Questions, answered honestly.

For a small local business, a salon or a café or a trades business, a professional custom website in Bristol typically runs between £499 and £3,000. My Essentials build is £499 when you take a care plan, or £799 outright. Bigger sites with booking systems or online shops go up from there. There's a full breakdown of website pricing on the blog if you want the detail.

A custom-designed site of 3 to 5 pages, built mobile-first, with a contact form, Google Maps, and the on-page SEO groundwork so you can be found locally from day one. No templates and no page builders. The £499 assumes you're taking a care plan alongside it. Outright with no plan it's £799, plus the £20 monthly hosting that every site needs.

No. Every build is available outright at the full price, and plenty of clients go that route. The reduced build price only applies when a plan comes with it. Both are honest options and I'll tell you which one I think fits your business. The one thing you can't skip either way is hosting.

Usually 2 to 4 weeks for a smaller site, from our first proper conversation to going live. Larger builds run 4 to 8 weeks. The biggest thing that slows a project down is waiting on content (photos, copy, logins), so I'll tell you exactly what I need from you at the start.

Yes, completely. You own your domain name from day one, registered in your name, and the site files are yours. If you ever leave, I'll hand everything over and help you move it. I don't think holding a business's website hostage is a reasonable way to keep clients.

Yes, and it's a big part of what I do. I'll look at what's there first and give you a straight answer on whether it's worth rebuilding, or whether a tidy-up would get you most of the way for a fraction of the cost. Sometimes the honest answer is that your existing site is fine and you need SEO instead.

Yes, though it moves you into the Bespoke bracket, from £2,500. An online shop is a genuinely different piece of work to a brochure site: payments, stock, delivery rules, tax, and a lot more ongoing maintenance. Worth a conversation before you commit either way.

Hosting is £20 a month, and yes, it's required on every website I build. That covers UK server space, your SSL certificate and your domain renewal. A website with nowhere reliable to live isn't a finished job, so I don't hand sites over without it.

No. The £20 is already inside every care plan price, so £49 a month means £49 a month. You only ever pay hosting on its own if you bought your site outright and decided against a plan.

Honestly, I'd rather you didn't. When something breaks I need access to fix it, and chasing a third party's support queue turns a ten-minute job into a three-day one. If you've got a genuine reason (an existing company setup, a hosting deal you're locked into), talk to me and we'll work something out.

UK-based server space, an SSL certificate that renews itself, your domain renewal, and me as the person who notices when something's wrong.

Not without plenty of warning. If my own costs move enough to matter I'll tell you well in advance and explain why. I'm not interested in the trick where a cheap headline rate quietly doubles at renewal.

A monthly arrangement where I look after your website so you don't have to. Depending on the plan that covers hosting, your SSL certificate, daily backups, security updates, uptime monitoring, content changes, local SEO, and a monthly report. Plans start at £49 a month, with full detail on the care plans page.

Not always, and I'll say so if I don't think you do. If you have a simple site, you're comfortable with the technical side, and you don't rely on search traffic for enquiries, paying for hosting alone and handling the rest yourself is perfectly sensible. A plan earns its money when the website is genuinely how customers find you.

If you took the reduced build price, there's a 12-month minimum. After that it rolls month to month and you can cancel with 30 days' notice. If you're joining with an existing website, there's no minimum term at all.

You keep it. I'll give you 30 days to arrange hosting elsewhere, hand over all the files and access, and point your domain wherever you want it. There's no exit fee and I won't make it awkward.

Any time, in either direction, with no penalty. Businesses have quiet seasons and busy ones. If you want to sit on Growth through your busy period and drop back to Care over winter, that's completely fine. Just tell me.

Unused time rolls over for one month and then resets. That said, the hours are the smaller part of what you're paying for. The hosting, security patching, backups, monitoring and SEO all carry on whether you send me work or not.

Updating text and prices, swapping photos, changing opening hours, adding a team member, posting a new offer, adding a page. Essentially anything that isn't a redesign or a new feature. If something's going to take longer than your allowance I'll tell you before I start, not after.

Usually, yes. I'll audit it first and tell you honestly what I find. If it's built on something reasonable I'll take it on as it is. If it's held together with string, I'd rather tell you that upfront than quietly charge you every month to maintain something that's going to fail.

No, and I'd be wary of anyone who does. Nobody controls Google's rankings, and a guarantee is either a meaningless promise or a sign someone's about to do something that gets you penalised. What I can do is the work that reliably improves local visibility, then show you the numbers each month so you can judge the results yourself.

For local search in a city like Bristol or Cardiff, expect to see movement in 2 to 3 months and meaningful results by 6 months. Google Business Profile work can show up faster, sometimes within weeks. Anyone promising page one in 30 days is selling you something.

It's the work that gets you showing up when someone nearby searches for what you do, in the map results and the "near me" searches. It's a different discipline to national SEO: your Google Business Profile, consistent business details across the web, reviews, and location-specific pages all matter far more than raw content volume.

If you serve customers in a specific area, it's probably the single highest-value thing you can sort out, and it's free. For a lot of local businesses it drives more enquiries than the website itself. I set it up and manage it as part of the Growth and Partner plans.

Yes. If you're happy with your current site but nobody's finding it, a Growth or Partner plan works perfectly well on its own. I'll audit what you have and tell you where the actual problem is before you spend anything.

Either. Most clients give me the raw information and I turn it into something readable. You know your business, I know how to write it for search. On the Partner plan I write a blog post for you every month as standard.

Portishead, just outside Bristol. I work with businesses across Bristol, Bath, North Somerset and the wider South West, and across the Severn in Cardiff, Newport and South Wales. See the Bristol page or the Cardiff page for how that works in practice.

Not at all. Those are simply where most of my clients are, and where I can turn up in person without it being a whole day out. If you're in Edinburgh, Norwich or Nebraska, get in touch. Design, builds, hosting and SEO all work exactly the same over email and video calls, and plenty of clients I've worked with for years I've never met in person.

Regularly. Cardiff is about 45 minutes from me over the bridge, so I'm happy to come to you for the first meeting and whenever it's genuinely useful after that. Most of the ongoing work happens over email and video calls, which suits most clients better than sitting in traffic.

Me. GoBurley is one person. I design it, I build it, I maintain it, and I'm the one who answers when you email. That's the main advantage of working with a freelancer over an agency, and it's the reason I've kept it that way.

Only if you want to. I'm glad to come out to you around Bristol, Bath, North Somerset and Cardiff, and for a first conversation it's often worth it. But plenty of clients I've worked with for years I've only ever spoken to on a call. Whatever fits how you like to work.

Care plan clients get a response within 2 working days, Growth by the next working day, and Partner the same day. If your site is actually down, that jumps the queue regardless of which plan you're on. I'm not going to leave a business offline because they're on the entry tier.

Builds are 50% to start and 50% on going live. Hosting and care plans are monthly by standing order or direct debit, invoiced on the same date each month. There's no setup fee, and I'll never move your price without telling you well in advance.

Yes. Slow laptops, Wi-Fi that keeps dropping, virus removal, new device setup, home networking, all still very much on offer around Portishead, Bristol and North Somerset. Have a look at the services page for the full list.

I do, with builds from £39.99 and parts sourced separately. Advice is free, whether you end up buying through me or not. Tell me your budget and what you want to do with it, and I'll tell you what to get.

Not for a conversation. If you want to talk through a problem and work out whether it's worth fixing, that costs nothing. I'll quote you honestly before any actual work starts.