I'm James Pickard, and I build websites from Bridge Street in Bungay. I also run the Green Dragon at the other end of town — a CAMRA award-winning pub and brewery — so I've a fair idea what a Suffolk small business can afford to spend on a website, and it isn't four figures for a brochure.
A starter site is £250 one-off, then £39 a year. Up to five pages, an editor you can work yourself, hosting and SSL for the first year, and the search-engine setup done properly so people looking for you in Beccles or Bury actually find you.
These are all down the road from me:
You'll be dealing with the person who writes the code. There's nobody else to hand you on to.
Home, about, what you do, contact — the shape your business actually needs. Most of your visitors will arrive on a phone, so that's what it's designed for first.
Change opening hours, prices, photos and text from any browser. Handy when the kitchen's off on a Tuesday and you need the site to say so by lunchtime.
Static hosting that loads instantly, the padlock in the address bar from launch, and your domain wired up. Nothing for you to install or update.
A contact or sign-up form with a consent tickbox and a short privacy notice, feeding a list you can view and export. Good for around 100 sign-ups a month.
Titles, descriptions, sitemap and local business structured data, so you show up for people searching your trade plus your town.
£39 a year covers hosting, the SSL certificate, the editor and security updates. Cancel whenever you like and the content is still yours.
James was a pleasure to work with — patient, knowledgeable, and incredibly efficient. He used his AI expertise to help generate high-quality website copy and demonstrated strong capability across a wide range of IT and tech areas, tackling every challenge with ease. His software development skills are exceptional; he even built a feature that allows me to edit my website remotely from anywhere. I'd highly recommend him to anyone looking for reliable and forward-thinking tech support.
Bungay, Beccles, Halesworth, Southwold, Framlingham, Woodbridge, Saxmundham, Stowmarket, Lowestoft, Ipswich and Bury St Edmunds — I'll come and sit in your shop, pub, workshop or office and work out what the site actually has to do before I quote a penny.
The £250 is a starter site, and it's honest about its limits. If you want to sell online, take bookings, give customers logins, run a site with dozens of pages, or plug the website into a till or accounts system, that's a bigger piece of work — I do all of it, it's just quoted separately. My software development in Suffolk page covers that side, and the case studies show the range.
Website analytics, ongoing SEO work and paid advertising aren't in the £250 either, and nor is logo and brand design. I build to the brand you already have; if you haven't got one, I'll point you at someone local who does that properly.
How much does a website cost in Suffolk? A starter website is £250 one-off, then £39 a year from year two. That covers up to five pages, an editor you use yourself, hosting, SSL, domain wiring, an SEO pass and submission to Google and Bing. Domain registration is separate, at about £10 to £15 a year direct to a registrar and in your own name, and you can cancel the yearly renewal whenever you like.
Where in Suffolk do you work? I'm based in Bungay and work across the county — Beccles, Halesworth, Southwold, Framlingham, Woodbridge, Saxmundham, Stowmarket, Lowestoft, Ipswich and Bury St Edmunds. I'm happy to come to you rather than do everything over video.
Can you take over my existing WordPress site? Usually, yes. Send me the login and I'll give you an honest view on whether it's worth maintaining as it is or rebuilding as a static site, which is normally cheaper to run and has no WordPress plugins to keep patched.
How quickly can my Suffolk business be online? Typically one to two weeks from the point I have your photos, words and domain access. The build itself is rarely the slow part.
Prefer email? hello@cloudship.co.uk.
Fifteen minutes on the phone, no charge, no sales pitch. Tell me what the business does and I'll tell you straight whether £250 does the job.