You've done the hard part — the NIE appointments, the autónomo registration, the gestor who answers in voice notes. Now your business needs to exist online, and Spain adds a few local twists that most "how to make a website" guides skip entirely. This is the website checklist for starting a business in Spain: the practical layer, from domain choice to the legal texts nobody reads but everybody needs. One disclaimer before we start: this is practical experience, not legal advice — for the legal fine print, that gestor of yours earns their fee.
1. The domain: .es or .com?
Short answer: if your customers are in Spain, .es signals local and ranks fine locally; if you'll sell across borders, .com keeps doors open. Can't decide? Register both (each runs €10–15/year) and point one at the other — cheaper than a coffee subscription and it blocks squatters.
Two rules that matter more than the extension:
- Register it yourself, in your own name, at any mainstream registrar. Don't let "the web guy" own your address — it's the single most common lock-in we see, and untangling it later ranges from awkward to hopeless.
- Skip hyphens and clever spellings. If you have to spell it out loud twice, it's wrong.
2. Hosting: boring is correct
For a small business site you don't need Spanish hosting for speed — you need a reputable host with EU data centers (nice for GDPR optics and latency both). What actually matters is whose account it sits in: yours, with the provider handover documented. Cost of decent hosting in 2026: from a few euros to ~€20/month; a static site like ours hosts practically free.
3. The legal texts (LSSI + GDPR, in human words)
Spanish law (the LSSI, on top of EU GDPR) expects any commercial website to state plainly who operates it. In practice, a compliant small-business site carries:
- Aviso legal — who you are: name, NIF/NIE or company details, contact address. Yes, even as autónomo.
- Política de privacidad — what personal data you collect (a contact form counts!), why, and how people can exercise their rights.
- Cookie consent — only if you actually set non-essential cookies. Here's a liberating thought: a lean site with no tracking scripts needs no cookie banner at all. Fewer trackers, fewer banners, faster site.
Fines for missing basics exist and start in four figures, but the realistic risk for a small business is simpler: looking improvised to the very customers you're trying to convince. Template texts adapted to your details cover the standard cases — and for anything beyond standard (health data, minors, e-commerce), that's your gestor or a lawyer, not a blog post.
4. Multilingual from day one — or not?
The default expat instinct is "Spanish AND English, obviously." Sometimes right, sometimes double the content for 5% of visitors. The honest test: which language do your paying customers search in? A beach-town rental service: yes, bilingual from day one. A neighborhood service business in a Spanish city: Spanish first, add English when the analytics ask for it. We wrote a full piece on doing multilingual properly — including why machine-translated sites quietly repel the natives they're meant to attract.
Whatever you choose, choose per audience, not per vanity. Every language is content you must write, maintain and keep consistent.
5. Contact points that survive invoicing
Small, Spain-specific, painful when missed: your site's contact details should match your registered business data. The email on the site should be one you actually check (not the Gmail you made for the NIE process), the phone should have WhatsApp — in Spain it is the business channel, roughly 90% of our inbound conversations start there — and if you invoice B2B, display the legal name and NIF somewhere findable, because Spanish clients will ask for a proper factura and check.
6. The launch-week extras that cost nothing
- Google Business Profile — free, and for local businesses more urgent than the website itself.
- A professional email on your domain (hola@yourbusiness.es beats yourbusiness2024@gmail.com in every quote you send).
- WhatsApp Business — catalog, hours, auto-reply. Free, five minutes, disproportionate payoff.
When you don't need any of this yet
If you're still validating — no registered activity, no paying customers — don't buy a domain portfolio and a website. An Instagram profile and a WhatsApp number test your idea for €0. This checklist is for the moment real money starts moving and looking improvised starts costing you. (What a site costs when that moment comes: real 2026 prices in Spain.)
Frequently asked questions
Do I legally need a website as an autónomo?
No — no law requires a website. The law only regulates the site once you have one (the LSSI texts above). Plenty of autónomos run on Google Business Profile + WhatsApp for years; the website becomes worth it when customers search for your service and find competitors instead.
Can I write the legal texts myself?
For a standard services site — adapted templates with your real data are common practice and vastly better than nothing. The trap is copying another site's texts verbatim, wrong details included. If you handle sensitive data or sell online, budget for proper advice.
Should the site be in Spanish even if my clients are all expats?
Then English first — your customers' language wins, always. But consider a Spanish version anyway if you depend on any Spanish-speaking counterparties: suppliers, landlords, town halls. Being findable and readable locally has second-order benefits that don't show in analytics.
The short version
Domain in your name (€10–15/year), hosting in your account, the three legal texts adapted to your data, languages chosen by where the money comes from, contact details that match your invoices, and the free trio — Google profile, domain email, WhatsApp Business. That's a launch-ready web presence in Spain. If you want it built properly in a week with everything above included, our fixed prices are on the pricing page — and if you just want your current setup sanity-checked, send us the link on WhatsApp; the checklist review costs nothing.