A website for your support work
Across New Zealand, disabled people and their whānau arrange their own support, and the person they choose is often someone working for themselves. If that's you, this page is our honest offer. A proper website, built for you, for a one-off price, in your own name, with nothing monthly behind it, ever.
Last updated July 2026
The front doorA directory is a list. Your own page is a front door.
The search happens from both sides. Under Individualised Funding, a disabled person or their whānau can engage their own support workers rather than take whoever an agency sends, usually with a host organisation handling the paperwork. So somebody, somewhere in your city, is looking for the person you already are. What they find first is directories and Facebook groups: rows of names, all looking much the same, with the real detail behind a login or a phone call.
A page of your own is different. It can be read at eleven at night, in the worst week a family has had in a while, by someone who has run out of energy for phone calls. It says who you are, where you work, what you do and what you value, in your own voice, before anyone has to ring a stranger. Trust is most of what you are being chosen on, and a calm, plain page carries more of it than any listing.
That is the lens we design with. Freehold started in the community and disability sector, and worst-day readability is not a metaphor to us: we build for people who are stretched, tired, and deciding one thing at a time.
And the honest other side: if your books are full through word of mouth and you're turning work away, you may not need a site at all. We'd rather say that here than waste your evening.
What a support worker's website actually needs
Not much, done well. Who you are, written like a person and not a CV. The areas you cover, named the way locals name them. The kind of support you do, and the kind you don't, because being clear about that saves everyone a difficult conversation later. Roughly when you have hours free. Your experience and training, including anything you hold, and a plain line about the checks you can provide. Then one way to reach you that you'll actually answer.
What it doesn't need: client information of any kind, a booking system, a login, or a monthly platform plan. 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 you're taking new clients this month.
Your web presence shouldn't depend on a platform's monthly bill
Working for yourself, your income moves. Some months are full, some are quiet, and a quiet one is exactly when a subscription hurts and exactly when you least want to cancel the thing people find you by. The usual web arrangement is a rental: a builder plan or a profile that keeps billing whether or not you're taking clients, and if it lapses, the page goes with it.
Ours is built the other way. The domain is registered in your name, never ours. Hosting is free, so there is no subscription to lapse in a slow month. The whole site can be exported free at any time, so you're not locked to us either, and if you ever move to an agency, take a break, or hand the work on, the page and the address stay yours to do as you like with. Changes are an email to us, $20 for a batch, whenever you actually want one.
Your page can grow as your practice does
To see what this looks like built, we made a fictional site for a sole-operator celebrant, the same shape of site: Marnie Ashcroft, celebrant. Every real build starts from your own world, not from that one.
The honest version first. On the day it goes live, your page is finished: everything written, nothing waiting on a second stage, nothing left for you to sit down and fill in. If you never send us another word it keeps working for as long as you keep the domain, and that costs you nothing further. A page that stays exactly as it is is a page doing its job.
It can also grow, because the studio stays behind it, and none of the growing lands on you at the end of a shift. You email us what's changed, we draft it and send it back, you tell us it's right, and up it goes: $20 for a batch of edits, and small changes can usually be done quickly. Over a few years the page grows the way your work does. A new area added when you start taking work there. Training added as you finish it, so what you hold reads as current rather than three courses out of date. Words from a family added only ever with their written permission, and only if you want any on there at all.
Every build can also include a site assistant, which answers a visitor's questions from the words already on your page and nothing else, so a family reading late at night gets the same answer you would have given them. It's included in the price and switched on only if you want it. And all of it stays yours either way: the domain in your name, nothing monthly, and a free export whenever you like.
One flat price, and working for yourself is what the community rate is for
Our standard price is $800, once. The community rate is $400, for people and organisations where $800 would genuinely be a stretch, and one person doing support work on their own is exactly the shape it was written for. 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 your name, not ours. That's the deed. Changes later are $20 for a batch of edits, whenever you actually want one, 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
One practical note, because it comes up: in New Zealand, Police vetting is requested by approved agencies rather than by individuals, so if you work for yourself the check you can arrange yourself is a criminal record check from the Ministry of Justice. Your site never needs to publish a document either way. A plain line saying what you hold and that you're happy to provide it on request is enough, and it's what families are looking for.
The sums behind the price
What the whole market charges, honestly mapped: what a website really costs in New Zealand. Why owning beats renting when your income moves month to month: 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 you work, the kind of support you do, and what you have now, even if it's only a profile on someone else's site. We'll be straight about whether we can help and what it would cost.