How I built a website for less than a meal in Brunei.

By Ryan Wong · Published July 2026 · 8 min read

Last year a friend asked me what it would cost to put her cafe — a small place with seven tables and a loyal walk-in crowd — on the internet. "I just want a page with our menu, our hours, and a way for people to message us," she said. "How hard is that?"

I went looking. I asked three local agencies, two freelance designers, and one platform. The cheapest quote I got was BND 1,500 for setup plus BND 80 per month. The most expensive was BND 5,000 plus BND 200 per month. The "platform" option was a DIY builder at USD 30 per month with a learning curve that, honestly, my friend didn't have time for.

She closed her laptop and asked if I could just do it. I did. The whole thing took an afternoon, cost me less than BND 50 in hosting for the year, and now her cafe has a working page that comes up when you Google "cafe Bandar Seri Begawan."

This post is what I learned from that afternoon, and why I started CRM BN to do the same thing for other Brunei businesses.

What "a website for a small business" actually means in Brunei

When a Bruneian SMB owner says they want a website, they usually mean one of three things:

• A simple page that exists — name, location, hours, a contact button. This is what 80% of cafes, salons, workshops, and small shops actually need.
• A page that shows up on Google — same as above, plus basic search metadata so customers searching for "salon near me" actually find them.
• A full marketing site — multiple pages, blog, gallery, ordering or booking integration, lead forms. This is what larger or ambitious businesses want.

Most businesses I've talked to want option 1 or 2. They're being quoted for option 3, and they're being charged for option 3 even though they don't need it.

The real cost breakdown (2026, Brunei)

I share this not to trash the agencies — some of them do excellent work for businesses that genuinely need option 3. But if you're a small cafe, salon, or workshop, you're probably being over-sold.

Why the standard pricing is the way it is

Agencies charge what they charge for two reasons. First, they have real costs: designers, project managers, hosting infrastructure, support staff. Second, their business model assumes a small number of high-margin clients, not many low-margin ones.

That works when each client is paying BND 2,000/year. It breaks when each client is paying BND 100/year. So the agencies can't serve the bottom of the market without changing their model.

CRM BN changes the model. Instead of building dashboards, training customers on content management, and offering "premium themes," we build one focused page per customer, host it ourselves, and handle small updates. The whole thing is small, so the price can be small.

What a USD 9.99/month page actually includes

For a cafe in Bandar Seri Begawan, here's what's in the page:

• Mobile-first layout — loads fast on a phone, where 90% of Bruneian customers will see it
• Your menu, services, or what you do (one section, edited monthly)
• Opening hours and address, with one-tap directions
• Click-to-call and click-to-WhatsApp buttons
• Search metadata so your business actually appears in Google results for relevant queries
• Hosted on crmbn.com — no hosting bill from you, no SSL cert to renew, no domain to maintain (unless you want a custom one)

That's it. No content management system, no analytics dashboard (unless you ask for one), no comments section, no login area, no shopping cart.

What it doesn't include (and why that's fine)

Almost every Bruneian SMB I talk to does not need:

• Custom CMS — the small update per month handles 95% of content needs
• Multiple pages — a well-designed one-page site outperforms a sprawling multi-page site for local discovery
• Blog — if you want to blog, write for free on Instagram or LinkedIn instead
• Real-time chat — WhatsApp IS the chat for Brunei. A button to it is better than any chat widget.
• Premium photography — your iPhone photos are fine for the web. Save the professional shoot for the menu.

The real question: what would you do with the savings?

If you're currently paying BND 2,000/year for a website, switching to CRM BN saves you BND 1,830/year. That's a meaningful number. Spend it on:

• Better ingredients (for cafes)
• A small ad campaign on Meta or TikTok
• One month of an extra helper during peak season
• Yourself, for an afternoon off

Or save it. Either way, it's yours to decide.

The honest limits

This isn't for every business. CRM BN is the wrong choice if you need:

• An e-commerce store with inventory and payment processing
• A booking system with calendar and staff scheduling
• A member portal with login and access control
• Custom integrations with your existing POS or ERP
• Multi-language support beyond English and Bahasa Melayu

For those, you need a custom build. We'll tell you that honestly when you ask.

How to get started

If you run a small business in Brunei (or East Malaysia — Sabah, Sarawak, Labuan) and want to see what your page would look like, the easiest path is to request a free concept preview. We prepare a one-page concept in about a day, you review it, and only then do you decide whether to activate.

No payment before approval. No setup fees. Cancel anytime.

The intro pricing — USD 9.99/month or USD 79/year — is locked for the first 500 subscribers. After that, the price will reflect what the service costs to run at that volume, which is a higher number.

That's the whole offer. If it sounds useful, the form is right there.

Ryan Wong runs CRM BN, a Brunei and East Malaysia service that builds mobile-friendly business pages for small operators. He also runs other things, mostly badly, mostly late. Reach him at sage-digital@agentmail.to if you have questions about this post.