A website for your A&P show
New Zealand's A&P shows are run by volunteers, and most of the societies behind them are a great deal older than anyone currently on the committee. This page is our honest offer to the people who put the show on. A proper website for the society and the show, built for you, for a one-off price, owned by the society outright, with nothing monthly behind it, ever.
Last updated July 2026
The weeks before the gates openFor a few weeks a year, the whole district looks you up
Ask anyone locally when the show is on and half of them will reach for their phone. In the weeks before show day the searching starts in earnest: what date, what time the gates open, what it costs to get in, whether the dogs can come, where to park, is it on if it rains. That is the busiest attention your society gets all year, and it lands wherever the search sends it. If that turns out to be a page still showing last year's date, you have earned the attention and lost it at the door.
A show site's job in those weeks is to answer the plain questions first and fast, on a phone, at the kitchen table. It has to answer them for people who are not on Facebook, and for the AI search tools now doing a lot of the looking on people's behalf. Being current is worth more to a show than any amount of design.
Plenty of show sites sit a year behind, and it is almost never neglect. The site was built by someone who has since moved on, the login sat with a past secretary, or changing a date means wrestling software nobody wants to wrestle in the middle of the season. Ours are built the other way round: the annual refresh is one email to us, done before entries open.
And the honest other side: if your ground fills every year, your entries are healthy and your current site already tells people what they need, you may not need us at all. We would rather say that here than waste your evening.
Three audiences, one site, a clear path each
A show website serves three quite different people at once, and most of the trouble comes from making them share a page. The visitor wants the date, the gate price and what is on. The competitor wants the schedule, the classes, when entries close and how to enter, whether that is equestrian, livestock, home industries, dogs or anything else you run. The stallholder or sponsor wants site sizes, what it costs, and the name of the person to email. Give each of them one obvious path from the front page and the site more or less runs itself.
Then the ordinary things, done properly: where the ground is and which gate to use, parking, cash or card at the gate, and a real contact for the sections. A link out to whatever handles your entries or ticketing, working exactly as it does now. We never replace a system that is working.
And the ten months that are not show season. The site holds next year's date the day the committee sets it, so the question has an answer all year round. It holds the society's story, which is often a very long one. It keeps your sponsors' names and logos visible long after the marquees come down, which is worth a good deal more to them than a post that scrolled away last spring.
What it does not need: a login system, a monthly platform plan, or anything a future committee will be afraid to touch. We build small, fast, plain sites on purpose. They cost nothing to keep online, which is why hosting is free, and they keep working whether or not anyone logs into anything.
The changeover problem, solved by ownership
Committees turn over. A secretary hands on, a new show manager comes in, and the website is usually the one thing nobody can find the key to. Everyone knows the version where it was set up years ago by a member's son, the billing sat on a card that has long since been cancelled, and now nobody can change the date. That is not a technology failure, it is an ownership failure.
Ours is built the other way. The domain is registered in the society's name, never ours. Hosting is free, so there is no subscription to lapse between shows. The whole site can be exported free at any time, so you are never locked to us either. Handover to the next committee is one line in the folder: “the website, changes by email to the studio, $20 a batch.”
Current before entries open, year after year
The site is finished on the day it goes live. That is the honest premise of the offer: it is complete, it answers the questions the district actually asks, and it can sit exactly as it is for as long as the society likes, free, forever. Hosting costs nothing, there is no subscription between shows, and a year in which nothing changes costs nothing at all.
It can also grow, because we stay behind it. You email us what has changed, we draft it and send it back for the committee to read, and it goes on the site once you have said yes. A batch of changes is $20, so it pays to send them together, and a straightforward change can usually be done quickly. Nobody has to work on the site themselves. For most societies that means each show's date and schedule refreshed in one batch well before entries open, last year's results and champions remembered on the site rather than lost with the programme, the society's long history told a chapter at a time as the records are gone through, and your sponsors' recognition kept current as the arrangements change.
Every build can also include a site assistant, a plain way for a visitor to ask a question and get an answer drawn from the site's own words, nothing invented. It is included in the price and switched on only if the society wants it. All of it stays yours either way: the domain in the society's name, nothing monthly, and the whole site exportable free at any time.
One flat price, and volunteer-run is what the community rate is for
Our standard price is $800, once. The community rate is $400, for organisations where $800 would genuinely be a stretch, and a society running a show on gate takings, sponsorship and volunteer hours is close to the shape it was written for. Some shows are large enough that the standard rate is the fair one, and we will say so. Same site, same care, same ownership at either rate, by rule.
The only cost we don't carry: your domain name, about $65 a year, because it must be registered in the society's name, not ours. That's the deed. Changes later are $20 for a batch of edits, which for most societies is the annual refresh before entries open, and a year where nothing changes costs nothing. Whether the community rate applies is a one-line email: how we make that call.
Asked and answered, plainly
The sums behind the price
What the whole market charges, honestly mapped: what a website really costs in New Zealand. Why owning beats renting for a society that intends to still be running shows in twenty years: owning vs renting your website. Whether the $400 rate applies to you: who qualifies for the community rate. The whole process from first email to handover: how it works.
Tell us about it in a sentence
Where your ground is, when the show is on, and what you have now, even if it is a Facebook page and a schedule PDF. We'll be straight about whether we can help and what it would cost.