Free tool
Use AI to work out how your website should be built.
Hire someone, or build it yourself? Choose between two agencies, two quotes, two platforms - or all of it at once, before you even know which question matters most? These are expensive decisions, wrapped in jargon, and most business owners make them once or twice in a lifetime.
An AI assistant can genuinely help - weighing what your business actually needs, comparing what is in front of you, and giving you a recommendation for your situation rather than a generic one. But only with the right prompt. Answer a few questions and we'll write you one.
To be clear about what this page hands you: a prompt, not an answer. The thinking happens in ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini - with your quotes attached, or with none at all. Our part is knowing what to ask it.
Answer a few questions
Under a minute. Whether you are hiring someone, building it yourself, or genuinely have not decided - and enough about the business for the questions to be worth answering.
Copy the prompt we write
It appears as you answer, already built around your project. It is long, deliberately: it carries the questions a professional would ask and most people never think to.
Paste it in, with your quotes if you have any
Into ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini - the free tier of any of them is enough. The assistant interviews you about the business first, then works through the options and tells you what to ask before you commit to anything.
What the business actually does, or what you want the site to do. The more specific you are, the better the questions you get asked back.
Optional. A promise made on the phone, a price that was mentioned but never written down, a deadline someone agreed to. The assistant will put these on the list of things to get in writing.
Your prompt
Copy this, open ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini, paste it in and attach your quotes. It will ask you a few questions about the business before it compares anything.
I'm choosing who should design and build a new website for my business, and I'd like your help comparing my options. Please be even-handed. I want a clear-eyed read, not encouragement. ABOUT THE BUSINESS We are a professional services firm. The site does not need to sell online. WHAT I'M WEIGHING UP I have two quotes, which I'll attach. Call them Quote A, Quote B and so on, in the order I attach them. Use only what the quotes actually say. Where one is silent on something, tell me it is silent rather than filling the gap with an assumption. BEFORE YOU ANALYSE ANYTHING, INTERVIEW ME Ask me these one or two at a time, and wait for my answers: - Where do I expect the business to be in two years, and what might the site need to do then that it does not need to do now? - Who will edit the site day to day, and how confident are they? - What has frustrated me about a website before - mine or anyone else's? - Is there anything this site has to do that is unusual for my line of work? - Is there a date this needs to be live by, and what happens if it slips? - What is my budget for this, and is that a firm ceiling or a rough figure? - Which matters more to me right now: launching quickly, or being able to change things freely later? Then ask me who is providing each of these, because they are the parts that get assumed rather than agreed, and any of them can quietly become my problem: - the words on every page - photography, and whether any stock images are licensed and for how long - the logo and any brand assets - the domain name - who buys it, whose name it is in, and who renews it - email on that domain - setting the site up to be found in search and by AI assistants - keeping it updated, backed up and secure once it is live THEN COMPARE, UNDER THESE HEADINGS 1. What am I actually being offered? Work out from each quote what the site would actually be built on - a named platform, a bought theme, or genuinely written from scratch - and what that means in practice. Words like custom, bespoke and tailored are not answers on their own: if a quote uses them without naming the technology underneath, say the quote does not answer this, and do not guess which it means. 2. What is missing from each quote. Go through it against everything I told you above about who provides what, and check as well for: who owns the source code and the design files; what I can take with me if I leave; who holds the domain, hosting and analytics accounts; how many rounds of changes are included; what it costs to run from year two onwards; whether search and AI-assistant readiness is included or billed separately; what maintenance covers and how fast they respond; whether any speed or accessibility commitment is written down; and what happens when I want something that was not in the original scope. List what each quote is silent on. 3. Where each option is genuinely stronger. Include building it myself honestly. If a platform is the right answer for a business like mine, say so plainly and say why. 4. What each option would make hard later. Concrete examples for my line of work, not generalities. 5. The questions I should send back to each supplier before I decide. Write them out so I can paste them straight into an email. RULES - Show me the trade-offs and what I would be giving up either way, then tell me what you would do in my position and what would change your mind. A recommendation you can defend is more use to me than a refusal to have a view. - Do not soften it to be agreeable, and do not assume the dearer option is the better one. If two options are effectively equivalent, say so. - Plain English. If you need a technical term, explain it in the same sentence.
Nothing you type here is sent to us, and your quotes never come near us - they go straight from you to the assistant you choose.
What the prompt asks for
The questions you would ask if you did this for a living.
None of this is secret, and none of it is clever. It is simply the list you build after reading a few hundred website quotes, and it is the whole of what this page adds to the assistant you were going to use anyway.
- It interviews you first
- Before it weighs anything up, it asks where you expect the business to be in two years, who will edit the site day to day, your budget and your deadline, and who is providing the words, the photographs and the domain. An answer that skips all that is just a summary of three documents.
- It hunts for what is missing
- Who owns the source code and the design files. What you can take with you if you leave. Who holds the domain and hosting accounts. How many rounds of changes are included. What it costs to run from year two, and whether being found in search is included or billed separately. Most quotes are silent on several of these, and silence is the finding.
- It checks the migration
- If you already have a site, it looks for whether the move is costed and whether a redirect map is included - so the pages that currently rank in search keep working. This is the single most expensive omission in a website quote, and it is left out constantly.
- It is told to be even-handed
- The prompt asks for a recommendation and for what would change its mind - but it also tells the assistant to say plainly when a platform is the right answer, not to soften anything to be agreeable, and never to assume the dearer option is the better one. You can read every word of it in the box before you use it. We would not write it any other way: a rigged prompt is worth nothing to you and less to us.
A word on what this will not do. It cannot tell you whether you will enjoy working with someone, whether their previous sites are any good, or whether the person who answers the phone in March will still be there in September. Those decide more projects than any clause in a quote does. Meet them, and ask them these five questions.
FAQ
Questions about this page.
Start with a blank canvas.
Tell us a little about your project, and we'll come back within one working day.