Beautiful website design and hosting
Are you ready for a new website?
Ashcafe is a web design agency for independent and small business owners. We design, code, and host websites — and if yours has gone stale with nobody left to call about it, talk to us.
No cost for the call. No pitch. Bring your website and we'll look at it together.
Sound familiar?
You're not the only one in this spot.
Nearly every client comes to us saying some version of one of these.
The person who used to handle my website disappeared, and I have no idea who to call.
It still lists services I stopped offering years ago.
I built it myself a long time ago and I can't remember how to get back in.
Honestly? I'd rather people didn't find my website at all right now.
I'm paying someone every month and I'm not sure what for.
It looks fine on my computer but it's a mess on my phone.
None of this is unusual, and none of it is your fault. Websites need somebody looking after them, and at some point yours stopped having one.
Double tall skinny half-decaf design
Four ways we can help.
Build you a new one
A site written and designed from scratch around what you actually sell today — not what you sold in 2009. Fast, readable on a phone, and easy for people to contact you from.
Redesign what you have
Keep what's working, fix what isn't. We bring your existing content across, cut what's out of date, and give the whole thing a look that matches the business you run now.
Get you off an old platform
Yahoo, AOL, Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, GoDaddy's site builder — we don't work inside any of them. We build you a new site in our own code and point your web address at it, and the monthly bill you've been paying out of habit stops.
Sort out domains and email
Nobody knows who owns the domain. Email is going to spam. A renewal notice arrived from a company you don't recognise. We untangle it and put you back in control of your own name.
Being straight with you
And what we don't do.
We write every site ourselves, in our own code — no Squarespace, no Wix, no page builder. So we don't work inside platforms we didn't build, and we don't take over vibe-coded websites.
If your site is on Wix, Squarespace, Yahoo, or something long retired, you're still exactly who we work with. We just replace what you've got instead of trying to keep it alive.
And it's yours
Because it's our own code rather than a platform's private format, you own it outright. Ask for a copy any time — no exit fee. You can even host it yourself, and we'll walk you through the steps.
Most people decide they'd rather we kept handling it. That's the cheaper, faster option — but it's your call, and it stays your call.
Our work
Sites we've built and still look after.
Wellness practices, working artists, founder communities, off-road trail maps. Different businesses, same job: make it clear, make it current, keep it running.
Elizabeth Greenfield Functional Wellness
Stuck on Squarespace with content she couldn't update and services nobody could find. Now she runs the site herself — and it's bringing in bookings.
João de Brito, painter
Squarespace was raising his renewal for services he didn't use, and he couldn't get in to update his own gallery. He kept the design he liked and left anyway.
Inspiring Founders
A community site that had to sell a serious annual commitment — and screen out the wrong applicants before they applied.
4x4maps
A product site for an off-road trail platform — 8,400+ trails, a map at the centre, and an audience that shops on a phone with one bar of signal.
How it works
Tell us your problems and let us fix them.
Talk for half an hour
You show us the site. We ask what your business does now and what you want people to do when they land there. You don't need to prepare anything or find any passwords first.
Figure out you what it needs
Straight answer on whether this is a repair, a redesign, or a fresh start — plus what it would cost and how long it would take. If you're better off leaving it alone, we'll tell you that instead.
Build it and keep it running
We handle the domain, the hosting, the move, and the email. When something needs changing later, you get in touch and it gets changed. That's the part you've been missing.
Who we are
A small agency, built around clients like you.
We work with independent operators and small business owners — trades, practices, studios, shops, consultancies. Not enterprises with a marketing department. That focus is the whole point: your problems aren't unusual to us, because they're the only kind we deal with.
Small enough that you're not passed around a queue, and set up so nothing important lives in one person's head. Your domain, your hosting, your access, and how it all fits together is written down and in your name — which means you're never one missing phone number away from being stuck again.
Between us we've spent 25+ years building websites and software. But the reason clients stay isn't the résumé — it's that when something breaks, we pick up.
What you can expect
- A reply the same working day, from a real person.
- Plain English — no jargon, no acronyms, no talking down to you.
- You own your domain and your content. Always. In your name.
- Everything documented and handed over, so you're never locked in or left guessing.
- No long contracts.
- An honest answer, including when the answer is "don't bother".
Questions people ask first
Before you book a call.
Do I have to move my website somewhere new?
Usually yes, and that's a good thing. Most of the sites we're called about are stuck on a platform that's expensive, hard to edit, or no longer supported. We rebuild the site, move it somewhere fast and inexpensive to run, and handle the switchover so visitors never see a gap. Your web address stays exactly the same.
What happens if Ashcafe isn't around one day?
A fair question, and probably close to the reason you're on this page. The honest answer isn't a promise — it's how we set things up. Your domain and your hosting are registered in your name, not ours. Your content and your site files are yours. How it all fits together gets written down and handed to you, not kept in somebody's head. So if you ever need to take it elsewhere, you can, without asking permission and without starting over. That is deliberately the opposite of how you got stuck last time.
What if I don't know who has my domain name or my passwords?
That's the most common call we get, and it's fixable. We can look up who controls your domain and walk you through getting access back — even if the person who set it up years ago is long gone. You don't need to figure any of it out before we talk.
My site is on Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, or GoDaddy. Can you help?
Yes — that describes most of our clients. One important distinction though: we won't work inside those platforms. We don't log into your Squarespace account to patch a page. What we do is build you a new site in our own code, bring your text and images across, and point your existing web address at it, so visitors notice nothing but the improvement.
Is there anything you don't take on?
Yes, and we'd rather say so early. We only build and host sites we've coded ourselves, so we don't build on Squarespace, Wix, or Shopify, we don't work inside a platform we didn't build, and we don't take over vibe-coded sites — the kind built by prompting an AI tool. Sites on retired platforms like Yahoo or AOL get replaced rather than revived. In every one of those cases we'll happily build you the real thing instead — the How We Build page lays it all out.
Will my email keep working?
Yes — and this is the part most people are rightly nervous about. Email and websites are separate systems that happen to share your domain name. We plan the move around your email so it keeps working throughout, and if your email is already broken or going to spam, that's something we fix too.
What does it cost?
It depends entirely on the shape your site is in — a tidy-up and a rebuild from scratch are very different jobs. Rather than guess at a number, we look at your site together on a 30-minute call and then quote the actual work. The call is free and there's no obligation.
How long does it take?
Most redesigns take a few weeks from the point we have your content. Moving an existing site off an old platform is often faster. Urgent problems — a site that's down, email that's stopped working, a domain about to expire — get dealt with straight away.
No cost, no pitch
Let's have a look at your website together.
Thirty minutes on a call. Tell us what's wrong with it, and we'll tell you straight what it would take to fix — whether that's a small repair or starting over. If it's not a fit, we'll say so.