Every UK company is on the record in Cardiff
- Companies House since 1976
- Home of Welsh tech since 2016
- Tafwyl each summer
- The capital of Wales
How Cardiff grew
The short version, in order. Pick a year.
Companies House moves to Cardiff
The register of every company in the United Kingdom relocated to Cardiff, and with it a large public-sector technology operation that has been digitising the record ever since.
Companies House moved to Cardiff in 1976
In 1976 Companies House moved its headquarters from London to Cardiff. At the time it was a paper archive. Today it is one of the largest open data operations in the country: the registered details, accounts and filing history of every company in the United Kingdom, published free, machine-readable, and used constantly by banks, journalists, credit agencies and anyone checking whether a business is real.
That is a quietly enormous piece of national internet infrastructure, and it is administered from Cardiff. Every time somebody looks up a limited company before handing over a deposit, they are querying a database that lives in this city.
It is also a useful reminder for any Welsh business: your public record is already online, whether or not your website is.
What that means if you trade in Cardiff
Cardiff is a compact capital that serves a much larger region, from the Valleys to the Vale, and its businesses often trade across a far wider area than the city boundary suggests.
It is also genuinely bilingual in public life, which raises a question most English cities never face: whether your site should speak Welsh as well.
What Cardiff businesses ask us for
Decide about Welsh
Even a bilingual heading and contact section signals that you belong here. Half-hearted translation is worse than none.
Say how far you travel
Valleys, Vale, Newport and beyond. The city name alone undersells most Cardiff businesses.
Show the company details
Company number and registered address. In the city that runs the register, it is an easy trust signal.
The tech scene here
Cardiff’s digital economy has an unusual shape because so much of it is public or broadcast. Companies House runs one of the larger government technology operations in the country from here, and the broadcasters give the city a substantial media and production base.
Around that sits a genuine startup community, most visibly at Tramshed Tech, which converted a derelict tram depot in Grangetown in 2016 and has since grown into a network across Wales.
Being a capital city of about the size Cardiff is has one clear advantage for a small business: the people who make decisions are reachable, and word travels.
Where people work
Compact, and mostly walkable from the centre.
Tramshed Tech
The original Grangetown site is 25,000 sq ft of coworking and offices in a converted tram depot, running events and hosting startups, scale-ups and larger firms since 2016.
Cardiff’s festivals
A capital city calendar, in two languages.
Tafwyl
The Welsh-language festival, held each summer at Cardiff Castle and in Bute Park. It started in 2006 outside a pub and now runs across two days in the open air.
How local businesses use their sites
It changes by trade, but the website is nearly always the first contact — and usually the only one before someone spends money.
Trades and home services
The areas you cover, photos of real jobs, and a phone number you can see without scrolling.
Clinics, salons and studios
People expect to book online rather than ring during working hours.
Shops, cafés and bars
Menus, stock, hours and location — current, and readable on a small screen.
Professional and B2B services
A lot of buying here is public sector or agency. Make it easy to check who you are and where you are.
Why FastSites works here
Cardiff is small enough that reputation moves quickly and large enough that you still have to be findable. A fast, clear one-page site does both jobs.
Live in days, price published, built for phones. Name Grangetown, Roath, Canton or Penarth and turn up when someone there searches. If you trade in Welsh as well as English, say so — it matters to a good number of your customers.
How well do you know Cardiff?
Five quick questions. Get all five right and you win a 10% off discount code for your website. Every answer is somewhere on this page, so have a read if you get stuck.
Cardiff quiz · 1 of 5
What moved to Cardiff in 1976 and holds the record of every UK company?
Common questions
The simplest one-page site starts at £15 a month, with the website build included and nothing to pay up front. Every plan and its price is published on the pricing page before you speak to anyone.
Sign-up takes about 3 minutes and the build questionnaire about 5. Most sites are then designed and built within 21 hours, and live within days of the brief being answered.
No setup fee and no hidden extras. Your monthly plan covers the website build and hosting. Done-for-you plans have a 12-month minimum term, then you can cancel any time from your dashboard.
Yes — you can upgrade at any time as your business grows, with no need to start over.