Manchester taught computers to remember
- First stored-program computer, 1948
- World’s first intercity railway, 1830
- Biggest tech economy outside London
- Home of MediaCityUK
How Manchester grew
Canals, then railways, then computers. Pick a year.
The Bridgewater Canal
The first British canal that did not simply follow a river. It brought the Duke of Bridgewater’s coal straight into town and halved the price of it, which set off fifty years of canal building across the country.
The first computer that could remember a program
In 1948, in a lab at Manchester University, a machine everyone called the Baby did something no computer had done before. It ran a program held in its own memory. The job took 52 minutes: find the largest factor of a number.
Before that, a computer had to be rewired by hand every time you wanted it to do something new. Freddie Williams, Tom Kilburn and Geoff Tootill built one you could simply tell what to do. Every phone and laptop since works the way the Baby did.
Ferranti then turned the design into a machine it could actually sell, so Manchester gave the world the first commercial computer too.
What that means if you sell in Manchester
Manchester did not just take up computing, it worked out how it should work — and the city has never quite lost the confidence that came with that. Between MediaCityUK, a big agency scene and customers who have been buying online for twenty-five years, the bar for what a website should look like is high.
That bar is set by companies far bigger than yours. The useful question is how a two-van firm or a single clinic looks just as trustworthy, without waiting four months for a build.
What Manchester businesses ask us for
Say which areas you cover
A plumber in Chorlton is not chasing work in Bolton. Listing your areas saves everyone a phone call.
Be easy to reach
A lot of people come to us because their old web company stopped replying. Put your phone number where nobody has to hunt for it.
Show real work
Photos of jobs you have actually done beat stock images. Manchester spots a template a mile off.
The tech scene here
Manchester has the biggest tech economy in the UK outside London. Not a branded one — a working one: online retail, data, fintech, cyber security, media and a lot of agencies, all in a city centre you can walk across. The Oxford Road Corridor puts both universities, the hospitals and Manchester Science Park on the same road, so skilled people are never far away.
For a small business the effect is simple. Your customers already book and buy online, and the firms next to you already look the part. An old website here is not just untidy — it is missing from the searches where the work comes from.
Tech events
There is a proper calendar here, not one conference a year.
Manchester Tech Festival
An independent festival across the city, funded by the community. Talks, workshops and socials, run by and for people who actually do the work.
Digital Skills Festival
Run by Manchester Digital, the region’s trade body, and the biggest of its kind in the North. Its Talent Day pulls in thousands of people looking at careers in tech.
What the hubs run
Manchester Science Park, The Federation and Barclays Eagle Labs each put on their own talks, clinics and meet-ups through the year.
Manchester’s festivals
The tech calendar sits inside a much bigger one. Manchester runs a genuine year-round festival scene, and every one of these has run for years — tap a name for its official site.
Manchester International Festival
A biennial festival of new, original work across theatre, music, dance and visual art, produced by Factory International at Aviva Studios.
Manchester Pride
One of the longest-running Pride events in the country, taking over the city over the August bank holiday weekend.
Parklife
A two-day music festival at Heaton Park each June, and one of the biggest metropolitan festivals in the UK.
Manchester Jazz Festival
The city’s longest-running music festival, formed in 1996, spanning free and ticketed gigs each spring.
Manchester Literature Festival
Author talks, poetry and book launches across the city’s venues each October.
Manchester Animation Festival
Billed as the UK’s largest animation festival, held each November.
Where people work
Most of it sits in two places — the Oxford Road Corridor to the south, and the Northern Quarter and Ancoats to the north-east.
Manchester Science Park
Bruntwood SciTech’s main campus: offices, labs, workshop space and desks, plus help for companies trying to grow. The Bright Building is its shared space and events venue.
Circle Square and Manchester Technology Centre
Two more Bruntwood SciTech sites in town, aimed at tech firms taking their first proper office.
The Federation
Desks, an events space and a podcast studio in Federation House on Balloon Street, built around the Co-op’s digital team and run on co-operative values.
Barclays Eagle Labs
Desks and a busy events programme, and the base for a Greater Manchester cyber security project with Plexal, Lancaster University and the University of Manchester.
MediaCityUK
The broadcast and production cluster on the water at Salford Quays.
Companies that started here
Auto Trader runs the UK’s biggest car marketplace from the city centre. THG sells Lookfantastic, Cult Beauty and Myprotein on software it built itself. Matillion, which moves data into the cloud for big companies, was founded here, and AccessPay builds the software that connects company finance systems to their banks. Peak, an AI firm grown in Manchester, was bought by the Nasdaq-listed UiPath.
Behind the names sit hundreds of agencies, studios and freelancers. That is why the bar for design and speed is high here — and why a tired website stands out.
Meet-ups worth knowing
Manchester Web Meetup is the obvious one if you are having a site built. Two or three talks an evening on how websites are actually made, somewhere in town, free to turn up to. Manchester Digital connects employers, agencies and freelancers across the region, and the places above all run their own regular events.
The upshot: good advice travels fast here. You can get a straight answer about what your website needs without hiring anyone.
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. Most people are on a phone, halfway through a problem.
Clinics, salons and studios
People expect to book online. If they have to ring during working hours, they book somewhere else.
Shops, cafés and bars
Menus, stock, opening hours and where you are — all current, all readable on a small screen. This is where being found locally is won or lost.
Professional services
Say plainly what you do, name the people who do it, and answer the question the customer actually typed in.
Why FastSites works here
Manchester expects a website to look right before it trusts you, and that expectation is set by companies with budgets you cannot match. We close the gap: a smart one-page site, live in days, at a price you can see before you talk to anyone.
It is built for phones, because that is where your customers are. It is built light, because a slow page does not get read or ranked. And it is written so you can name your areas — Chorlton, Ancoats, Didsbury, Salford — and turn up in the searches that actually bring work in. No retainer, no four-month wait, and no agency you cannot get hold of afterwards.
Manchester, neighbourhood by neighbourhood
Manchester is not one place. Each part of it has its own history, its own trade and its own kind of customer.
How well do you know Manchester?
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.
Manchester quiz · 1 of 5
Manchester built the first computer that could store its own program. What was it nicknamed?
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.