Websites, pricing & getting found in AI search

The simplest way is to have a specialist build it for you and host it for a low monthly fee. Propeller builds a complete, custom website for Australian small businesses for free — there is no upfront design or setup cost — and your site is live within 48 hours of you approving the design. You only pay a monthly plan from $99 that covers hosting, support, updates and getting you found online. Send your details through propeller.net.au and we build a working demo of your new site first, so you can see it before you decide.

With Propeller, a professionally designed website can be live in 48 hours. The clock starts once you approve the design and we have your content — your photos, services and business details. Most agencies take four to twelve weeks because every build is bespoke; Propeller is fast because we have built a system that does the heavy lifting and then hand-finishes every site. There is no upfront cost, so you are not paying thousands while you wait.

Yes. Propeller builds your website for free — $0 setup and no upfront design fee — on a build that would typically cost $3,000 or more elsewhere. Instead of a large bill on day one, you pay a simple monthly plan from $99 that covers premium hosting, security, support and ongoing updates. The build is free because the business runs on the monthly plan, not a big one-off fee, so we have to keep earning your spot every month.

A custom small-business website in Australia usually costs between $2,000 and $8,000 upfront with a web agency, plus ongoing hosting. Propeller removes the upfront cost entirely: the build is free with $0 setup, and you pay a monthly plan instead — Basic is $99/month, Growth is $199/month and Growth Engine is $299/month. Every plan includes the build, hosting, SSL, backups, support and updates, with no surprise add-ons.

You need a website. A Facebook page can help, but you do not control it, it rarely shows up properly in Google, and AI assistants like ChatGPT cannot reliably recommend a business that only lives on social media. A real website on your own domain is what gets you found, builds trust and turns searchers into phone calls. Propeller builds sites specifically for Australian trades — electricians, plumbers, carpenters, builders and more — and can pull everything useful from your Facebook page into a proper site.

Two things: your approval of the design, and your content — photos, services, and business details. The 48-hour clock to going live starts once we have both. We build the working demo first from what is publicly available, so most of the work is already done before you are asked for anything.

Yes. A second site — for a second trade, a separate service line or a different area — gives your business more surface area in Google and AI search, and it runs on the same month-to-month model. See the second-site page for how it works.

Propeller's plans start at $99/month and include far more than basic hosting. Every plan covers premium servers, a global CDN, SSL, daily backups, security monitoring, real human support and ongoing updates — plus the website build itself at no upfront cost. Growth at $199/month adds unlimited monthly content updates and AI-search optimisation, and Growth Engine at $299/month adds a 24/7 AI receptionist that answers your missed calls. Plans are month-to-month.

Every Propeller plan includes the free website build, premium hosting, a global CDN, SSL security, daily backups, security monitoring, real human support and ongoing updates. Growth adds unlimited monthly content changes and answer-engine optimisation so you get found in ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI results. Growth Engine adds a 24/7 AI receptionist that answers missed calls in your business name and captures the lead. There is never a setup fee.

DIY builders like Wix or Squarespace look cheap, but the real costs are your time, a template that looks like everyone else's, and a site that often does not rank or convert. Once you add a domain, a premium plan, apps and the hours you spend, you have usually paid more for less. Propeller builds and maintains a custom site for you with no upfront cost and a monthly plan from $99 — so you get agency-quality work without the agency price or the DIY weekend.

Propeller plans are month-to-month — you can cancel any time and there is no lock-in contract. Your domain stays in your name and the website is yours. We would rather earn your business every month than trap you in a long contract, which is also why there is no large upfront fee to walk away from.

Yes. Basic $99, Growth $199 and Growth Engine $299 are the prices you actually pay each month — AUD, GST inclusive, month-to-month. There is no annual lock-in and no GST surprise at invoice time. See the pricing page for what each plan includes.

No. The website build itself is free — $0 setup, no upfront design fee — and each plan covers hosting, SSL, daily backups, security, support and updates with no surprise add-ons. The monthly plan price is the whole cost of running the site.

Refer a business to Propeller and when they sign up, you get a month free on your own plan — one free month for each business you refer. Details and your referral link are on the referral program page.

To be recommended by AI assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, your business needs a clear, well-structured website with content written the way people actually ask questions, plus machine-readable data — structured data and an llms.txt file — that AI crawlers can read. AI tools answer from sources they can understand and trust. Propeller builds every site this way, with FAQ content, structured data and AI-readable files included, so your business is set up to be cited when someone asks an AI for a recommendation in your trade and town.

Answer engine optimisation (AEO) is the practice of structuring your website so AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity can understand it and recommend you. It is the new version of SEO: instead of only ranking in a list of links, you want to be the business the AI names when someone asks 'who is a good electrician near me?'. Any small business that relies on being found online needs it now, and it is built into Propeller's Growth and Growth Engine plans.

AI assistants recommend businesses they can easily read, understand and trust. That means a real website rather than just a social page, content that directly answers the questions people ask, clear structured data, consistent business details across the web, and machine-readable files like llms.txt. Businesses that only exist on Facebook, or have a thin, outdated site, usually get skipped. Propeller builds sites specifically to meet these criteria, so you are the kind of business an AI can confidently name.

Usually it is one of a few things: you do not have a real website, your site is slow, outdated or not mobile-friendly, your content does not match what people search for, or your Google Business Profile is not set up well. Search engines and AI tools favour fast, clear, well-structured sites with relevant content. Propeller rebuilds your site to fix all of that — fast loading, mobile-first, properly structured and written around what your customers actually search for.

A well-built website's job is to turn the people already looking for you into phone calls and enquiries. Nearly half of visitors judge whether a business is worth contacting from the website alone, so a slow or dated site quietly loses you work every week. Propeller sites are built to load fast, look professional and make it effortless to call or message you — and on Growth Engine an AI receptionist catches the calls you miss, so leads do not slip away.

Yes, and a growing number of businesses do. You are already on Facebook, Instagram, a Google listing and your website, and nobody questions having several places to be found. AI search is the newest of those surfaces, and a second site is simply another place to claim it — the same way a Facebook page and an Instagram account both earn their keep. It is a separate, purpose-built site on its own domain that AI engines can read and quote, and it leaves your current site completely untouched, with no migration and no risk to your existing Google rankings. We walk through how it works, and why a second site rather than a change to your current one, on our second website page.

No one has measured AI-search visibility directly — but the strongest available proxy is stark. Propeller’s Australian Tradie AI Visibility Report 2026 assessed 516 trade and local-service businesses and found 72.1% had either no findable website or one rated in the weakest quality band. The report measured website existence and quality; the implication is that sites like that give AI assistants little or nothing to read and cite.

llms.txt is a plain-text file at your website’s root that hands AI assistants your canonical facts — what you do, where, your prices and contact details — so they can cite you accurately instead of guessing. It costs nothing to serve and removes an assistant’s excuses for getting your details wrong. Propeller includes one in every Growth-plan build.

Weeks, not days. Assistants that search the live web (ChatGPT Search, Perplexity, Copilot) can pick up a well-structured page within two to four weeks of it being indexed — Bing indexation matters most, because ChatGPT reads Bing. Recommendations drawn from model training data take longer and build with your presence across many sources. Early movers compound.

Ask the assistants what a customer would: “best [your trade] in [your suburb]”, “is [your business] any good?” — across ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity, monthly. Record whether you are named, linked, or absent, and who appears instead. Or send us your website and we will run the check for you with your free demo.

If your site looks fine but the phone is not ringing, the problem is usually speed, clarity, mobile experience or trust — visitors land, hesitate and leave. The fix is a site built to convert: fast loading, clear calls to action, obvious contact options and content that answers buyers' questions. Propeller rebuilds your site for free, you only pay the monthly plan, and focuses specifically on turning visitors into enquiries, then keeps improving it over time.

Absolutely — that is a great starting point. Propeller pulls everything useful from your Facebook page — your photos, reviews, services and details — and builds a real website around it on your own domain. You keep your Facebook page; you just stop depending on it to be found. A proper website is what ranks in Google and lets AI assistants recommend you, which a social page alone cannot do.

No — handled properly, a new website protects your ranking and usually improves it. Propeller carries across your existing content and sets up redirects from your old pages to the new ones, so the links and rankings you have built follow you over. The migration is designed to be invisible to visitors and to search engines, and a faster, better-structured site typically performs better in both Google and AI search afterwards.

Yes. Propeller carries across everything worth keeping — your text, service descriptions, photos and pages — and rebuilds it inside a properly designed, fast website. We set up redirects from your old URLs so existing links still work, and the changeover is built to be seamless for anyone visiting. You keep the content you trust, presented far better and built to be found.

Yes. Your domain stays registered in your name and the website is yours. If you ever decide to leave, we hand the whole thing over — no holding your site hostage on someone else's platform. You are paying Propeller to build, host and improve your site, not to own it on your behalf.

On the Growth and Growth Engine plans, Propeller makes unlimited content updates for you — just send the change and we handle it, usually the same day. There is no logging into a clunky editor or paying an hourly rate per tweak. This keeps your site, and the details that Google and AI tools read about you, accurate, which matters for staying findable.

An AI receptionist is a 24/7 virtual assistant that answers the calls you cannot get to — when you are on the tools, driving or after hours — in your business's name. It greets the caller, answers common questions and captures their details so the lead does not go to a competitor. It is included in Propeller's Growth Engine plan at $299/month, and for trades and local services that miss calls during the day it often pays for itself in a single recovered job.

Propeller offers three website plans — Basic $99, Growth $199 and Growth Engine $299/mo inc GST — and the receptionist is included in Growth Engine alongside the free website build and AI search optimisation. A standalone Voice Agent is available at $199/mo for businesses that only want the AI receptionist.

It answers in your business’s name, greets the caller, handles common questions — hours, services, service area — and captures the caller’s name, number and what they need, then gets those details to you so you can call back with the job still warm. The caller talks to something that responds instead of a voicemail beep, which is the difference between a captured lead and a competitor’s phone ringing.

Yes — the voice page has a live “Hear your AI receptionist” demo: leave your details and hear it answer as your business. Pair it with the free demo of your new website — nothing is billed until you have seen and heard both.

Three, and each has a live demo you can try before you decide: the Google Reviews Booster turns happy customers into 5-star Google reviews and catches unhappy ones privately; the Instant Estimate widget gives visitors a ballpark price in about 30 seconds and captures the lead while they’re keen; and Online Job Booking lets customers pick a service and a time that lands straight in your calendar. All three run inside your Propeller website — no extra apps or subscriptions to manage.

After every job you send one link — by text, email or a QR code on the invoice. Your customer taps a star rating on a clean page with your name on it: five-star raters are handed straight to your Google review form, and anyone less lands on a private feedback form that emails you directly, so you hear about a problem before it becomes a public review. Most happy customers never review you simply because nobody made it a 30-second job — removing that friction is what lifts the count. It works for any Australian trade or service business — sparkies, plumbers, cleaners, landscapers, personal trainers. Try the live demo.

Yes. Propeller’s Instant Estimate widget lets a visitor describe the job in plain words — “blocked drain in the kitchen” — and answers in seconds with a genuine price range built from your own pricing. You set a floor and a ceiling for every job type, every estimate carries a “confirmed on inspection” disclaimer, and the widget can never quote a number you haven’t approved. It then asks for a name and mobile for an exact quote, so the enquiry lands in your inbox while the visitor is still keen — instead of them bouncing to the next Google result. Try the live demo.

Yes — with Online Job Booking they pick a service, pick a time and confirm. The engine only offers times you’ve made available, synced against the calendar you already use (Google, Outlook or Apple), so a website can never double-book you. Confirmations, calendar invites and reminders go out automatically, which is the piece that kills no-shows. The 9pm “can someone come Thursday?” caller books Thursday instead of leaving a voicemail and ringing your competitor. Try the live demo.

The Google Reviews Booster is included in every plan — Basic at $99/month, Growth at $199/month and Growth Engine at $299/month (inc GST). The Instant Estimate widget and Online Job Booking are included in the Growth and Growth Engine plans. The full side-by-side comparison is on the pricing page.

Propeller is an Australian company that builds and hosts custom websites for small businesses — trades, local services, studios and owner-operators. The website build is free with no upfront cost, and you pay a simple monthly plan from $99 that covers hosting, support, updates and getting you found in Google and AI search. It is made for busy owners who need a professional site that wins work, without an agency-sized bill or the DIY hassle. Propeller is operated by Propeller Consulting Group.

Yes. Alongside its website plans, Propeller offers AI consulting and implementation for Australian businesses that want help putting AI to work inside the business — automating repetitive work like customer enquiries, quoting and proposals, invoicing, reporting and paperwork, with AI agents and automations built into the tools you already use, plus team training. Every engagement starts with a free discovery chat and is scoped up front. It is separate from the AI Search (AEO) service, which is about getting found and recommended in ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI.

Map where your team's hours actually go, pick one high-volume repetitive workflow, pilot it in two to four weeks wired into the tools you already use, add guardrails and a human approval step around anything customer-facing, then train the team and move to the next workflow. Working results should arrive in weeks, not quarters. The step-by-step method is in our guide, how to implement AI in your business — and Propeller’s AI consulting does the implementation for you, starting with a free discovery chat.

Published Australian rates in mid-2026 cluster around $150–$450 an hour, with day rates of $1,000–$2,500, AI audits from roughly $5,000 and advisory retainers from about $2,000 a month. The full market breakdown is in our guide, what an AI consultant does and costs in Australia. Propeller scopes every engagement up front after a free discovery chat, so the cost and expected payback are known before anything is built.

Getting started is easy and costs nothing. Send your business details through the contact form at propeller.net.au, or email hey@propeller.net.au, and Propeller builds a working demo of your new website first — so you can see exactly what you would get before deciding. If you love it, you pick a plan and we take it live, usually within 48 hours. If it is not for you, there is no obligation.