Websites
A real website, built by people who build real software. No lock-in.
Hand-built, fast on a phone, readable by a screen reader, and honest about what it does with a visitor's data, and yours outright. Written and coded by our own developers, never assembled in a page builder. From £540, with the first year of hosting included.
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Yours outright
you own the code, the content and the domain, and can take them anywhere
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95+
Lighthouse performance on every page, not just the homepage
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Under 200 KB
typical page weight, against a global web median of 2.4 MB
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A+ carbon
about 30 g of CO2e per 1,000 views, where the global median page makes 360 g
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WCAG 2.2 AA
the accessibility standard we build to as a matter of course
Why bother
The issue we have with builders, platforms and templates
A template gets bought, a page builder stacks a few blocks on top of it, and the result is three megabytes of someone else’s code with your name at the top. It looks finished. On a phone, on a slow connection, or through a screen reader, it often is not. More recently the same job gets handed to an AI model, published unread, and nobody involved could tell you what the code does.
We build websites the same way we build software: by hand, by developers, tested before it goes anywhere near the public. Whatever the size of the site, it gets the same standards, the same review, and the same quality of checks before release.
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Weight
Three megabytes to say hello
Template themes load fonts, sliders and scripts the site never uses. The visitor on a weak signal pays for it, a good share of them leave before it finishes, and every wasted megabyte is wasted carbon too.
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Privacy
Tracking before anyone agreed
Third-party trackers and ad pixels firing on page load, ahead of consent, break privacy law in most markets. UK fines reach £17.5 million or 4% of worldwide turnover, whichever is higher; the EU matches that at €20 million; California charges up to $7,988 per consumer, per intentional violation. The liability sits with the organisation named on the site, not whoever built it.
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Access
Unusable for some visitors
Fake headings, unlabelled fields and grey-on-grey text lock out anyone using a keyboard, a screen reader or a magnifier. That is discrimination in law: uncapped Equality Act claims in the UK, EU Accessibility Act fines up to €1 million in some member states, and US ADA penalties up to $75,000 for a first violation, with thousands of website suits filed every year.
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Bloat
A platform doing too much
Most agencies build small sites on WordPress: a database, a theme and thirty plugins to serve five pages. Every plugin needs patching forever, which is what the £30-a-month care plan is really paying for.
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Provenance
Code nobody has read
A generated site published unreviewed is not a saving, it is a debt. When it breaks, nobody involved can say why, and the next person tends to start again.
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Ownership
Rented, never owned
Builders and pay-monthly firms keep the site on their platform. The price rises, you swallow it or start again, and if you stop paying the site is gone. Years of rent, nothing to show for it.
Penalty figures: the ICO on UK fines, Article 83 of the GDPR for the EU, and the California Privacy Protection Agency for the US, where fines accrue per affected consumer. Accessibility: EU Accessibility Act fines by member state and US ADA Title III penalties; UK Equality Act claims are civil and uncapped.
What you get
Six things in every build
Not a list of upgrades. This is what a website from us includes before anyone talks about extras.
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A design made for you
Laid out around what you actually do, in your colours, with your own photographs. No bought template, no stock-photo strangers pretending to be your team.
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The words, written for you
Copywriting and page structure included. We talk to you for an hour, draft the site, and you edit what we send back. No blank page to stare at.
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Brand basics if you need them
A simple logo, a colour palette and a type choice that hold together across a site, an invoice and a sign. If you already have a brand, we follow it.
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Hand-built by developers
Written as code, reviewed line by line, and tested before release. No page builder, no bought theme underneath it, and nothing generated and published unread.
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Fast, accessible, and privacy by design and default
Above 95 on performance for every page, under 200 KB where we can manage it, WCAG 2.2 AA, nothing calling home before consent, and around a twelfth of the carbon of a median page. Tested and evidenced in the site report, not claimed.
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Forms that reach a human
Enquiry and contact forms that submit, land in your inbox, resist spam, and tell the sender what happened.
The light build is also the green one
Every megabyte a page sends has to be stored, pushed across a network and rendered, and every step burns electricity. Build at 200 KB instead of the global median and each visit uses around 92% less energy.
At the web's scale that matters. Seventeen trillion page views a year at the median weight cost about 6.3 million tonnes of CO2e. Built right, about half a million. The saving is around 5.8 million tonnes of CO2e a year, which looks like this:
One site
CO2e per 1,000 page views, measured in your site report.
The whole web
CO2e a year. Sustainable Web Design model estimates.
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5.8 million flights
Return, London to New York.
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1.3 million cars
Off the road for a whole year.
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276 million trees
Absorbing carbon for a whole year.
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2.5 billion litres
Of petrol, never put in a tank.
Who it is for
Organisations that need a good site, built right
Fast on a phone, accessible to every visitor, compliant with the rules that apply to you, and written by someone who asked what you do first. The size of the site does not change the standard it is built to.
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Small businesses
A site that explains what you sell and makes it easy to get in touch, without an agency retainer attached.
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Charities and non-profits
Clear on what you do and who you help, accessible to every visitor, with up to 50% off the build price and hosting free.
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Sole traders and professionals
One good page, findable by name, that turns a recommendation into an enquiry.
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Clubs, societies and community groups
Fixtures, events, membership and news, in a place your members can actually read on a phone.
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Schools, parishes and town councils
Public information that has to be reachable by everyone, published where people expect to find it.
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Startups needing a launch site
Something credible in front of the product while the product is still being built, ready to grow later.
The standard
Everything we build clears our hosting bar, because the bar is how we build
We host websites, and we turn away the ones that do not meet a published standard: fast, private, accessible, with nothing left lying around. A site we build has nothing to review and nothing to fix, so it can go live on our infrastructure the day it is ready, and the first year of hosting is included in the build price.
The same checks run on every release, and a release that fails them does not go live. You get the full site report at launch, and again with each hosting renewal, so the standard is a measurement rather than a promise.
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Fast
Above 95 on performance, measured page by page in a real browser.
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Private
Nothing loads, tracks or phones home before the visitor agrees to it.
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Accessible
Real headings, real labels, visible focus, honest contrast. WCAG 2.2 AA, the level UK public sector accessibility rules and the European Accessibility Act are written against.
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Sound
No keys in the source, no admin panel on a guessable path, no template leftovers indexed under your name.
How it works
Four steps, two to four weeks
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Step 1: A conversation
An hour on what you do, who you need to reach and what the site has to achieve. We come back with a fixed price and what is in it.
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Step 2: Words and layout
We draft the copy and the structure, and show you the design as a real page rather than a picture of one. You mark up what is wrong.
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Step 3: Built and tested
Coded by hand, then checked: performance, accessibility, links, forms, metadata. You see it on a private URL before anyone else does.
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Step 4: Live, with the report
We publish to production and send you the full site report. Your domain stays yours: we give you the exact records to set, or sit with you while you set them.
The only thing that reliably slows a website down is content. Send us what you have, however rough, and we will do the writing.
Rent or own
The maths nobody shows you
Wix, Squarespace and GoDaddy rent you the tools: around £20 a month for a business tier, you do the building, and there is no real way to take the finished site anywhere else. GoDaddy's price climbs sharply at the first renewal. Webflow is the same lock-in in nicer clothes: when the subscription rises, you swallow it or start again.
Pay-monthly web firms run the same model with a designer attached: a setup fee, a monthly charge, and a site that lives on their system for as long as you keep paying. It feels cheap in month one. Over ten years it is the most expensive way to own nothing.
| A website builder Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy, Webflow | A pay-monthly web firm Setup fee, then a subscription | Synnova Build once, own it outright | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The deal | About £20 a month, forever | £450 setup, then £45 a month | From £540 once, then £120 a year |
| Who does the work | You do, in your evenings | They do, on their platform | We do, as code you own |
| Cost over 1 year | £240 + your time to build it | £990 | £540 |
| Over 3 years | £720 | £2,070 | £780 |
| Over 5 years | £1,200 | £3,150 | £1,020 |
| Over 10 years | £2,400 | £5,850 | £1,620 |
| If you stop paying | The site is gone | The site is often gone | The site is yours, take it anywhere |
Typical published 2026 prices, excluding sales tax. The builder column does not count your own hours, and you are the designer, writer and maintainer. Ours includes design, copywriting, the build, the site report and the first year of hosting; after that hosting is optional, from £120 a year, and the site works wherever you take it.
Pricing
From £540, quoted before we start
One fixed price for the build, agreed in writing. Every tier includes the first year of hosting, the site report at launch, and the standards above.
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Up to 5 pages
From £540
Fixed price, agreed before we start.
The essentials, done properly. Right for a sole trader, a new venture or a group that needs to exist online.
- 1 to 5 pages
- Copywriting and structure
- Brand basics if you need them
- Enquiry form
- First year of hosting included
- Site report at launch
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Standard site
Most commonFrom £790
Fixed price, agreed before we start.
Up to 15 pages, a news or blog section, and the room to add more later without a rebuild.
- Up to 15 pages
- News or blog section
- Copywriting and structure
- Brand basics if you need them
- Enquiry and contact forms
- First year of hosting included
- Site report at launch
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Bespoke
From £1,500
Scoped and quoted per project.
When the site has to do something: take money, take bookings, hold members, run events, or talk to a system you already use.
- Everything in the standard site
- Any of the extras below
- Integration with systems you already run
- A content system if you need to edit it yourself
- Built to grow, not to be replaced
- First year of hosting included
- Site report at launch
Extras, priced per project
Anything here turns a build into the bespoke tier. Each one is scoped and quoted on its own, so you can see what it costs before you decide you need it.
- Online shop and payments
- Bookings and appointments
- Membership or login area
- Events and ticketing
- Donations
- Newsletter and mailing list
- A CMS for editing pages
- Integrations with your systems
Charities and community groups
Registered charities, CICs, parish and town councils, clubs and volunteer-run groups get up to 50% off the build price, and hosting free. Tell us who you are when you get in touch and it comes off the quote.
After the first year
Hosting renews at the published rate, from £120 a year, and you are free to take the site elsewhere instead. Changes afterwards come through a fixed quote or the retainer, never as a surprise line on a hosting invoice.
Prices exclude any applicable sales tax.
Questions
The things people ask first
Do we own the site when it is finished?
Yes. The code is yours, the content is yours, and the domain stays in your name at your registrar. If you ever want to host it elsewhere, we hand it over rather than hold it.
Can we edit it ourselves?
A small site usually does not need a content system, and every one you add is another thing to keep patched. If you do want to edit pages yourself, we will pick a content system that suits the site, build on it, and price that as an extra. Otherwise small changes come through us on a fixed quote or through the retainer.
Why not use a page builder or a website platform?
Because you inherit their code, their weight and their tracking, and you cannot fix any of it. Hand-built means the site loads what it needs and nothing else, and anything that goes wrong is something we can actually change.
Do you use AI?
We use AI the same way we use a compiler or a linter: to simplify and speed up the work. We do not point it at a blank page and ship whatever comes back. Every line is reviewed, tested and understood by the developer. AI assisted, never AI vibe-coded.
What do you need from us?
An hour of conversation, your logo and photographs if you have them, and whoever signs things available to say yes. We write the copy from that. Content is the only thing that reliably delays a small site.
How long does it take?
Two to four weeks from sign-off for a standard site, less for a single page. Bespoke work depends on what it has to do, and we tell you the timeline with the quote.
What happens after it goes live?
The first year of hosting is included in the build. After that it renews from £120 a year, with the site report repeated at each renewal. Changes come through a fixed quote or the retainer, so development never turns up disguised as a hosting invoice.
How does the charity discount work?
Up to 50% off the build price for registered charities, CICs, parish and town councils, clubs and volunteer-run groups, and hosting free. How far it goes depends on the work and the funding behind it. Mention who you are when you get in touch and it comes off the quote.