Google Sites Alternative UK — When the Free Builder Stops Earning Its Place

The seven-step migration sequence we run on every Google Sites-to-same-day rebuild. Step one: full Screaming Frog crawl of your existing Google Sites site to capture every URL, every status code, every meta title, every H1, every canonical, every internal-link relationship. The CSV is your contract — any URL in that export must resolve to a meaningful destination after the launch. Step two: Search Console export of your top 1,000 queries and top 1,000 pages over the last 16 months. These are the rankings to protect.

Step three: 1:1 redirect map written into the new host’s config and tested with curl before launch. Every old URL maps to exactly one new URL with a 301 redirect — no 302s, no redirect chains, no catch-all-to-homepage shortcuts. Step four: schema preservation, with the @id values from the existing entities carried into the new schema where they exist. Step five: the new build ships with the existing copy intact for week one so Google’s crawler does not see three simultaneous changes (URL, design, copy). Step six: launch on a Tuesday morning with the DNS swap, cache purge, Search Console URL inspection and smoke test sequence. Step seven: 30-day monitoring with daily Search Console checks for the first two weeks.

The migration window itself is same-day for sites under 50 URLs, 1-3 working days for sites with deeper content or e-commerce data, 3-5 days for Google Sites sites with custom backend integrations or large content libraries. The fee structure is the same as a new build — Launch tier (£699) for one-page migrations, Growth tier (£1,299) for multi-page rebuilds, Agency tier (£2,499) for complex platform-to-platform moves. Where the migration absolutely cannot land in those windows we say so explicitly on the brief call rather than missing the SLA.

The cost-per-year comparison is the visible part of the migration argument. The less-visible part is what ownership of the site actually means once the migration completes. With Google Sites, the visible output (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) is technically yours but the runtime that produces it belongs to the platform — if the Google Sites subscription lapses, the site stops working. With the custom build, the source code lives in a git repository in your name on GitHub or Bitbucket; the hosting account is in your name on Vercel or Cloudflare Pages; the domain registration is in your name at the registrar of your choice. Cancelling the relationship with us is a single email and the assets stay yours.

The compounding effect of ownership over multiple years: a custom build at year five has accumulated five years of editorial content under your domain authority, five years of inbound links pointing at URLs you control, five years of analytics history in a GA4 property you own. A Google Sites site at year five has accumulated the same assets — but they are bound to the platform. Migrating off at year five is materially harder than migrating off at year one because there is more to preserve and more to lose if the migration is sloppy.

The brief form on the get-started page is the fastest route. Share your existing Google Sites URL, the pages that matter most for your current rankings, the integrations you need to keep (analytics, payment processor, CRM, email host), and your preferred launch date. We confirm the migration scope inside 30 minutes during the working window, and the build is hands-off from there. Where the migration sits inside the same-day window, the new site is live by 6 PM the trading day after brief confirmation; where the scope is larger (deep e-commerce, multi-tenant content, custom integrations), we quote a 1-3 day window honestly on the brief call.

The decision between Google Sites and the same-day custom build is not always one-way. We have advised clients to stay on Google Sites when their specific usage genuinely fits the platform’s strengths, and we have advised clients to migrate even where the cost difference looked marginal because the operational benefits of ownership compounded. The brief call is the right place to make the call honestly — we are not paid more if you migrate, and the cost of doing the wrong migration is higher to both parties than the cost of saying no on the brief call.