Everything you might be wondering

A domain is your website's address — yourrestaurant.com. You purchase it separately from a registrar (Namecheap, Google Domains, etc.) and renew it annually for around £10–£20/year. Think of it as your plot of land on the internet — without it, no one can find you.

Hosting is the server where your website actually lives — the files, the database, the images. Without it, your site isn't accessible online. Koyko uses professional infrastructure (Vercel + Supabase) — the same tools used by companies serving millions of users — so your site loads fast, stays online, and scales with you.

With Squarespace or WordPress, you're inside a platform that makes decisions for you — forced updates, plugin conflicts, design limitations. With custom code, the site is fully yours: no platform can raise their prices, push a breaking update, or limit what your site can do. You get a faster, more secure site built exactly for your business — with no lock-in to any platform, including Koyko.

Every live website does — especially one with bookings and payments. Browsers update, integrations shift, and the web moves fast. The good news: with a custom-built site, maintenance is predictable and contained. Nothing changes unless you decide it does. You're never at the mercy of a platform pushing an update overnight.

For a site with live bookings and payments: uptime monitoring, critical bug fixes, and minor updates. Koyko's Care plan (£65/month) covers all of this — if the site goes down or payments break, it gets resolved with no extra charge. For a simple informational site, maintenance is minimal: occasional content updates and little else.

With WordPress, your site depends on third-party decisions you can't control. A plugin like Amelia could raise their prices, change their terms, or release an update that breaks your bookings — overnight, without warning. With a custom site, the code is yours. Nothing changes unless you want it to. Any developer can work on it — you're never locked in.

Generally, yes. With custom code, any issue has a single source and is straightforward to fix. With third-party platforms, problems can come from WordPress core updates, plugin conflicts, or your hosting provider changing server settings — all without you touching anything. With Wix and Squarespace, updates are automatic and forced. With custom code, you're in control.

The first 30 days post-launch are covered as part of every project — any issue directly caused by the build gets resolved at no extra cost. After that, the Care plan (£65/month) covers critical bugs on an ongoing basis: site down, payments failing, bookings broken — fixed, no additional charge. New features or design changes are billed separately at £35/hour.

A bug is something agreed in the original scope that isn't working as expected — a confirmation email not sending, a payment failing unexpectedly. A new feature is something outside the original scope — a new page, a design change, a new integration. The distinction is always discussed transparently before any work begins. No surprises.

Completely. Real users interact with a site in ways no testing environment can fully replicate. Edge cases surface, devices behave unexpectedly, and integrations occasionally need fine-tuning in production. It's not a sign of poor quality — it's how every software product works, from small websites to apps used by millions. What matters is having a clear plan for when it happens.

£65/month — hosting on professional infrastructure (Vercel + Supabase), uptime monitoring to catch issues before you notice them, and critical bug coverage. If something breaks that affects your clients' ability to book or pay, it gets fixed at no extra cost. Recommended for any site with live transactions.

Next.js, Supabase, Stripe, Vercel, Cloudflare — industry-standard tools used by companies worldwide. Everything is open, well-documented, and free of lock-in. The code is yours. Any developer can work on it, at any time.