Websites for South African small businesses
A real person builds
your website.
AI just makes me fast.
I use AI the way a carpenter uses power tools: it speeds up the work, it does not do the work. Every site is designed, built, tested and signed off by me, and I am the one who answers the phone afterwards.
From R5,500. No call needed to see a price. No “what’s your budget?” before I tell you mine.
The AI question, answered properly
Where the machine stops
and I start
You have probably been offered an “AI-generated website” before. They all look the same, half the buttons go nowhere, and there is nobody to phone when it falls over. That is not because AI is useless. It is because nobody was driving. I am driving.
What the AI does
The boring, repetitive, fast parts.
- Types out the repetitive code so I do not have to
- Throws up rough layout options for me to react to and mostly reject
- Drafts first-pass wording that I then rewrite in your voice
- Handles the tedium: image sizing, alt text, boilerplate, browser quirks
Net effect: roughly three weeks of work compressed into about one. That saving is why the price is what it is.
What I do
Everything that decides whether it works.
- Sit with you and work out what the site is actually for
- Make every design decision: layout, colour, hierarchy, what to cut
- Read every line of code that ships, because AI gets things confidently wrong
- Test it on real phones, on real signal, the way your customers will use it
- Answer the phone in six months when something needs changing
If your site is wrong, that is my fault and my problem, not a model’s. That accountability is the whole product.
How it works
Four steps. No mystery.
The whole process, start to finish. You will know the price before we have even spoken.
- 01Immediate
Price it yourself, in two minutes
Answer nine questions about what you need. The total updates as you go. No waiting for a call back, no being asked for your budget first. A PDF lands in your inbox straight away.
- 02Within a day or two
We talk for 30 minutes
A Teams call. I ask what your business actually does, who buys from you and what has to happen on the site for it to have been worth it. You get a fixed quote after this, and the full plan in writing (see below). No more estimating.
- 03Most sites: 5–10 working days
I build it, and you watch
You get a private preview link on day one and it fills in as I work. You comment, I fix. No four-week silence followed by a big reveal you have to pretend to like.
- 04Yours, permanently
It goes live and it is yours
I point the domain, check it on real phones, submit it to Google and hand over every login. Walk away whenever you like. Nothing is held hostage.
Before you decide
Six documents before you say yes
After our call, and before you decide to go ahead, you get the whole plan in writing. Written by me, for your business, not filled in from a template. You see exactly what you are buying before you pay for any of it.
- 01 of 06
Product Requirements Document
What the site has to do, in plain English. Who it is for, every page, every feature, and what success looks like. If it is not in here, it is not in the price.
- 02 of 06
Technical Requirements Document
How it will be built. Where it is hosted, the tools underneath, the speed and security it has to meet, and anything it needs to connect to. Another developer could pick it up and follow it.
- 03 of 06
App Flow
Every route a visitor can take, drawn out step by step. From finding you on Google to sending an enquiry, making a booking or paying, so nothing is left to guesswork.
- 04 of 06
Design Brief
How it will look and feel. Colours, fonts, the tone of the words and examples of the style, agreed with you before a single page is designed.
- 05 of 06
Backend Schema
What information the site keeps and where. Enquiries, bookings, products or customers, and who is allowed to see each one. Your data is mapped out before any of it exists.
- 06 of 06
Implementation Plan
The build broken into steps, with dates. What I do first, what I need from you and by when, and when each piece appears on your preview link.
Nothing gets built until you have read them and said yes. If something in them is wrong, we change the document, not the invoice. And once the build starts, they are the yardstick: the site either does what the documents say, or I fix it.
The obvious question
“Why is this
so much cheaper?”
Because you are not paying for the parts of an agency that never touch your website. Here is where a typical R60,000 quote actually goes.
Cheaper does not mean worse here. It means fewer people taking a cut and a shorter calendar. The site you get is the same standard I would ship to a client paying five times more, because it is the only standard I know how to work to.
- Account manager
- Project manager
- Designer who never meets you
- Developerthat’s me
- Separate QA tester
- Office in Sandton
- Agency margin
One person, using the fastest tools available, with no overhead to recover. That is the entire trick.
Included as standard
Not an upsell list
Every one of these is in the base price, on every site, at every size. Other people charge extra for most of them.
Fast, properly
Sub-second loads and green Core Web Vitals. Google ranks slow sites lower and people leave them faster.
Phone first
Most of your visitors are on a phone on bad signal. That is the version I design first, not the one I squash down at the end.
Found on Google
Titles, descriptions, sitemap, structured data and Search Console set up and submitted. Not an add-on.
Forms that arrive
Enquiries land in your inbox and are stored, so a mail glitch never quietly costs you a customer.
Accessible
Real contrast, keyboard navigation, labelled fields. It is the law's direction of travel and it is just better.
Handed over clean
The domain, the code, the analytics and every login, in your name. Where the site is hosted is a decision we make together, and it is written down.
Pricing
Published, not negotiated
The full rate card is on the website, because hiding prices wastes everybody’s time. Work out your own number before you speak to me. The estimator uses exactly the same figures.
A small business site starts at
R5,500
Four to five pages, live in about a week. Everything else is an addition you can see and price yourself.
Estimates land within 20% of the final quote. After our call the quote is fixed and the risk is mine.
Fair questions
Things people ask before they trust me
So is my website written by AI or not?
The code is written faster because I use AI, in the same way an accountant uses a spreadsheet instead of a ledger book. But nothing reaches you that I have not designed, read, tested and taken responsibility for. AI cannot sit on a call and work out that your real problem is that nobody can find your prices. That part is me.
Why are you so much cheaper than an agency?
An agency quote pays for an account manager, a project manager, a designer, a developer, a tester and an office. You are paying for one of those things: the person who actually builds it. AI closes the gap in throughput, and I have no office in Sandton to fund.
How can you promise the final quote is within 20% of the estimate?
Because the estimator asks the questions that actually move the price: how many pages, whether you sell, what has to connect to what, and who owns the domain. After the 30-minute call I give you a fixed quote. If the work turns out bigger than that, the difference is mine to absorb, not yours to pay.
What if I do not know what I want yet?
Most people do not, and that is fine. Pick your best guess in the estimator. The number moves as you change your mind, and nothing you choose is binding. The call is where it gets sorted out.
Who owns it when it is finished?
You do. The domain is registered in your name, the code is yours, the accounts are yours. There is no version of this where leaving me costs you your website.
Do I have to pay you monthly?
No. There is an optional care plan if you want me keeping an eye on it, but the site works fine without it and you can cancel it any time without losing anything.
What if something breaks at 7pm on a Friday?
You message me and I fix it. That is the entire escalation process. It is one of the genuine advantages of hiring a person rather than a queue.
Find out what it costs
before you talk to anyone.
Nine questions. Two minutes. A PDF estimate in your inbox immediately, and a real conversation only if you want one.
Would rather just write to me? hello@builtbyarealperson.com