How We Built Pet Friendly House: The Tools, Hosting, and Software Behind Our Website

One of the questions we receive most often at Pet Friendly House is, “What do you use to build and run your website?”

Many people assume websites like ours are built by teams of developers or backed by large companies. The reality is much simpler.

Like many website owners, I learned most of what I know through trial and error. Over the years I’ve watched countless YouTube tutorials, taken online courses, experimented with different software, and occasionally hired freelancers when I found myself stuck.

When I first started building websites, I made plenty of mistakes. I spent far too much time searching for the perfect theme, testing different hosting companies, and worrying about design details that ultimately didn’t matter nearly as much as publishing quality content.

Over the years I’ve tried numerous hosting providers, dozens of themes, and more plugins than I can count. Some lasted a few days. Some lasted a few months. A handful became permanent parts of our workflow.

The tools listed below are the ones that have stood the test of time for us.

Before we begin, it’s important to note that Pet Friendly House is not paid to recommend any of the companies or products mentioned in this article. These are simply the tools we currently use and the services we’ve had positive experiences with.

If you’re thinking about starting a pet website, pet blog, rescue organization website, or any type of animal-related online business, this article will give you a realistic look at what’s worked for us.

Elementor Pro: The Most Important Tool We Use

If WordPress is the foundation of our website, Elementor Pro is the framework that powers almost everything visitors see.

When I first started building websites, I spent countless hours searching for the perfect WordPress theme. Every theme looked fantastic in the demo. Then I’d install it and quickly discover limitations.

Maybe I wanted to change a layout. Maybe I wanted to move a section. Maybe the mobile version didn’t look right. No matter what theme I chose, I always seemed to run into restrictions.

Eventually I discovered Elementor.

Instead of adapting my website to fit a theme, I could build the website exactly the way I wanted.

That’s when things changed.

Today I can create custom pages, landing pages, category layouts, headers, footers, and mobile-specific designs without needing a developer every time I want to make a change.

While Elementor offers a free version, I strongly recommend the Pro version for anyone serious about building a website. The additional flexibility is worth the investment.

Some of the features we use regularly include:

Theme Builder
Header and Footer Builder
Dynamic Templates
Popup Builder
Mobile Design Controls
Forms and Integrations
Custom Layout Design

The biggest advantage is freedom.

If I decide tomorrow that I want to completely redesign a section of Pet Friendly House, I can usually do it myself.

Looking back, Elementor Pro is probably the single software purchase that has had the greatest impact on the growth and development of our website.

WPX Hosting: The Service I Recommend Most Often

If Elementor is the backbone of our design, WPX Hosting is the backbone of our infrastructure.

Hosting is one of those things most website owners don’t think much about until something goes wrong.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly when you find out whether your hosting company is any good.

Over the years I’ve used several hosting providers. Some were decent. Some were frustrating. Some seemed more interested in upselling services than solving problems.

For the past several years we’ve used WPX Hosting, and it’s become one of the easiest recommendations I can make.

The biggest reason is support.

WPX advertises incredibly fast support response times, often claiming responses in under a minute through live chat.

In my experience, they’ve consistently delivered.

Many of the support requests I’ve submitted over the years involved problems I created myself. Plugin conflicts, broken settings, caching issues, updates gone wrong—you name it.

Every time I’ve reached out, the support team has responded quickly and helped solve the problem.

As someone who occasionally breaks things while trying to improve them, that’s incredibly valuable.

The second reason is reliability.

Our website is available 24 hours a day to readers around the world. Downtime isn’t something we want to worry about, and WPX has proven to be extremely reliable.

They’re not the cheapest hosting company you’ll find online, but in my experience the combination of speed, reliability, and customer support more than justifies the cost.

If I were launching a brand-new pet website tomorrow, WPX would be one of my first purchases.

Website: https://elementor.com/

What I Would Do If I Were Starting Again Today

One advantage of running websites for years is that you eventually learn what matters and what doesn’t.

If I were starting Pet Friendly House from scratch today, I would keep things much simpler than I did originally.

I would:

Register a domain name.
Purchase reliable hosting. – https://elementor.com/
Install WordPress. – https://wordpress.org/
Install Elementor Pro. – https://elementor.com/
Add Rank Math or Yoast SEO. – https://rankmath.com/ or https://yoast.com/
Install Wordfence. – https://www.wordfence.com/
Set up Google Analytics.
Publish content consistently.

What I would not do is spend weeks obsessing over logos, fonts, colours, themes, or tiny design details.

Looking back, I spent far too much time trying to make the website perfect before I had enough content published.

The reality is that content is what drives traffic.

A simple website with excellent content will almost always outperform a beautiful website with very little content.

Many new website owners focus on design first and content second.

I would reverse that order.

Build a clean website, make sure it loads quickly, and then focus your energy on creating useful content that helps your audience.

That’s ultimately what helped Pet Friendly House grow.

Fiverr: One of the Best Investments You Can Make

One lesson I’ve learned over the years is that sometimes it’s cheaper to hire an expert than spend an entire weekend trying to solve a problem yourself.

Fiverr has saved me countless hours.

One recent example involved problems with our mega menu and mobile navigation. I spent time trying to figure it out myself before deciding to hire someone.

Within about an hour the issue was fixed, and the freelancer even added some custom CSS improvements that made the site look better than before.

Whether you need help with WordPress, Elementor, coding, logo design, graphics, SEO, or troubleshooting technical problems, Fiverr can be an excellent resource.

Sometimes the smartest thing a website owner can do is recognize when it’s time to bring in someone who already knows the answer.

Website: https://www.fiverr.com/

In closing

Building a successful pet website is easier today than it was when I started.

The tools are better. Hosting is faster. Educational resources are everywhere. You can learn almost anything through YouTube, online courses, communities, and AI tools.

The biggest challenge isn’t finding the perfect plugin or the perfect theme.

The biggest challenge is getting started and consistently publishing helpful content.

At Pet Friendly House, WordPress, Elementor Pro, and WPX Hosting form the foundation of everything we do. The other tools simply help us work more efficiently.

If you’re considering building a pet website of your own, don’t wait until everything is perfect. Publish your first article, learn as you go, and improve things over time.

That’s exactly how Pet Friendly House started.