I've been helping French creators with their websites for years. My recommendation until now was that platforms were superior. Especially for those selling online. Like Podia (aff link) is more than enough to be your home on the internet. One platform with all your stats, your sales, your email...
This was my conclusion after I'd seen more than my fair share of creators spending up to 10K€ on a website that did nothing but... tell people who they were. Sometimes with a little blog. Those websites were overcomplicated, bloated, and my non-technical clients were not capable of changing even a single line somewhere without calling someone for help.
They were blown away when I would show them a platform that they could actually use and understand. So that even if I was the one setting it up for them and making it look the way they wanted it to look like, day-to-day they didn't me to update it. PLUS, the same platform would handle sending newsletters, posting blog posts, and SELLING products for them.
The only downside of platforms like Podia is - even if the team there did a WONDERFUL job making a tool that looks good and has lots of potential - it's still a platform. And so I would sometimes run into tiny annoying limitations, like not being able to add 3 buttons, or make them different colors.
Not a big deal you'll tell me. And yes, that is still my opinion too. The success of a website doesn't rely on the colors of buttons. But it would sometimes be difficult to accept things couldn't be EXACTLY the way we imagined it.
Another, perhaps more serious, limitation is : if you stop paying the platform, your website goes down. Or if you want to change platforms, then your website needs to be redone somewhere else from scratch. With probably a different set of limitations.
I never stop experimenting with platforms and website and design for my own curiosity and to be able to help my clients better. I see the way some platforms are changing, like Podia who is now more of a community platform by default. I see new very cool functionalities, like the MCP on TinyPages (aff link), which allows you to add sales page, emails... directly from your favorite AI.
And I see IA. The way it's getting REALLY good at making HTML files, and how easy, even for a non technical person, to just... ask for things to happen and it will.
So I'm changing my recommendation : I think the most efficient setup should be
- a main website, done in HTML, light, that then sends people to
- a selling platform to buy your products
- a email platform to subscribe to your newsletter (could be the same as your selling platform if need be)
That way you have all the advantages :
- files can be easily moved, transferred, modified with any IA, coder, host... you become very flexible on that front. all your sales pages should be on that website too.
- you are not tied to a platform, you can sell from any and change as you go (the only thing to do is to add your files to the new one)
- and you can go from Substack to any other emailing platform
It's the most FLEXIBLE setup. You can follow the trends if you need to, you can redesign your website on the go with any of the current performing IA...
Also, because I got this comment once or twice: it's secure. What will be on the website you manage with IA has NO personal data. All the emailing and selling, I still recommend you go through a platform, because that's still the easiest way to set up those things.
What you need for this is :
- a domain name (I like Squarespace domain for this)
- a Cloudflare account (free, and that will be your hosting)
- a GitHub account (free, to store and push the files)
- a selling platform (Podia or TinyPages are my recommendations)
- a newsletter (I use Substack and Podia, but MailerLite (aff link) is one too)
And if that sounds difficult, it's not. It's just one thing to set up. Ask your AI or take a consult with me, we'll set it up together and talk about what that can look like.