Not-for-profit web studioUnited KingdomThree businesses at a time
The best businesses on your high street have the worst sites on the internet. Llama Studio fixes that, properly, for £25 a month with hosting included. No build fee. No contract.
Small businesses don't need a bigger website. They need one that works, and someone who can help.
The people who run the good shops are brilliant at their craft and have no time. So the website gets quoted at thousands, or it gets built on a template nobody can edit, and then it sits there for four years with last summer's opening hours on it.
Llama Studio is a not-for-profit studio built to remove that problem. One flat monthly fee that covers hosting and the studio's running costs, with every penny of profit going into getting the next small business started. A real designer, a real conversation, and a site that goes live in days rather than quarters.
Because the fee is small and the standard isn't, we only take three businesses at a time. That's the trade.
Llama Studio is newly launched. The four below are sample cases, built to show the format and the standard. Each one is a working website you can open and use, deliberately built in a different style. Real businesses replace them as they ship.
Bakery & provisions — StockportSample case
A one-page shop with a Friday cut-off form, a bread list the baker edits from behind the counter, and opening hours that update themselves over bank holidays.
Wine merchant — SheffieldSample case
Every bottle on the shelf gets a page in the owner's own words. Turns a shop's expertise into search traffic, then into people walking through the door on a Thursday.
Barbers — LeedsSample case
Moved off a commission-taking booking app onto a simple slot picker the team runs themselves. Same convenience for the customer, the margin stays in the shop.
Florist — BristolSample case
The high-value work was invisible online. Now there's a portfolio the owner adds to from her camera roll, and an enquiry form that asks the six questions she always has to chase.
Thirty minutes in the shop, or a video call if that's easier. What do you sell, who buys it, and what is the one thing you want the website to do. No forms to fill in, no discovery phase, no invoice for the meeting.
You see the real layout on screen before anything gets built. The type, the colours, where your photographs sit. Changing a mock-up takes an afternoon and changing a finished site takes a week, so this is the point where you tell me it's wrong.
Design, copy, photography direction, hosting, Google Business, the lot. Fast on a handset, readable by a screen reader, and yours: I register the domain in your name, on your card, so your content and your address stay yours.
New prices, new hours, a new member of staff, a Christmas menu. Email me and it's done that week. That's what the £25 is for.
Nothing is taken out of Llama Studio. The fee covers hosting and the studio's running costs, and 100% of the profit funds the start of the next small business on the list. Three at a time, each one paying forward to the next.
Price list — no build fee, no contract
Not included
Your domain is registered to you, in your name, and billed to you directly by the registrar. It costs a few pounds a year and it means nobody can hold your address hostage. Llama Studio sets it up and never owns it.
Add-ons, only if you need them
+£10a month
+1%of takings
Registered charities, community groups and social enterprises pay half. That's £12.50 a month, add-ons included at half price too.
Where the £25 actually goes.
Hosting, software licences, insurance and the studio's running costs. Design and development time is given, not billed.
100% of profit funds the start of the next small business. Not a share of it, not what's left at year end. All of it, straight into getting the next shopfront on the internet: the design time, the build, the setup.
Also not included: paid advertising, large-catalogue e-commerce, custom software, and anything better served by a proper agency. If that's you, I'll say so and point you somewhere good.
If you need to take bookings or payments, there are two add-ons and they're priced the same way as everything else: at what they cost to run. Card processing fees always go straight to Stripe or PayPal, never through me.
I run operations at a subscription business for a living. Llama Studio is that discipline, pointed at the shop three doors down.
I'm Andy Stride, Chief Operating Officer at Good Pair Days, a direct-to-consumer wine subscription business. My work is the unglamorous machinery that makes a small company function: operations, customer experience, logistics, retention, and the numbers underneath all of it.
Llama Studio started with a pattern I kept noticing on my own high street. The businesses I admire most are run by people who are excellent at one thing and have no time for the web. They get quoted thousands, or they get sold a template they can't change. Either way the site ends up out of date and quietly costing them customers.
Most of what makes a subscription business work is exactly what makes a shop's website work: say the true thing clearly, make the next step obvious, remove the friction, then measure whether it moved. It doesn't take a rebrand. It takes attention.
So the deal is simple. I bring operating discipline and design taste, you bring the thing you're brilliant at, and we get your shopfront on the internet looking like the shop you actually run.
Six questions. No sales pitch.
Tell me about the business and what you want the website to do. If Llama Studio is a fit you'll hear back within two working days with a date for a conversation. If it isn't a fit, you'll hear that too, with a better suggestion.
Llama Studio needs designers, developers, photographers and copywriters who can spare an evening a month. Skill level matters less than turning up.