Web design in Portsmouth for trades, takeaways and independents
We're a Southampton studio, same county, same motorway, and we build custom-coded websites for Portsmouth businesses. We have no live client in the city yet and we're not going to pretend otherwise, so we do it the other way round: we build your site first, you see the real thing inside 48 hours, and you only pay if you want to keep it. Builds start at £395, every line is written by hand rather than dragged out of a page builder, and the site is yours.
Near neighbours, straight answers, published prices
We're not claiming a Fratton postcode. Here's what we are claiming, and you can check every line of it.
Near enough to turn up
Southampton studio, same county, straight along the motorway. Close enough to meet you at Lakeside North Harbour or on Albert Road, and near enough that when something needs changing you get it changed instead of getting a ticket number.
An island city is winnable
Most of Portsmouth lives on Portsea Island, and everything gets on or off it over the motorway spur at Tipner, the Portsbridge roundabout at Cosham or the Eastern Road. Your whole customer base sits inside that. Local search here is tight and concentrated, which makes it worth owning rather than renting.
The leads are yours
No directory subscription, no fee per enquiry, and no shared lead landing in your competitors' inboxes at the same time as yours. Your domain, your phone number, your job.
Custom-coded and quick
No templates and no page builders. Hand-written code still loads on a bad signal in a back alley behind a Fratton terrace, which is exactly where somebody will be standing when they open it.
The price is on the page
Builds are £395, £650 or £1,200. Care plans are £35, £55 or £95 a month. That is the whole number, not a starting point, and it is on the page before you ever speak to us. Ask around and see how long it takes anyone else to give you a figure before they've met you.
Built before you pay
We build the real site first and send you a live link within 48 hours. Keep it and we go live on your domain. Don't and you close the tab owing nothing.
Portsmouth trades and takeaways, mostly
Trades and takeaways here are both paying somebody else every month for work a website does once.
Plumbers, gas and heating engineers
Boiler swaps, leaks and breakdowns across Copnor, Baffins, Milton and up through Drayton and Cosham. Nobody browses for an emergency. They search it stood in a cold kitchen with a phone in one hand, and the first proper site in the results takes the call.
Electricians, landlord certs and rental work
This city rents. The terraces off Elm Grove, Winter Road, Somers Town and up Fratton Road are split into flats and shared houses, and the tenancies turn over in the summer. Certificates, consumer units and rewires are repeat work, and the landlord booking them searches by trade and by street, never by brand.
Roofers, damp and timber specialists
Portsea Island is street after street of bay-fronted terrace, salt air straight off the Solent, and slate that has had a very long time of it. Slipped tiles, chimney flashing, rot in the sashes and flat roofs over back additions all get searched for in a hurry, usually on the Monday after a wet weekend.
Builders, joiners, plasterers and fitters
Loft conversions and rear extensions on terraces with no side access, where every bag of muck comes out through the hallway and the scaffold goes up on a permit street. Kitchens, bathrooms, decorating, windows and doors, fencing and driveways out in Drayton, Farlington and Portchester. Work like that gets chosen off photos, so the gallery is the sales pitch.
Takeaways and family restaurants
The independents on Albert Road, Elm Grove, Osborne Road, Highland Road, Fratton Road, Kingston Road, London Road in North End and Cosham High Street. Your own ordering page takes the same order with no app commission, and the customer's number stays yours instead of the app's.
Garages, MOT centres and body shops
Fitzherbert Road out at Farlington, Airport Service Road on Anchorage Park, Voyager Park, Burrfields, Quartremaine Road, Walton Road and the Pompey Centre. There is no room for a forecourt on the island, so the trade sits on the estates behind roller doors nobody drives past. The search result is your shop front.
We also build for cleaners and end-of-tenancy firms working the student changeover and the naval churn, removals and man-and-van outfits, small letting agents, locksmiths and CCTV installers, mobile valeters and detailers who work off the kerb because nobody has a driveway, and the marine trades around Port Solent, the Camber and Gosport, where the marine trade keeps turning time-served engineers into self-employed ones.
What the leads are costing you now
You already know this figure, because it is itemised on your own statement every month. Checkatrade, MyBuilder and Rated People run at £15 to £40 a lead, and the same enquiry gets sold on to whoever else paid for it, so by the time you ring back you're competing on price for a job you already paid to hear about. You are renting the phone call. A build is a one-off number, it is printed above, and the calls it brings in come straight to you.
What the apps are costing you now
You know what the apps take as well: a quarter to a third of every order. On food you cooked, in a kitchen you pay the rent on, for a customer whose phone number you never get to keep. We're not telling you to come off the apps. We're telling you to stop paying that on the regulars who already know your name and would happily order off a page with your name at the top of it.
We haven't launched a site in Portsmouth yet
No local client, no local testimonial, and we're not borrowing somebody else's. Here is exactly what we have instead.
Eight SH Studios client sites are live. They're in Falkirk, Stoke-on-Trent, Leicester, Middlewich, Crewe, Kent and over the Bristol and Cardiff side, and the eighth business trades online only. Not one of them is in Hampshire.
Separately, we've built around eighty sites on spec, UK wide. Coded from scratch before anyone paid, and mostly before anyone was even asked. Hampshire businesses are among them, in towns on the list further down this page. Every one of them is a build, not a launch. Those businesses are not our clients and we won't dress them up as if they were.
The one client result we can actually prove is this one, and it's the only one on the books.
"The website's already created £1,700 worth of jobs, only 3 jobs, pretty high ticket. It's only been up a day. Knew it would slap. 10/10, man."
Oliver, Rinse Revive Detailing, Falkirk
We are not pretending that happens for everyone. It happened once, for one detailer, in one town, in the first day his site was up. It's on this page because it's true, not because it's typical.
Here's the part that matters for you. A testimonial only exists to protect you from paying for something bad. The free preview protects you better than any review can: you get a real link to the actual finished site, you open it on your own phone stood in your own unit, and you decide. Nothing has moved, nothing has been signed, and nothing is owed if the answer is no. SH Studios is a registered company, number 17354895, and you can look that up before you ring us. You would be the first live SH Studios site in Portsmouth, which is a fact about us, not a discount, and the price is the same £395, £650 or £1,200 either way.
Portsmouth and the PO postcodes
On the island, over the harbour, and out along the coast road.
- On Portsea Island: Southsea, Fratton, Copnor, Baffins, Milton, Eastney, North End, Hilsea, Buckland, Landport, Somers Town, Tipner and Stamshaw
- Over the harbour and under the hill: Cosham, Paulsgrove, Drayton, Farlington, Portchester and Port Solent
- West across the water: Gosport, Lee-on-the-Solent, Fareham, Stubbington and Titchfield
- East along the coast road: Havant, Bedhampton, Leigh Park, Emsworth, Hayling Island and Rowlands Castle
- North up the London road: Waterlooville, Purbrook, Widley, Cowplain, Denmead, Horndean and Clanfield
- Trading estates we know by name: Fitzherbert Road, Airport Service Road, Voyager Park, Burrfields, Quartremaine Road, Walton Road, the Railway Triangle, the Pompey Centre and Lakeside North Harbour
From first message to live in Portsmouth
You see the finished site before any money moves.
1. Tell us what you do and where you cover
A phone call or a message. What the job is, which bits of the city and how far up the London road you'll travel, and who you'd rather be beating in the results.
2. Free 48-hour preview
We build the real site, not a mockup, and send you a live link. Your photos, your words, your prices. It costs you nothing and there is nothing to cancel.
3. We change what you want changed
Wrong photo, wrong wording, wrong order of jobs, tell us and it's done. If it still isn't right, walk away and you owe nothing.
4. Go live on your own domain
We put it live on your own domain, get your Google Business Profile and email sorted, and aim the whole thing at the searches people round here actually type. Care plans from £35 a month if you want us carrying on keeping you winning customers after launch. That is real work, not hosting.
Be the first live SH Studios site in Portsmouth
We'll build the real thing in 48 hours and send you the link. You only pay if you want to keep it. Builds £395, £650 or £1,200.