Charity Web Design experts
Charity Web Design
We specialise in creating custom WordPress websites for charities.
We’re a virtual digital agency/collective that’s run by ex-charity staff. It’s a modern way of working which means we don’t have an office or overheads to pay for.
Find out more about what makes us different as a charity digital agency.
We don’t charge VAT for any of our website builds.
Flexible, Future-proof, Open source
We build our sites using WordPress - the world's most popular open-source Content Management System.
They'll grow as your charity does, whilst remaining secure, mobile friendly and accessible.
Custom designs, flawless functionality
We design all our sites from scratch but each one is built on the foundation of years' of experience in creating donation forms, fundraising events, jobs, blogs and everything else a charity site needs.
Flexible, Future-proof, Open source
We build our sites using WordPress - the world's most popular open-source Content Management System.
They'll grow as your charity does, whilst remaining secure, mobile friendly and accessible.
Not your typical agency
We've sat in your shoes and been the clients of digital agencies in the past. That's why we do things differently.
We prefer to build an honest and proactive can-do relationship with our clients rather than fixate on what's inside or outside the 'spec' of the project.
Our sites
- Secure, fast WordPress 'responsive design' websites that look great on screens of all sizes.
- Easy for you and your staff to update, with different permission levels as required.
- Flexible design and functionality that can grow as your charity does.
- Latest news, jobs, events and donation pages built-in so you can switch them on when you need them.
- We can provide ongoing maintenance and support, or you can Do It Yourself or hand it over to another agency.
FAQs
We specialise in building custom WordPress sites. WordPress is the most popular Content Management System (CMS) on the planet - powering nearly a quarter of the sites on the internet.
WordPress is an ‘open-source’ CMS, which means that it is free to download and do what you want with. There’s no license fee, and you’re not tied in to a proprietary system that can’t grow as your needs do.
Keeping your site safe from malware and spam-bots is critical as a hacked site can cost you time and money to repair, and can damage your reputation. Most of the big CMS systems are a target for automated ‘bots’ (programs that automatically scan the internet looking for unsecure websites that they try to compromise) and WordPress is no different. It’s not something that should cause you sleepless nights though.
If a website is set up with the right security measures in place, and is regularly updated with the latest software versions, then there’s little to worry about. It’s generally the WordPress sites set up by amateurs, or that don’t use well-written Plugins, that are most vulnerable.
We’ve never had a problem with any of our sites being infected, but it’s something we’re constantly vigilant against. See our blog post for some ways to keep your WordPress site safe.
That’s a bit of a misnomer. The actual look and design of the site is (or at least should be) completely separate from the CMS that powers it. So you could make an identical looking site in many CMSs (though in our experience it’s faster and easier to make it in WordPress). Just because you like the look of a particular site, doesn’t mean that you should be drawn into using the CMS it was built on.
That’s always a tough one to answer. It’s a bit like asking how much a house costs - the answer is always ‘it depends’. So without knowing your exact needs and the required functionality of the website it’s impossible to give an estimate.
Because we like to work in-depth with our clients, our website projects start from £6,000. Most are in the range of £7,000 to £15,000.
We’re very happy to do so, and it’s a service that some of our clients use. It might be something fairly simple like making sure that the website and all its Plugins are kept up-to-date (this is the number one way to help keep your site secure) and keeping regular off-site backups. This generally costs around £100 per quarter.
We also provide ad-hoc website support and development to clients who want to tweak the design of their site or add in some new functionality.
And some clients just want a new website built, and that’s that. They may be happy to do all the software updates themselves (it’s actually pretty straightforward to do) or they may decide to use another agency in the future.
The beauty of WordPress is that there are thousands of people out there who could understand the nuts and bolts of the sites we build, and seamlessly take over the administration of them. So you’re not tied in to us for any longer than you want to be.
That’s why we strive to provide an honest, cost-effective and friendly service that will keep clients coming back to us, and recommending us to other people.
As a general rule, we find that the service we provide isn’t the best solution for clients restricted to a tiny budget.
If you’re just getting started and you need a basic presence on the internet, then a custom designed WordPress site probably isn’t quite up your street yet. We’d recommend setting up a wordpress.com site to begin with, or maybe something you can customise from SquareSpace, Wix or madewithjam. They all have their limitations, but they’re a decent first rung on the ladder.
Most of the clients we work with have a website already but they are frustrated with its design or functionality and they want to move it to the next step.
Yes. Although we specialise in WordPress sites, we acknowledge that they can sometimes be akin to a hammer cracking a small nut.
We’ve built non-CMS websites for Christmas and fundraising campaigns. Because they have a short shelf-life and don’t need the capacity to have extra functionality in the future, they’re easier and cheaper to build without a full-blown CMS like WordPress.
Get in touch and we can tell you more.
We aren’t providers or ‘resellers’ of web hosting packages, so we’ve no vested interest in one company or service over another. We’ve found that the web hosting packages provided by companies like 123-reg, GoDaddy, 1and1 can have problems in running WordPress sites smoothly.
For what it’s worth, we tend to recommend a company called SiteGround for economical but good quality WordPress hosting. We use them ourselves (for this site for example) and have always found their customer support to be good.