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Tony Cooper
Founder, We Build Stores
25 years in digital marketing
About a month ago, Nick Bastock from the good2great programme recommended Carlos contact me. Escudero Auto desperately needed a new website - it’s a 3D printing business, industrial additive manufacturing, rapid prototyping, custom automotive parts. Their one.com site was aging badly and needed replacing with something more modern.
A local agency would quote around £1,500 for a WordPress website that does a similar job. Then there’s the ongoing hosting, maintenance, plugin updates.
“Industry standard” performance, they’d promise. Which means 3-second loading times (or worse) and hoping nothing breaks when WordPress updates on Tuesday.
Here’s the thing. That model made sense ten years ago when dynamic database-driven websites were the only option. It doesn’t make sense anymore.
The Escudero Auto site costs £49 monthly. Loads in under a second globally. It uses the same Astro website infrastructure that powers We Build Stores.
That’s not promotional pricing. Not mates rates. Just what enterprise infrastructure actually costs when you understand what’s possible with AI assisted coding and development tools in late 2025.
In This Issue
How Escudero Auto Got Enterprise Infrastructure for two pub pints a week — The 3D printing manufacturer paying £49/month for what agencies charge £1,500+ for (then add hosting fees)
Why Static Site Generation Demolished Traditional Web Hosting Economics — From £100+/month WordPress overhead to £5/month infrastructure costs
The Technical Credibility Problem with Slow Websites — When your 3-second WordPress site undermines your engineering expertise
What £49 Actually Buys You in 2025 — Sub-second global loading, zero platform limitations, professional design
The Coming Agency Extinction Event — When better technology costs 70% less, business models collapse
Key Insight: The best business websites now cost less than the worst business websites. Not because of corners cut, but because modern infrastructure eliminated the costs that legacy platforms still charge for. Most businesses won’t believe this until they see it working.
The Carlos Conversation
Carlos runs CNC machines and 3D printers. 10,000+ parts delivered. 99.5% accuracy. 48-hour turnaround on custom automotive components.
The kind of technical precision that deserves a website loading in under a second, not three.
Time for some business physics.
The Wix business plan currently costs £31.25 monthly and you are paying for steam train technology. The heavy javascript loaded pages render painfully slowly.
WordPress agencies will quote £1,500 to build the website plus ongoing hosting, security patches, plugin updates that break things, performance optimisation to fix what shouldn’t be slow in the first place. WordPress hosting can typically approach £100 per month once you are all in.
Both promise “easy content management”, when all most people want to do is update their case studies once a month.
Here’s what I built instead.
Astro static site generation. It’s the same tech stack that powers We Build Stores.
Updates deploy in 30 seconds from Git commits. No WordPress admin wrestling. No plugin coordination. No hoping nothing breaks on Tuesday.
Six core services showcased properly. Trust indicators that actually build trust, not stock template filler. Mobile-responsive without needing separate templates or plugins.
Loads in under a second globally via Netlify CDN.
Total monthly cost: £49.
No template limitations. No platform lock-in. No “upgrade your plan” conversations.
This is where it gets expensive for agencies still selling WordPress at expensive rates.
They can’t compete when better infrastructure costs 70% less.
How I Got Here (And Why Most Agencies Haven’t)
There’s a conversation I keep having with AI, and it always follows the same pattern. “What’s the best way to solve this problem?”
Modern static site generation didn’t just make websites faster. It completely demolished the economic model that’s kept traditional web agencies profitable for the past fifteen years.
Ten years ago, if you wanted a decent business website, you genuinely needed all of this monthly overhead: database server at £30+, WordPress hosting at £20+, premium theme licensing at £50+ upfront, security plugins at £10+ monthly, performance optimisation plugins at another £20+, and developer maintenance at £100+ to keep the whole precarious stack from falling over when WordPress released its weekly security update. Add it all up and you’re looking at £180+ every month minimum, plus several hundred in initial setup fees.
That was real cost. Agencies weren’t ripping anyone off, they were just charging for infrastructure that genuinely required constant maintenance and actual running costs.
Then Astro, Netlify, and the whole static site generation ecosystem matured, and suddenly all of that infrastructure cost just… disappeared. Static generation is free. Global CDN hosting costs £0-5 monthly. No database means no database server bills, no security vulnerabilities to patch, no performance optimisation required because the entire site’s already pre-generated and sitting on a CDN. Automated deployments from Git mean updates take 30 seconds instead of 30 minutes of careful WordPress plugin coordination. Total actual infrastructure cost drops to basically pocket change.
This is where it gets expensive for traditional agencies.
They can’t charge £50 monthly when their business model requires £50+ billing just to cover their own WordPress maintenance overhead. They can’t compete on performance when their carefully optimised WordPress stack still needs 3 seconds to load what Astro delivers in 300 milliseconds. They can’t match capabilities when static generation provides features their database-heavy platforms struggle to implement without another £30 monthly plugin subscription.
So instead of adapting, they tell you static sites “aren’t suitable for business needs” and hope you don’t notice that Escudero Auto loads instantly, showcases technical services properly, costs £49 monthly, and does everything their expensive WordPress solution promises except slower and more expensively.
You can see it working right now at escudero-auto.com. Sub-second loading globally. Professional design. Zero platform limitations. And costing 70% less than what agencies claim is the minimum viable price for “professional” web presence.
The Real Escudero Auto Achievement
Let me show you what £49/month actually bought.
Performance: Loads in under a second globally via Netlify CDN
Mobile Responsive: Perfect layout across devices with toggle menu and optimised navigation
No Limitations: Want to add a blog? Product catalogue? Client portal? Technical documentation? Contact forms with automation? It’s all possible without “upgrading your plan.”
That’s not a £49/month website. That’s enterprise infrastructure priced for small business reality.
The Manufacturing Advantage
Here’s what clicked with Carlos from Escudero Auto.
He’s running CNC machines and 3D printers. Industrial additive manufacturing. Technical services where precision matters and speed wins contracts.
His website should reflect that technical excellence.
Not “built with Wix” — but “built with the same infrastructure that tech companies use for millions of page views.”
When a potential client visits escudero-auto.com and it loads instantly, showcases products beautifully, and works perfectly on mobile — that’s not just good UX. That’s proof of technical competence.
The subliminal message: “If they can build infrastructure like this, they can handle my technical requirements.”
The Agency Reality Check
Traditional web agencies are about to have a very uncomfortable period of transition.
Their Business Model Requires:
- £1,500-5,000 setup fees
- £100-300/month ongoing
- Premium positioning to justify premium pricing
- WordPress maintenance overhead
- Security and performance concerns
The £49 Astro Model Offers:
- £0 setup (genuinely faster)
- £49/month ongoing (infrastructure costs are lower)
- Superior technical capabilities
- Zero maintenance overhead
- Built-in security and performance
When the better technical solution costs 70% less than the legacy approach, that’s not disruption. That’s extinction.
Agencies will fight back with “but WordPress has plugins!” and “but you need a database for dynamic content!” and “but Wix is easier for clients to edit!”
Meanwhile, your Astro site loads in 300ms, costs £49/month, and outperforms everything they build at 3x the price.
The Liberation Offer
Here’s what happens next.
If you’re a tradesperson, manufacturer, or small business owner paying £50+/month for website hosting:
Reply with “LIBERATION” and tell me:
- What you’re currently paying for hosting
- What platform you’re using
- What’s frustrating you most
- What you actually need from a website
I’ll show you exactly how £49/month Astro infrastructure compares to what you’re paying now.
No sales pitch. No obligation. Just honest technical comparison between legacy platforms and modern infrastructure.
If liberation makes sense, we’ll talk about setup.
If your current platform is genuinely the best solution, I’ll tell you that too.
Sometimes the most powerful business decision isn’t upgrading your website. It’s understanding why you’re paying premium prices for commodity capabilities.
P.S. - Next Week: Exactly how I build £49 websites in hours instead of weeks. The AI development tools, the actual workflow.
P.P.S. - The Framework: Want the complete platform liberation framework? The systematic analysis that shows you exactly what you’re paying for (and what you shouldn’t be)? Reply with “FRAMEWORK” and I’ll send you the checklist I use to evaluate whether modern infrastructure makes sense for your business.
Tony Cooper We Build Stores - Where 25 Years of Experience Delivers in One Hour What Twenty Hours of Not Knowing Cannot
tony.cooper@webuildstores.co.uk 07963 242210
See The Revolution: escudero-auto.com This Week: Platform liberation through enterprise infrastructure at impossible pricing
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