A website for your U3A group
A U3A website has one job: help the next member find you, see what your interest groups are, and know how to come along. This page is our honest offer to the people who run one, volunteers, elected each year, doing it around everything else. A proper website, built for you, for a one-off price, owned by the group outright, with nothing monthly behind it, ever.
Last updated July 2026
The front doorSomeone newly retired searches your town. What they find decides whether they turn up.
A person finishes work, or moves closer to the grandchildren, and a friend says try U3A. What they do next is search U3A and the name of the town. If what comes back is a page that has not changed in three committees, or a contact who moved on years ago, the interest they arrived with quietly runs out. Nobody emails to tell you that happened.
A website holds the current answers still: what your interest groups are this year, when and where the main meeting is, whether a visitor can simply come along, and what it costs to join. It is also what a library, a hall or the local paper looks at when they want to point people your way. And it works for someone with no Facebook account, with no login wall in front of it.
And the honest other side: if your membership is healthy, the popular interest groups already have waiting lists, and the site you have is current and easy to read, you do not need us. We would rather say that here than take up a committee meeting.
What a U3A website actually needs
Not much, done well. Who you are and what U3A means, in a short paragraph a newcomer understands without being told twice. The current list of interest groups, with enough about each one that someone can picture themselves in it. When and where the main meeting is, and whether a visitor is welcome to just turn up. What membership costs and how to join. A contact that is a role rather than a person, so it survives the next AGM. And somewhere stable for the programme and the newsletter to live, rather than only in an email attachment that new people never received.
The design part matters more in this sector than most, and it is the part we care about most. Readability for older readers is a requirement here, not a nicety: large clear type, strong contrast, generous spacing, links and buttons that are easy to hit, and one decision at a time instead of a wall of choices. Nothing that needs a steady hand, a new phone or a good screen. Sites that pass that test turn out to be better for everyone.
What it does not need: a members-only login, a monthly platform plan, or anything the next committee will be frightened 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 are elected each year, and on many of them the website is one line on a list that also holds the newsletter, the speaker and the venue. It lands with whichever member is willing. That member does a good job for years, and then steps down, or their health changes, and the site goes still. The login was theirs. The renewal notice goes to their inbox. The group often finds out in the year the domain lapses.
Ours is built the other way round. The domain is registered in the group's name, never ours, with the renewal going to a group address rather than a personal one. Hosting is free, so there is no subscription to fall over when the treasurer changes. The whole site can be exported free at any time, so you are not tied to us either. Handover is one line in the folder the secretary passes on: “the website, changes by email to the studio, $20 a batch.”
Right from day one, and a record that deepens each year
The honest version first. On the day it goes live, the site is complete. Every page written, every answer in place, nothing held over for a second stage. If you never send us another word it carries on doing its job for as long as the group keeps the domain, and that costs nothing further. A site that stays exactly as it is is not a neglected one, it is one that was right to begin with.
It can also grow, because the studio stays behind it, and nobody on your committee has to become the website person for that to happen. You email us what is new, we draft the change and send it back to you, you tell us it is right, and up it goes: $20 for a batch of edits, and small changes can usually be done quickly. Over several committees that becomes something a one-off build never becomes. Each year's programme joining the one before it, so the group keeps a record of what it has actually studied. A page for a new interest group in the month it forms, rather than the year after. A note of who spoke and what they spoke about, so a good talk is remembered rather than living only in the email that announced it. And a permanent home for the newsletter, somewhere findable, rather than only in an attachment that new members never received.
Every build can also include a site assistant, which answers a visitor's questions using only the words already on your site, so someone deciding whether to come along gets the same answer your committee would give them. It is included in the price, and switched on only if the group wants it. All of it stays yours either way: the domain in the group's name, nothing monthly, and a free export 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 U3A group run by volunteers from among its own members 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 the group's 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
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 group that plans to exist in ten 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 your group in a sentence
Where you are, roughly how many members, and what you have now, even if it is a page a member built years ago. We'll be straight about whether we can help and what it would cost.