Plans and platform
What each plan includes, the limits that go with it, and the work the managed platform does for you in the background so you never have to.
The plans
There are three plans. You can start on Free and move up at any time without rebuilding anything.
Free
A real, permanent site on a sitefern address, such as yourbusiness.sitefern.com. It is not a trial that expires. Free includes one site of up to five pages, every template and the full editor, a contact form, and the built-in search setup. Free sites carry a small Made with sitefern badge.
Starter, from 12 pounds a month
Everything in Free, plus your own domain with the security certificate handled, the Made with sitefern badge removed, access to the premium templates, and higher limits.
Pro, from 29 pounds a month
Everything in Starter, plus booking, payments and enquiry tools, and room for several sites and more pages.
Limits and how they behave
Each plan sets a few limits. They are enforced gently and only at the point you reach them, with a clear prompt rather than a surprise. The main ones are the number of pages, whether you can connect a custom domain, whether premium templates are available, and a monthly cap on contact form messages. If you hit a limit, you are told which plan lifts it, so the upgrade is a deliberate choice tied to a real need, most often wanting your own domain.
The Made with sitefern badge
Free sites show a small Made with sitefern badge. It is removed automatically on the paid plans. There is nothing to configure either way.
What the platform handles for you
sitefern is managed, which means the running of the site is the platform's job, not yours. None of the following appears on your to-do list, and there is no plugin list to maintain.
- Hosting. Your site runs on fast, reliable infrastructure, cached close to your visitors so pages load quickly.
- The security certificate. The padlock in the address bar is set up and renewed for you, on your sitefern address and on a connected custom domain.
- Updates and patches. The platform is kept current and secure centrally, for every site at once. Nothing for you to update.
- Backups. Your site is backed up in the background, and page version history lets you roll back your own edits.
- Performance. Pages are served fast and cached, which both visitors and search engines reward.
Search built in from day one
Every site is set up so search engines can read it properly from the first day, without you learning the details. This is part of the platform, on every plan.
- Titles and descriptions on every page, with sensible defaults from your content and a per-page override in the editor.
- A sitemap at /sitemap.xml, kept current as you add pages, posts and events.
- A robots file at /robots.txt that points crawlers to your sitemap.
- Clean web addresses that describe the page, rather than strings of numbers.
- Structured data behind the scenes, so pages, articles and events can appear as rich results.
- A blog feed so readers and tools can follow your posts.
- An answer-engine file at /llms.txt, which describes your site for AI assistants that cite sources.
For the settings you can adjust on top of these defaults, see SEO, analytics and enquiries.