Websites for small NZ organisations and businesses
One email opens your design room. Tell your story there, and a real, working website can be back the same day, hosted while you shape it with us, free, for a week. Keep it for a flat $800 and you own it outright. Your website, freehold.
No forms, no calls, no account. One email opens your room, and no is always fine.
Certificate of Title
Held Freehold
This website is held freehold by
you
Ask for a design room, tell your story there, and we build it free. You shape it with us over a week, keep it for a flat $800, and it is yours.
How it works → Going FreeholdEmail us the address. We rebuild it free and show you, before you decide anything. If you want it, we guide you through going live, one step at a time.
Going Freehold →You never have to log into anything or learn a tool. One email opens your room, your story goes in, a real website comes back. The only decision that costs you anything is the last one.
Email us a line or two about who you are, and we reply with a private link to your own room. No forms, no account, no password.
The room is a quiet chat with the studio. It asks about what you do, one question at a time, and there is a shelf for your photos and documents. Take it at your own pace.
Your first version can be back the same day your room is ready, and never more than a few days. A real, multi-page website at a private link. Not a mock-up, the actual site, live and hosted.
Ask for changes in your room or by email, as many as you like. We rebuild and send the same link back, and we say what changed and why. Genuinely free, the whole week.
Keep it for a flat $800 and it goes live in your name. Or walk away and it comes down the same day, no charge, no hard feelings.
There is no house template and no set of options to pick from. These three are fictional organisations we invented to show how differently a Freehold site can turn out. Yours is designed from scratch, from your world, your words and your photos, and could be nothing like any of them.
A community workshop that feels like a painted shed sign. Timber, denim and tea.
See the showcase → Quiet and archivalA heritage society set like the archive itself. Catalogue cards, ink and linen.
See the showcase → Bold and movingA paddling club with the energy of the river. Big headlines, one current line.
See the showcase →The building is genuinely free. You only pay if you decide to keep the finished site, and the price follows one published rule, the same for everyone. It is a flat $800, and $400 at our community rate if it is just you: sole traders, one-person businesses, and volunteer-run groups where nobody is paid. After that, the running cost is nothing. A comparable custom build from a New Zealand agency runs about $3,500 to $8,500, and most add a monthly fee on top; ours is paid once, then nothing.
There is no deposit, no subscription, and no lock-in. You pay once, you own it outright, and you can walk away with everything any day.
Same finished website. A very different deal underneath it.
Also included with your site
We set up and style your own Cal.com or Calendly, on your own free account.
Your own Givealittle or Stripe link, in your name. We never touch the money.
Your own sender, your own list. We design each issue and you press send.
Built to be found on Google, in the directories that matter for your work, and by the AI assistants people now ask instead of searching. At handoff you get a plain checklist for the few parts only you can do.
Every one of these is included in the flat price, at either rate, set up on your own account in your own name, and only if you want it. Nothing monthly, ever.
Every site we build can carry an assistant trained on your own words. Not a pop-up chatbot pointing at a help desk, but part of the site itself, built from what you have published and speaking in your voice. There is one in the corner of this page right now, answering from everything we have written about Freehold.
Opening hours, prices, what to bring, how to get help. It answers from your own pages and points people to the right one, at 2am on a Sunday when nobody is at the desk.
For the things people always need walked through, joining, booking, applying, it can take a visitor through step by step, one question at a time, never a wall of instructions.
It only answers from what you have published. When something is not there, it says so plainly and hands the visitor to your email instead of guessing.
Your assistant runs live during your free build window, trained on your real content, so you can ask it your own hard questions before you keep anything.
What does it cost to keep the website running?
Nothing. The site is owned outright, so there is no monthly fee, no subscription, and nothing to renew. If you would like the full detail, it is on the pricing page, or you can email the team any time.
Answering from the site's own pages, in its own voice.
Assistants like this are usually sold as their own product, billed monthly or by the message. Yours is part of the deed: included in the flat price at either rate, nothing metered, and only if you want it.
Freehold is not a website builder, and it is the opposite of one.
The do-it-yourself tools sell you a login and a monthly bill, from about $19 to $49 a month for as long as you want the site online, then leave the work to you. We sell you freedom from managing a website at all.
There is nothing to keep updated, nothing to break, and no monthly dashboard to log into and do the work yourself. When you want a change, you just say so, and we make it.
Your design room builds it; a plain email keeps it current for good. Your words in, a finished change out.
Owned outright, in your name, free to take anywhere. You get the ease of someone else running it, without giving up a thing.
Every site we build comes with a private management room: the easiest way to send us a change. It is your inbox, made even easier. Drop in a photo or a document, say what you want in your own words, and it is queued for the studio. There is nothing to learn, and it is never a dashboard.
Tell it what to change in plain words, or drop in a photo, a PDF, or a document. No sizing, no fiddling, just hand it over.
Your room opens from a private link we email you. No password to remember, no account to set up, and no one else can reach it.
Nothing to keep updated, nothing to break. The studio still makes and checks every change before it goes live, usually within a couple of days.
The room is just an easier option, never a requirement. If you would rather send your changes by email, you always can.
Add Meg to the team page, she is our new coordinator.📎 meg.jpg
Got it. Meg is in your queue, noted for your next update. The studio makes the change and checks it, and you will get a note when it is live.
A real change, made and checked by the studio. Nothing goes live on your site until it has been.
Plenty of small organisations and businesses do great work behind a website that undersells them. Good design costs thousands, so the ones with the least to spend end up looking like they matter least.
That is the gap Freehold exists to close.
One email opens it. Tell us who you are in a line or two, and your private room link comes back by reply. No forms to fill in, no call to book, and saying no later is always fine.
Had an email from us about your existing site? Everything here is what that offer becomes.