Before you compare prices
What is a website, really?
Nobody explains this part, so most people buy a website without knowing what they are buying. Here it is in plain terms. A website is a house, on a piece of land, with an address out front. Simple enough.
The part almost nobody mentions is the meter. Your site records what people searched to find you, what they clicked, and what made them call. That reading is the most valuable thing you own online. Most companies sell you the house and quietly keep the meter.
So the question was never "prettier or cheaper." It is: what do I own, and what is it telling me?
Take this at your own pace. I walk clients through it one piece at a time.
Five pieces, and who holds each one
The address
Your domain
yourbusiness.com, bought on your card, in your name.
The house
Your design and code
Everything I build sits in your account. You hold the keys, I hold a copy you can take back in a few clicks.
The land
Your hosting
The ground the house sits on, opened in your name on day one.
The keys
Your accounts
Who can get in and change things. You own every account, and I hold guest keys you can take back in a few clicks.
The meter
Your data
What people searched, what they clicked, what made them call. Registered to you, not to me.
The free hosting plan covers a normal small business site with room to spare. If yours ever outgrows it, the next step up is $5 a month, paid by you straight to the host, never through me.
So there are two ways to do this
Owning your website
- The address in your name, about $11 a year
- The house is yours, design and code
- The land is yours, $0 a month
- The meter reads to you from day one
- You can revoke my access in a few clicks
- Stop paying me, and nothing turns off
The honest trade
Highest price on day one, on purpose
Renting your website
- Their address, their house, their land
- The monthly payment never ends
- Ownership terms usually unstated on their pricing page
- The meter stays in their name
- Pretty, but blind to the data it gathers
- Stop paying, and the site stops
The worst part
It spends your time: money that belongs in selling and marketing.
Everything the one price includes
- An ownership setup call: four accounts, every one in your name
- Your domain bought on your card, never on mine
- A site designed around your business, not a template
- Your own brand sheet: colors and fonts researched for your market
- A day view and a night view, both checked for readability
- A studio where you edit your own text and photos, in English or Spanish
- Every change previewed on a private link before anyone sees it
- Google Search Console and analytics opened in your name
- A launch checklist so people can find you: search setup and local schema
- 30 days of care after we go live
Want me to keep watch and read the meter for you? The care plan is $55 a month for my founding clients: a plain-language report on what your site is doing, up to an hour of edits, cancel anytime. Optional, always. Your site runs perfectly without it.
A website is not just something you own. It is something you build equity in. What I sell you is the equity: your numbers, a direction, room to grow, and your name on all of it.
Here is the part I will say out loud. When a real store is what you need, Shopify is genuinely the one platform that hands you real numbers out of the box, and I will build it for you there and set it up in your name. I win either way, which is why I can afford to tell you that.
Bring me the questions you were told were too basic. That is the whole job.
Rather pick a time? Book my discovery call
Plain language, with the price receipts in the back.