What Does a $99 Website Actually Cost You? Everything.
That's not a trick answer. During the current launch window, $99 is the complete setup fee for a real, live website built and launched for your business. Not a deposit. Not a starting price that balloons once you add "required" extras. Just $99 to go from zero to a live site with a real domain, real SSL, and real hosting.
We know that sounds too clean. Most small business owners have been burned before — by a web designer who quoted one number and invoiced another, or by a website builder that lured them in with a free trial and then hit them with a wall of paid tiers. So let's just walk through every single cost, line by line, so there's nothing left to wonder about.
The Setup Fee: $99 During Launch, $249 After
Right now, Hands Free Sites is in its public launch window. During that window, the one-time setup fee is $99. When the launch window closes, that fee goes up to the standard price of $249. We're not going to tell you it ends at midnight tonight — we don't do fake countdown timers. But it is a real, finite window, and once it closes, the $99 price is gone.
That setup fee covers everything involved in building and launching your site: the design, the initial content, connecting your domain, configuring SSL, and getting you live. For most customers, that happens in as little as one business day — not the six-plus weeks you'd wait on a freelance web designer, and not the ten-plus hours of evenings and weekends you'd burn trying to figure out Squarespace or WordPress on your own.
The Monthly Platform Fee: $10 + AWS Hosting at Cost
After your site is live, there's a $10 per month platform fee. That covers ongoing maintenance, security patches, SSL renewals, and everything else involved in keeping your site running reliably. You don't log in to manage any of it. It just works.
You'll notice we write it as $10+/mo. The "+" is your AWS hosting cost, passed through to you at exactly what Amazon Web Services charges — no markup. In practice, that's typically $1 to $3 per month, so most customers pay $11 to $13 per month total.
Why pass it through separately instead of baking it into a flat $13? Transparency. Your hosting cost is your hosting cost. We don't want to pad it, and we don't want you to wonder what you're actually paying for infrastructure. If AWS changes their pricing, your cost reflects that exactly — up or down.
There is no "renewal price triples in year 2." The platform fee is the platform fee. Month two looks like month one. Month twenty-four looks like month one.
Domain Registration: At Cost, If You Need It
If you already own a domain, we'll connect it for free as part of setup. If you need a new domain, we register it for you through Amazon Route 53 and pass the cost through at exactly what Route 53 charges — typically $12 to $14 per year for a standard .com. No inflated "domain management" fees, no holding your domain hostage if you ever want to move it.
That's the full list. Setup fee, monthly platform fee, and domain if you need one. Nothing else.
What "No Hidden Fees" Actually Means in Practice
Let's put it in dollar terms so it's easy to picture. Say you sign up during the launch window, need a new domain, and your AWS hosting comes in at $2/mo:
- Year one: $99 setup + ~$13 domain + (12 × $12/mo) = roughly $256 for the entire first year
- Year two and beyond: (12 × $12/mo) = roughly $144 per year
Compare that to a web designer (typically $2,000–$5,000 upfront, then hosting and maintenance on top), or a DIY builder like Wix or Squarespace (low entry price, but their business plans run $20–$40/mo, and you're still doing all the work yourself). The math is not close.
And if you want to see what a real Hands Free Sites website actually looks like before you commit, the showcase is live right now. There's a handyman site, a bakery site, a gym site, a real estate site, and more — all viewable at handsfreesites.com/showcase.
What's Included That You Might Not Expect
Transparent pricing isn't just about what we charge — it's also about making sure you know what you're getting for that money. A few things worth calling out:
Ongoing Maintenance, Forever
Your $10+/mo isn't just hosting. Hands Free Sites maintains your site indefinitely — SSL certificate renewals, security patches, hosting failover. None of that becomes your problem. The whole point is that a website should be a service you buy, not a project you babysit.
Automatic Weekly Blog Content
Every week, Hands Free Sites automatically publishes fresh blog content relevant to your business. This isn't filler — it's content that helps your site rank on Google, signals to visitors that your business is active and legitimate, and compounds over time into real organic traffic. You don't write a word. You don't approve drafts. It just happens, every week, as part of what you're already paying for.
By mid-2026, Google's search algorithms have made fresh, consistent content more important than ever for local business visibility. The auto-blog feature exists precisely because most small business owners know they should be publishing content — and never do, because there's no time. Now there is, because it's not on you.
A Real Site, Not a Profile Page
If your current "website" is a Facebook page or a Google Business Profile, you know the limitations. You're on someone else's platform, playing by their rules, with no control over what appears next to your name. A real domain, a real SSL certificate, and a real hosted website changes that — and that's what you get, starting day one.
The Short Version
Here's the whole picture in plain language: $99 to get started during the launch window (going up to $249 when it closes), $10+/mo after that (the "+" is AWS hosting at cost, usually $1–3), and domain registration at cost if you need it. No setup fees buried in the fine print, no upsells, no price jumps at renewal. Just a site that goes live fast, runs itself, and keeps working for your business without you having to think about it.
If you've been putting off getting a real website because you weren't sure what it would actually cost — now you know. Take a look at handsfreesites.com and get started while the $99 launch price is still available.
