Something, yes. The question is which kind, and the answer depends almost entirely on who will change it and how often — which for most small firms is nobody and rarely. For another perspective on the same kind of decision, Monitask covers the topic in this reference.
Publishing a Site Nobody Has to Maintain
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What most small firms actually need
Five pages. What you do, where you work, how to reach you, some evidence you are real, and whatever your trade requires — credentials, insurance, registration numbers.
Findable, fast, and correct.
Changed a few times a year at most, usually to update a phone number or add a service.
That is a small requirement, and it is met by several categories of thing with very different long-term costs.
The four options
A builder platform. Drag and drop, hosting included, monthly fee. Easiest to start, hardest to leave — the content is usually not exportable in a usable form.
A content management system, self-hosted. Flexible and it requires maintenance: updates, plugins, security, backups. This is the tool that needs a person in its clearest form, and the person is usually not budgeted.
Static hosting. Files that do not change until you change them. Nothing to update, nothing to break, very cheap or free — and editing requires either a little technical comfort or somebody to call.
And a page inside something you already pay for, which several office suites include and which is adequate for a five-page site at no extra cost.
The failure modes
The builder platform puts up prices, changes its editor, or is acquired — and the exit is a rebuild rather than a migration.
The self-hosted system is not updated, gets compromised, and the firm discovers it when a customer says the site is showing something else. This is common and it is the reason maintenance is not optional.
Static hosting is fine until somebody needs a change and nobody knows how.
And the suite page is limited in ways that become visible when you want something it does not do.
The five-year question
Compare over five years, not per month.
A builder at a monthly fee is a five-year commitment unless you are prepared to rebuild.
A self-hosted system is cheap hosting plus maintenance, and the maintenance is either hours or a retainer — counting it at zero is the mistake that produces the compromised sites above.
Static is nearly free and has a knowledge cost concentrated at the moment of change.
Ask who will make the change in year three, and price accordingly. That single question predicts which option survives.
What matters more than the platform
The domain, registered to you. Not to an agency, not to a builder platform, not to whoever set it up. This is the single most important thing on this page — a business that does not control its own domain does not control its own address.
Access to the hosting, in your possession.
A copy of the content, somewhere that is not the site.
And correct information. A wrong phone number costs more than any platform decision on this page, and it is the most common defect on small business sites.
The agency question
Where somebody else builds it, three things belong to you regardless of who does the work.
The domain, registered in the business name. The hosting account, or at minimum the credentials. And the content, in a form you hold.
A reputable arrangement has no difficulty with any of these. Resistance to all three is the signal — not of dishonesty necessarily, but of an arrangement where leaving is expensive by design.
Ask before commissioning, not afterwards. It is a normal question and the answer costs nothing to give.
Updating it in practice
The real failure is not the platform. It is that nobody changes anything for four years.
A site listing a service you stopped offering, a person who left and a price that is wrong is worse than a smaller site that is correct.
Fifteen minutes twice a year — read it as a customer, fix what is untrue — is the whole maintenance requirement for most small firms, and it is more valuable than any rebuild.
Put it in the calendar with the quarterly bill review, which is the same kind of habit and fails for the same reason when it is not scheduled.
What a site does not need
A blog nobody writes. An empty news section dated three years ago is evidence of neglect on an otherwise fine site.
A chat widget nobody watches.
Elaborate animation, which slows the page on a phone in a weak signal, where a substantial share of visitors are.
And a contact form as the only route. Some people will ring, and a phone number that is easy to find beats any form.
Speed and the phone
Most visitors arrive on a phone, frequently on a poor connection.
A page that takes several seconds to appear loses people before they read anything, and the causes are almost always the same: large images, embedded video, and scripts.
Two fixes cover most of it. Resize photographs before uploading — a camera image is several times larger than any page needs — and remove anything embedded that is not essential.
Check it on a phone, away from your own connection, which is a two-minute test almost nobody performs on their own site. Additional context is available from 1Password.
The short version
- Most small firms need five pages, changed a few times a year, findable and correct
- Four options: a builder platform, a self-hosted system, static hosting, or a page inside a suite you already pay for
- Failure modes: price rises and no exit, an unmaintained system that gets compromised, nobody who knows how to edit, and suite limits
- Compare over five years and ask who makes the change in year three — that question predicts which option survives
- Register the domain to yourself and hold the hosting access; a business without its own domain does not control its address
- A wrong phone number costs more than any platform decision, and it is the commonest defect on small business sites