Websites for local businesses, built before they ask

The challenge

Many local businesses have no website or an outdated one: requesting a quote, supplying texts and deciding without seeing a result is too high a barrier. At the same time, website, domain name, email and hosting are usually scattered across different suppliers, each with their own invoice.

Our solution

We built Hostree: a platform that creates a complete sample site for a business based on publicly available information, before the owner has to decide anything. The owner receives a letter with a personal preview link and code, reviews the site at leisure and only then decides. On a yes, Hostree takes care of everything: the domain name registered in the customer's name, email addresses, hosting on Belgian servers, an SSL certificate and daily backups, plus maintenance and text or photo changes. Provisioning of domain, DNS, hosting and mailboxes is automated; sample sites expire automatically after thirty days.

The result

One fixed monthly fee without set-up costs covers website, domain name, email and hosting, cancellable monthly after the first three months. Business owners see a finished result before they commit, and Zodi Innovations gained a scalable second business line built on Symfony with automated provisioning.