Get online
Build it yourself, first
The order for founders who build their own product: the address, email, hosting and credits — before the company, before the first sale.
If you are building it yourself, build first and register when you are about to sell — the clock on a company’s yearly costs starts the day it exists.
- 5 Before you apply · 100%
- 5 You · 100%
Build it before you take a pennyYou
While nobody is paid anything — you included — Jersey does not ask for a business licence; and AWS’s Activate credits for founders ask for a working company website. So the website comes first: build, test and get it ready, then register the company when you are about to take money.
Your web addressYou
Bought from a registrar, in your own name, renewed every year: .co.uk at Cloudflare: $5.3 a year; .com at Cloudflare: $10.46 a year; .co.uk at Namecheap: $6.98 a year (then $9.98 a year to renew); .co.uk at GoDaddy: $12.99 a year (at its US prices); .je at Spaceship or Dynadot: $52–58 a year.
Your emailYou
An address at your own domain: An address I already have: £0 a year (a free Gmail or Outlook.com address); Zoho Mail, free: £0 a year each (up to 5 people, in the browser, in some regions); Namecheap Private Email: $14.88 a year each (after a free first month); Microsoft 365: £4.6–5.75 a month each; Google Workspace: £5.9 a month each.
Where it livesYou
Hosting for a site you build yourself: Cloudflare Pages: $0 a month (free plan, 500 builds a month); Netlify, free: $0 a month (its free plan); Netlify Personal: $9 a month; Vercel Pro: $20 a month (its free plan is non-commercial); pay for what you use; a new account gets up to $200 in credits.
Credits — apply earlyYouWorth doing
AWS Free Tier: Up to $200 in credits, for any new AWS account. AWS Activate Founders: $1,000 in credits, for a self-funded startup founded in the last 10 years, with a working company website, new to Activate. Google for Startups Cloud Program: Up to $2,000 in Google Cloud credits, for a year, for a startup founded in the last two years, with a working product and plans to raise funding. Microsoft for Startups: Azure credits from the start, up to $150,000 over time, for a privately held company building its own software product — not an agency or a consultancy. Cloudflare for Startups: Up to $250,000 in Cloudflare credits, for a startup Cloudflare accepts, at its own discretion; the tiers follow how much it has raised. Apply before you start building, not after. I should have applied for my own company’s credits much earlier than I did.
Keep going
- Get onlineYour web address, your email, your hosting and your Google profile — each in your own name.Open
- Start a companyForm a limited company: who it needs, its office, its rules, the application — and everything that follows, in order.Open
- Sole trader or company?What each costs you in tax, what each costs to run, and the one question that usually decides it: will you keep money in the business?Open
- All of it, in orderPlan my start draws every journey you need, for your place, with your costs.Plan my start
Words in this journey:Business licenceLimited company