Web Hosting for Cabinetmakers and Bespoke Joiners

Short answer: bespoke joinery sells on two kinds of image that need different handling. Finished photographs, which are heavy and need a CDN, and drawings or renders, which are usually line art and look terrible if you serve them as compressed JPEGs. Getting both right is the hosting question.

Looking for plans rather than guidance? Our web hosting plans start at £39 a year and renew at £39, with SSD storage, a CDN and daily backups included.

Drawings and photographs need different formats

This is the technical point most joinery websites get wrong, and it is easy to fix.

Photographs are continuous tone and belong as JPEG or a modern equivalent, resized to around 1600px wide before upload.

Drawings, plans and line renders are the opposite: flat areas, sharp lines and text. Saved as JPEG they get fuzzy edges and halos around the linework, which looks amateurish on the exact document meant to demonstrate precision. Save those as PNG or SVG instead, where lines stay crisp and file size is often smaller than a JPEG of the same image.

Showing a sketch alongside the finished piece is one of the most persuasive things a joiner can publish, so it is worth the drawing not looking degraded.

Your gallery is the weight problem

Fitted kitchens, bedrooms and alcove units accumulate quickly, and joinery photography is usually taken properly rather than snapped, so the originals are large.

• Resize before uploading rather than dropping full-resolution camera files in
• Use lazy loading so a project page does not load forty images at once
• Serve through a CDN, which converts formats and delivers from a location near the visitor
• Remember WordPress creates several resized copies of every upload, so storage goes faster than the originals suggest

Our plain English guide to Core Web Vitals covers how load speed is measured. Most of your visitors browse in the evening on a phone, so this matters.

Clients will send you plans and photographs

Almost every enquiry involves someone sending a room photograph, a floor plan or an architect’s drawing. Two hosting consequences.

Check your upload limit. A default WordPress install often caps uploads below the size of an architect’s PDF, and a client who hits an error usually gives up rather than emailing separately.

Know where files land. By default in your WordPress media library, in a directory frequently reachable by direct URL. Floor plans of a client’s home should not sit in an openly readable folder. Either restrict the directory properly or take drawings by another route.

Your enquiry form will fail silently

The form submits, the visitor sees a confirmation, the email never arrives, and nothing appears broken. On a business quoting five-figure kitchens, that is expensive.

WordPress sends mail through PHP by default, which is frequently filtered or rejected without authentication records on your domain.

• Send form mail through authenticated SMTP rather than PHP mail
• Add SPF, DKIM and DMARC records to your domain
• Deliver to an address you check daily
• Test monthly from a different device, with and without an attachment

Test the attachment case specifically, because a form that works for plain messages can fail on ones carrying a plan, and those are your qualified enquiries. Our guides to contact forms not sending emails and SPF, DKIM and DMARC cover both.

Email on your own domain

You are asking for a substantial deposit on something that does not exist yet, so an address at your own domain rather than a free webmail account is worth having. Design correspondence also carries drawings and photographs, so mailbox storage matters.

Our email hosting plans include unlimited mailboxes on your domain with 10GB each, so separate addresses for enquiries, design and accounts cost nothing extra.

Backups protect your portfolio

Your gallery is the record of pieces that left the workshop years ago and cannot be photographed again. Daily backups of files as well as database, and check the uploads folder is actually included, since some backup tools exclude it by default to keep backups small.

Register the domain in the company’s name with auto-renew set. Our complete guide to UK domain names covers registration and renewals.

What plan you actually need

Entry-level shared hosting with SSD storage, a CDN, free SSL and daily backups, with generous storage since project photography accumulates. Around £39 a year.

If you sell freestanding furniture online as well as taking commissions, that is a shop and needs more PHP memory and caching. Our WooCommerce hosting guide covers what that involves.

Check the renewal figure rather than the introductory rate. Our guide to cheap web hosting in the UK covers what should be standard.

Frequently asked questions

Why do my drawings look fuzzy on the website?

They are being saved as JPEG. Line art needs PNG or SVG, where edges stay sharp and the file is often smaller anyway.

Can clients upload floor plans to my enquiry form?

Yes, but check the upload limit, which is often below an architect’s PDF, and check where the files land since plans of a client’s home should not be publicly readable.

How much storage does a joinery portfolio need?

More than most trades, because photography is taken properly and WordPress creates several copies of each upload. Plan for growth.

My form works but not with an attachment. Why?

The message size is exceeding a limit on upload or in outgoing mail. Test both cases, and consider having the form send a link rather than the file.

Are my project photographs backed up?

Check. Some backup tools exclude the uploads folder by default, and that folder holds work you cannot photograph again.

Explore more

Our guide to web hosting for tradespeople covers the requirements common to every trade, and our guide to upholsterers covers a neighbouring workshop trade with its own image challenges.

Our hosting plans start at £39 a year, with a free trial if you want to test your own images and drawings first.