Website builder, ready template, or custom code for your RP server
Three real ways to get a server website live, what an hour of your time is actually worth in each, and the one question that decides which is right for you.
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How a community site actually needs to work names three ways to build one and picks a lane fast, because that guide is about what the site needs to contain, not how to get there. This one is the opposite: same three options, the actual tradeoffs, and the one question that tells you which fits your server.
The question to ask first
Not "which is cheapest" or "which is fastest." Ask: does this site need to show a live player count that's actually true right now, and does it need to look like it belongs to a serious community rather than a hobby project?
If the honest answer is no to both, a page builder is a defensible choice. If yes to either, that rules it out on its own, before cost or time enters the conversation at all.
Page builder (Carrd, Framer, your host's site tool)
What you get: something live in under an hour, no code, a genuinely good-looking result for a single static page.
Where it breaks: live status. A player count that means anything has to call your game server's API on every page load, which is a server-side request most page builders have no clean way to make. Showing live server status on your website covers why the naive version of this breaks in production even when you do have a backend — a page builder typically gives you no way to attempt it at all. What you get instead is a number frozen at whatever it was when you last edited the page, which is worse than not showing one.
Cost model: a recurring subscription, usually for as long as the site exists.
Right for: a server that wants a single static page — rules, a join link, an FAQ — and is genuinely fine without proof-of-life on the homepage. That's a smaller group than most people building one assume they're in.
A ready template built for RP servers
What you get: the specific pieces an RP community site needs, already built and already solving the problems above: a live status widget wired to FiveM's actual APIs with the caching and staleness handling that a first attempt usually gets wrong, a rules/FAQ/legal page structure, multi-language support if your community needs it. RPWebsite, the template this site sells, is one example — the setup walkthrough takes about an hour from an empty folder to a deployed site.
Where it's a worse fit: a community with a genuinely unusual structural need — a bespoke member portal, an in-house economy dashboard, anything past "content, status, and the standard pages." A template is configuration, not a blank canvas.
Cost model: one-time. $99-249 for RPWebsite depending on license tier, then hosting, which is commonly free-tier (Vercel's free plan fits a community site's traffic comfortably).
Right for: most servers. This is the option that exists specifically because "rebuild the same handful of pages every RP community needs, from nothing, every time" was the actual gap.
Custom code
What you get: exactly what you specify, with no constraint from a template's structure.
What it actually costs: a developer, either your time or someone else's, and — this is the part that's easy to discount going in — ongoing maintenance that is now entirely yours. A template's status-widget edge cases, caching bugs, and API changes get fixed once for everyone using it. A custom build's equivalent bugs are yours alone to find and fix.
Cost model: hours of skilled time, which for a working live-status widget and the standard page set realistically starts in the hundreds of dollars if you're paying for it, or is free in cash and expensive in time if you're building it yourself — see what a FiveM server actually costs to start for where this sits against the other options.
Right for: a community whose needs are genuinely past what configuration can express. Not "we want it to look different" — a template's theme options usually cover that — but a structural feature no template ships.
The short version
- Page builder — under an hour, ongoing subscription, no real live status.
- Ready template — about an hour of configuration, one-time payment, live status included and already handling the cases that break in production.
- Custom code — days to weeks, a developer's time plus ongoing maintenance, live status only as good as what gets built and kept working.
If you already know a template is the answer, the full setup walkthrough is the next page to read.