How Your Free Preview Works: Homepage Now, Full Site After Checkout
4 min read
The short version
When you submit your business details, we build your homepage first — that's what you see in the preview. Your other selected pages (about, services, contact, etc.) get built and deployed automatically within minutes of checkout, using the same design language so they all match.
This means:
- Free preview = your homepage only. Click around in the iframe and the nav links may 404 — that's because those pages don't exist yet (intentionally).
- After checkout = your full site. Same design, same nav, same fonts and colors, built out across every page you picked on the submit form.
Why we don't build the whole site for the free preview
Two reasons, both honest:
1. Real money in AI compute. Generating each page costs us a few dollars in AI charges. If we built your 7-page site as a free preview and you decided you didn't like it (totally fair — that's why we offer a preview), we just burned ~$20 for nothing. Multiply that by everyone who clicks "Get a Free Preview" and the math stops working.
2. The homepage is the gut-check. Your homepage is where 90% of the design decisions live — color palette, typography, layout style, image treatment, hero approach. If you like the homepage design, the other pages will feel the same. If you don't, no other page is going to save it.
So we show you the homepage as a no-credit-card gut-check, and only build the rest once you've decided.
What we built it from
Since Hands Free Sites builds you a brand-new site (not redesigning an existing one), the preview is generated entirely from what you gave us on the submit form:
- Business name and description — drive the headline, the hero copy, and the "about" section
- Site type (storefront, service business, local business, portfolio, etc.) — drives the page structure and which sections appear
- Services and differentiators — populate the "what we do" and "why choose us" sections
- Design preferences (vibe, color hints, primary action) — drive the visual feel and the main call-to-action
- Photos (if you uploaded any) — used as the hero image and section backgrounds
What happens after you check out
The second your payment clears:
- The other pages you selected get queued for generation. Your selected pages were captured at submit time — usually 3-8 pages depending on what you picked.
- Each page uses your homepage as a design template. Same fonts, same colors, same header, same nav. They look like a coherent site, not 7 random designs glued together.
- Generation runs in the background. Usually 5-10 minutes for a typical small-business site.
- You get an email when everything's live. Your dashboard shows each page as it lands.
"But the nav links are broken in my preview!"
Yes — by design. The homepage preview includes the nav structure (so you can see the overall site shape) but the destinations don't exist yet. After checkout, those exact same nav links resolve to real pages.
"The preview doesn't quite look like what I had in mind."
That's expected on a first draft, especially if the description you gave us was short. Two free options:
- Reply to the preview-ready email. During our launch we offer free, hands-on design help — tell us what to change and we'll redo it for you.
- After checkout, use your AI prompts. Every site comes with 5 free AI prompts you can use to rewrite copy, swap colors, change images, or restructure sections. Just describe what you want.
"Can I see another page in the preview before paying?"
Not currently. Your best move is to click around your homepage preview to evaluate the design quality, then decide based on that. If you launch and genuinely hate the result, your free prompts (and our free launch design help) cover the fix.
Related help
- AI Prompting Examples — how to use your AI prompts to refine the design after checkout
- Domain Name Registration — register a domain or bring one you own
- Adding a New Page — after you launch, add brand-new pages by asking the AI