What we are
websitesfor500.com builds websites for small businesses around the Chicago area. We're new. We don't have a decade of client logos, an office, or account managers, and pretending otherwise would be a strange way to start a relationship built on trusting us with your front door.
Why we build before we ask
Every new web shop has the same problem: you need a portfolio to get work, and you need work to get a portfolio. The usual answer is to make up fake projects for fake companies and hope nobody looks closely.
We'd rather the portfolio be useful to somebody. So each week we pick a handful of local businesses whose websites are visibly holding them back — slow, hard to use on a phone, or just old — and we rebuild one properly at our own expense. Then we call and offer to show them.
There is no catch in that sentence. The site is already built before we contact you. Looking at it costs nothing, there's nothing to sign up for, and if you say no we say thank you and go.
If you like it, it's $500 and it's yours. That price is genuinely the same for everybody, and it's on the pricing page along with every other number we charge.
What we're not
We're not a marketing agency. We don't run your ads, we don't do brand strategy, and we're not going to promise you a position on Google. If that's what you need, we'll tell you we're the wrong shop rather than take the money and try.
What we do is build a clear, fast website that makes it easy to call you, and then keep it accurate for as long as you want us around.
The part we actually care about
Most small-business sites don't die at launch. They die slowly, eighteen months later, when the hours are wrong and the promotion is out of date and the person who built it stopped answering email.
That's why the monthly plan is $100 and not $400 — we'd rather it be an easy yes that stays true for years than a line item you cancel in March. A site that's still accurate in 2029 is worth more to you than anything we could have done to it on day one.
Where we are
We're in the Chicago area and we work with businesses here. You can call (630) 931-2237 or email hello@websitesfor500.com, and a person will get back to you.