Own your website: why we move small business sites to plain HTML

Most small business websites are rented. You pay for a WordPress theme and a stack of plugins, or a Wix plan, and when something needs to change you send it to someone and wait. Every edit is a ticket, and every ticket has a bill.

That used to be a small annoyance. It isn’t anymore.

Your website has to move faster now

More of your customers find you through AI: they ask ChatGPT, Claude or Google’s AI for a recommendation and act on the answer. Getting into those answers (AEO) is now as important as search rankings (SEO), and both reward sites that stay clear, current and specific.

If you use AI for market research, it will keep handing you good ideas: sharpen this message, add a page for that service, answer the questions your customers are asking. Those ideas are only worth something if you act on them this week, not after a quote and a two-week wait.

“If every change has to go through someone else, most of the good changes never get made.”

Plain HTML plus Claude: edit it yourself

A plain HTML site is just a folder of web pages. No database, no plugins, no page builder. That makes it the easiest kind of site for AI to work on. You open a page with Claude, point at what you want changed, describe it in plain English, and see the change. Update your headline, add a FAQ, rewrite a service page around what your research found. It takes minutes, and you don’t need to know code.

The person you used to pay to make changes, and the monthly cost of managing the site, drop out of the picture. What’s left is your domain name and, for most small business sites, a free hosting plan.

Step one is an assessment

Not every site should move, so we start by looking at yours. Most business sites are brochure sites: pages, pictures, a contact form. Those convert cleanly. Then we look for the parts that need more than plain pages: forms, booking, a store, member logins, embedded tools.

Where there’s a gap, we fill it with the smallest thing that works, usually a little JavaScript or a simple hosted service. The goal is to stay as close to pure HTML as possible, because every extra moving part is something to maintain. If your site isn’t a good fit, we tell you up front.

Hosted on Cloudflare

Your new site goes on Cloudflare, a favorite of modern web teams. Cloudflare runs one of the largest networks on the internet, so your pages are served from close to wherever your visitor is, with security built in. Its free plan for static sites covers what most small businesses need.

Your files live in your own GitHub account. Every change is saved, so you can always see what changed and roll it back. If you ever want to move hosts, you take the folder and go.

What you end up with

• Your site in your GitHub account, every file yours
• Set up for visual editing with Claude
• Live on Cloudflare at a preview address, so you can check every page
• Simple steps to point your domain at it when you’re ready
• Monthly website costs close to zero

“Stop renting your website. Own it, and change it whenever you want.”