on his own hosting.
• Start from scratch. You get a one-page starter draft. Bernard interviews you about the business, saves your answers as a style brief and drafts a homepage from it. You add more pages one at a time, each on its own preview.
• Copy one of your own sites. The pages, styling and photos come across. Shop and course pages, contacts, the web address and any approved code stay behind.

You can also design pages by hand in Claude Design, if you want to. You make the site in Bernard first, then design the homepage in Claude Design starting from your real colours and fonts, approve it, and design the next page from that. It works page by page. Claude Design does not build a whole site in one go, and a connected AI (Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini) cannot create a new site for you: that first step is yours, and it takes about a minute.

There is one gap to know about. Bernard has no template library. He starts from the look you already have, or from the interview. If you want to browse a hundred finished designs and pick one, Wix and Squarespace suit you better.

What happens when the business grows

Getting online is the easy part. Here is what each platform asks of you as the business adds things.

More pages. None of the four charges by the page. Bernard’s pricing page puts it plainly: a hundred-page site costs the same as a ten-page one. On every platform, more pages means more to keep current, which is a time cost, not a money one.

A shop. On Wix, taking payments needs the Core plan (£16 a month paid yearly, against £9 for Light). Squarespace sells from Basic but takes 2% of store sales on top of card fees, and nothing from Core (£17 a month). WordPress adds a shop with WooCommerce, which brings its own extensions and upkeep. Bernard adds a shop for £200 a year on any plan, takes 0% of your sales, and pays you through your own Stripe account (Stripe still charges its card fee).

A mailing list. This is where the bills spread. Squarespace’s Email Campaigns is a separate add-on priced by emails sent. A Wix or WordPress owner usually adds a tool such as Mailchimp. On Bernard, sending campaigns to your list is part of every plan, with no charge per contact. The hub’s like-for-like sum shows a five-page site plus a 500-person list costing £331.20 a year on Squarespace, £347.33 on Wix Light with Mailchimp, and £200 on Bernard, with WordPress on SiteGround at £419.19 a year once its first year is over.

A second site. A second brand or a side business. This one surprises people, so it gets its own sum.

What if you need two websites, not one?

Wix and Squarespace both charge a full plan for each site. Wix’s help says each site “must have its own Premium or Studio site plan”. Squarespace’s says “Each website you create is paid for separately. We don’t offer multi-site plans.” Webflow’s pricing page is per site as well. Bernard’s plans also cover one site each, including the largest, but a second site is a £150-a-year add-on on any plan, so you do not have to move up a size to get one.

These are comparisons of broadly similar business needs, not identical products. Some of these services include things Bernard does not do. Bernard includes planning, reading your numbers and doing the work, which these combinations do not give you without more tools or more of your own time.

The sum below uses the same basis as the hub: what a UK business that is not VAT-registered pays. Wix and Squarespace show prices before VAT, so 20% is added. Bernard is not VAT-registered, so his price is the whole price. Prices were read on 21 October 2026 and are paid yearly.

The pieces, so you can check them:

• Wix Light is £9 a month paid yearly, £108 a year. It has no line for taking payments. Two sites that sell need Core, £16 a month: £192 each, £460.80 for two with VAT.
• Squarespace Basic is £12 a month paid yearly, £144 a year. Paid monthly it is £16, which makes two sites £460.80 a year with VAT.
• Bernard is Nautilus Small at £200 a year plus £150 a year for the second site, on one payment with one renewal date. You add the second site yourself from your Account page.

For two bare sites, Wix Light costs less than Bernard each year, and Squarespace Basic paid yearly costs £4.40 less. If that is all you need, that is the answer.

Add one 500-person mailing list, as in the hub, and the order changes. Wix comes to £476.93 a year (£259.20 plus Mailchimp Standard at £217.73 with VAT). Squarespace comes to £504 (£345.60 plus Email Campaigns at £158.40 with VAT). Bernard stays at £350, because the email is part of the plan.

Two sites, each with its own mailing list. Now give each site its own list of 500 people, with two newsletters a month and a welcome email for each new sign-up. WordPress on SiteGround GrowBig with the same Mailchimp plan comes to £547.35 in year one and £835.35 a year after. Wix comes to £749.09 a year: £259.20 for the two sites, plus Mailchimp Standard for 1,000 contacts, £34.02 a month, which is £408.24 a year or £489.89 with VAT. Squarespace comes to £504 if one Email Campaigns plan covers both sites: the two lists send about 2,200 emails a month, which still fits the 5,000-email tier at £158.40 a year with VAT. Squarespace’s email page does not say whether one plan can serve two sites, so check before you count on it. Bernard stays at £350. Each site keeps its own list and its own monthly sending allowance, and campaigns and automatic emails are part of both.

WordPress works differently again. SiteGround’s StartUp plan hosts one website, but its GrowBig plan lists unlimited websites. GrowBig was £3.99 a month in the first year (£57.46 with VAT) and renews at £23.99 a month (£345.46 a year with VAT). That covers the hosting for both sites, with themes, plugins and the upkeep of two WordPress installs on top.

Seeing what you are paying for, and what is changing

Prices. Wix, Squarespace, SiteGround and Mailchimp all show prices before VAT, so a business that is not VAT-registered pays a fifth more at the checkout. SiteGround’s low price is for the first year only. Bernard’s prices are flat with no VAT added, his first payment carries a 30-day refund (renewals, add-ons and domains are not covered), and he takes 0% of your sales. There is no free plan. Why website bills climb over time covers the renewal side.

Changes. On every platform you edit a page and then publish it. What differs is who else can make changes, and whether you see them first. On Bernard, his changes wait on a draft. Each one comes with a plain-English note, and you tick the ones you want and press Approve. Bernard in your dashboard cannot publish at all. You can plug your own AI account (Claude or ChatGPT) into any plan and use it as much as you like. It is instructed never to publish unless you ask it to. You can undo, too: the last 100 published versions are kept.

Limits. Bernard builds shop, course, lesson and membership pages from your product and course settings, so you change those in the settings, not on the page. Everything else (your homepage, about page, contact page, blog posts, gallery pages) is yours to edit freely.

After launch: keeping the site fast and findable

Once the site is live, it needs to load quickly and be found. Each platform does some of this for you. What matters is what comes in the base plan and what costs extra.

What Bernard checks. Every time you publish, he re-reads your live site and checks broken links, page titles and descriptions, structured data (the labels search engines read), and Google’s speed test on mobile and desktop separately. His accessibility test re-runs itself every week. Reports also show how often ChatGPT, Claude and other AI assistants read your pages, and whether a read was to answer someone’s question.

What Bernard fixes. When a site moves in, he adds alt text to every image, repairs the structured data, recompresses and resizes images, strips unused styling and loads images only as they are needed. Measuring is on from the start, so when you publish, the sitemap refreshes, Google is sent it, and Bing and others are told through IndexNow. None of this puts you at the top of Google, and Bernard’s own help says so.

What it did for speed. We measured ten live sites before and after Bernard moved them, on 6 August 2026, using Google’s Lighthouse speed test on mobile, three runs each. The average score went from 65 to 72. Seven of the ten got faster. Two fast sites got slower: one from 91 to 78, one from 72 to 67. That is a small gain on a small sample, so treat it as a fair guide, not a promise. How Bernard builds a site explains what he changes and why.

Where Bernard fits, and where he does not

Bernard suits an owner who wants the website, the upkeep and the mailing list in one place, and who expects to add a shop, courses or a second site later without changing platform.

He keeps working after launch, too. Each Monday he writes a short note on your site’s Analytics page: who visited, where they came from, and at most three things worth doing, each with a button that does it. On the Medium and Large plans he also plans your marketing every six weeks and drafts your posts, emails and pages for you to approve.

He is not the right fit for everyone:

• He is newer and smaller than Wix, Squarespace or WordPress.
• He has no template library. If you want to start by browsing finished designs, Wix and Squarespace have far more.
• He is not for hand-coders. You can add your own code, but he checks it first and it goes live only when you publish. If you want to write a lot of code yourself, WordPress gives you much more room.
• Dragging things around is limited. On a computer you can reorder sections, product cards and gallery photos. There is no free-form canvas like Wix’s, and on a phone you cannot drag at all.
• On a bare website, he is not the smaller bill. Wix Light and Squarespace Basic both cost less for one site with nothing else, and Wix Light costs less for two.

How to make the choice

1. Decide who looks after the site. If nobody will, rule out anything that needs regular updating.
2. Pick your way in. A template, a theme, or the site you already have.
3. Write down what the business might add in two years. A shop, a mailing list, courses, a second site.
4. Price that version, not today’s. Two years, with VAT if you are not registered and the renewal price, not the introductory one.
5. Ask how you would leave. Your web address should stay in your name wherever the site lives.

Whichever platform you pick, you can change it later, and a careful move keeps your pages and their place in Google. For a fuller comparison of every option, with prices for each, read The best website builder for a small business depends on who runs it.

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See what Bernard would do with your business. Already have a website? Paste its address and he measures it up, free, and shows you the new place before you decide anything. Starting from nothing? Tell him what you are building.