Build and Host a Website on ICP With AI: Cost and Setup

Short answer: the Internet Computer (ICP) is the best place I have found to host a website, and building it with an AI tool like Claude Code is the fastest way to get it there. Hosting a normal creator or small business site costs me less than $10 a month; the real cost is the AI subscription while you build. You will end up in a terminal, but less than you expect.

In Editing My ICP Website in Claude Live I record the workflow itself. I dictate a prompt into ChatGPT: shrink the top picture on my date page, shorten the first block, drop the repetitive quotes, swap these photos, keep the Internet Computer one. I paste that text into Claude Code and hit enter. With remote control, I pick five better photos on my phone and drop them into the session. Claude edits the page, checks the photos rendered, and quick-syncs only the changed assets to the ICP canister, with no identity to unlock. The date page was live again before I finished recording. The first iteration was decent, not perfect, so I tell it the next round, as I did for my coaching page and sales dashboard.

That post also answers why ICP instead of Google Cloud: my site cannot be canceled if I annoy somebody at a hosting company, it has blockchain security behind it, and I sign in with Internet Identity. A second uploader identity does the syncing, so a compromised computer cannot touch my main one. When my PC was compromised I wiped it; the project lived on another drive, I made a fresh Internet Identity, and the site never went down.

It has survived an attack too: hundreds of fake checkout orders meant to waste my cycles. The site stayed up, the attack cost about $2 of cycles, and Claude Fable closed that vector in minutes, plus a few more it found. The story is in A Troll Attacked My ICP Website. Here's What Happened. On WordPress I would have been patching plugins; on Shopify, paying far more for managed security without the customization my store needs; on Replit or Lovable, data, code and computation scattered across Web2 services instead of one smart contract. The target was the Jerry Banfield 2026 Founding 50 shirt preorder, with up to 50 buyers' names on the shirt. AI built the page in about an hour, plus about 30 minutes to add crypto payments with a discount for paying in JBBJ on ICP or JERRY on Robinhood. The spam showed up as impossible numbers on that page.

For about ten years I ran jerrybanfield.com on WordPress with Elementor, Astra, WooCommerce and LearnDash, paying $100 a month for Kinsta hosting so a viral week would not crash it. WordPress Sucks Compared to ICP explains why I stopped. In June I deleted my Caffeine AI version and rebuilt the site in Claude Code, served from ICP through the command line; ICP and Claude Code Is the Best Web Hosting Setup Online reported a PageSpeed score of about 98 on mobile. In July Launch Your Website on ICP turned that into a ten-step guide from installing Ubuntu on Windows through a custom domain: start static, and add backend canisters only when you need logins, payments or user data. In August I Built My Entire Website on ICP With AI showed a chat room, store, games and Stripe and ICP payments on one site, a snapshot from when parts of the store still needed testing. The October and November posts are the ones I trust most for a typical small business, which needs no WooCommerce, theme stack or plugin pile.

Cost: ICP charges per visit rather than a fixed fee. My site has 2,000 to 3,000 assets (pages, images and URLs), and with thousands of visitors a day it still costs under $10 a month in cycles. Quick sync helps: canisters do not like a full sync of 2,000 objects, so only changed posts and assets go up. The AI is the bigger line item, at least a $100-a-month Claude or ChatGPT plan to build the site. I pay for the $200 plan, run edits on extra-high effort for better pages, and use it for everything else, so the site costs me nothing extra; once built, a cheaper plan may do. Set your canisters up carefully and watch the balance, since an attacker could try to drain cycles.

You do not need to be a developer. The guide walks through each command, and Claude or ChatGPT can explain any error. Keep the project in Git to undo bad changes, and never paste a seed phrase, private key or recovery phrase into an AI tool. Internet Identity and a funded wallet take patience, not skill; after that the daily work is just talking. If you would rather have me walk you through installing the Claude command line, book a call with me.

I stay for resilience and control. My site is replicated across a subnet of, I believe, 13 machines, so at least seven would have to fail before it went offline.

All the posts follow in full, newest first, with a contents list. For the plain-English basics, read What is the Internet Computer? Weighing a no-code builder against Claude Code? My notes on Caffeine AI cover that. For a straight answer about your own site, get a personal video review at jerrybanfield.com/review/.

Editing My ICP Website in Claude Live (November 6, 2026)
A Troll Attacked My ICP Website. Here's What Happened. (October 31, 2026)
WordPress Sucks Compared to ICP (October 13, 2026)
Build and Host a Website on ICP With AI: Cost and Setup (August 11, 2026)
Launch Your Website on ICP (July 17, 2026)
ICP and Claude Code Is the Best Web Hosting Setup Online (June 13, 2026)

Editing My ICP Website in Claude Live

From my video published November 6, 2026.

Showing the real workflow instead of talking about it

If you want to see why ICP is the most incredible thing in crypto, I am going to show you right now how I actually work with Claude. You could use ChatGPT Codex to do the same thing. I talk a lot about what I do on my website and how it is hosted on ICP, as anyone who read I Can't Stop Marketing ICP (Even If I Want To) already knows, but I do not usually show it. This time I am going to walk through the actual workflow in real time, exactly as I do it.

The first thing that is so cool is that jerrybanfield.com is built on ICP, and I have used Claude to build it out through the command line. Maybe in a future video I will show how to actually install the command line, install Claude and get all of that done, but I already have it installed. Here I am going to show how I use it, and then maybe we will do the installation walkthrough in the future. What I want to find is something on my website I want to change, and you will be amazed at the capabilities, at everything that can be done this way.

One cool thing I have done is build out a dashboard that shows all the sales, in all the different currencies, that I have made on my website over the last month. Things like that are super easy to do and super easy to update because the site is built on ICP. I just said, make me a dashboard with all the sales so I can show off how people have paid and exactly what people have bought on my website, and it exists.

Dictating the changes to my date page

The first thing I want to start with is fixing a page on my website, making it better. I just put the jerrybanfield.com/date page back up, and I want to make this page better, because it could be better. Here is how I do it, and it is super cool. All I need to do is go into the AI and start talking to it. I just talk off the top of my head. This is what I said, more or less word for word:

"What I'd like to do now is revise the jerrybanfield.com/date page so that it looks better. The picture at the top is too large. The First Virtual Date with me section is a little bit too long right here. I want you to remove the 'want a coaching call' line from that first block. Take away this picture of me in a jacket; I'll give you a different picture to replace it. Good job linking these different posts. I like how the button looks on that one. Let's take out the pictures with the dogs and the BOSU ball, and I'll put some different pictures in there for you to use instead. Now, there are too many Ashley Cummings quotes on here, so just remove that whole quote section because it's a bit repetitive. Update the line that I spent $7,500 on matchmaking and got zero second dates. Take out this picture of me in the pink shirt; it looks tacky, very tacky. What is this picture? It's funny that women have actually requested dates, and I've talked to them, off this page. Take off the Hogwarts picture too, but the Internet Computer one is nice. Let's make those updates to the page, and I'll give you the pictures."

Then I stop. I stopped the transcript. I actually captured that audio prompt in ChatGPT, which turned my talking into text, and then I took the text out of there. I went over to the Claude Code command line, where I can also show how this worked on a previous page, and I pasted that exact text in and hit enter. It is going to do almost everything else by itself.

Dropping in better pictures from my laptop and my phone

The one thing I still needed to do was give it some better pictures. My plan was to drag some better pictures into the project folder. I did not record the part where I went through all my photos, because it took me a shockingly long time. There are a lot of photos in there, including some I should probably go through and delete, and some that definitely do not belong on a dating page. I could even put videos on there if I wanted to, but I was not going to do that. I found a picture I liked that was already on the page, for goodness' sake, and I started to think I was not going to be able to drag anything in during the recording itself.

Here is what is super cool, though. I can jump off my computer entirely, because I have this set up via remote control. It is set up so that I can go on my laptop, where it is easier to access my photos and the library is not all garbaged up with a bunch of screenshots I have taken, and just drag the files into my Claude web interface, and it drops them straight into the session. I have /remote-control already set up on here. Maybe it was not active before, but it was active now, and I got a notification confirming it. That means I can literally go straight to my phone, and my phone is a lot more organized. I would probably be better off doing this from the phone anyway.

So I went through the photos on my phone, into collections, into favorites, and picked a picture of me from yoga, shirtless, a picture of me hugging my son, and a picture of me in a shirt in my office. I added those photos to the session and told it to use these, and the prompt came through on the computer with the images attached. I just stuck those images in from my phone, then went back and picked a couple more. I had a nice tennis photo too, so I grabbed the picture of me at tennis at sunset and one more tennis picture and fired those last two over straight from my phone. By the end, all five photos popped up in the project. I do not fully understand how I did that the first time, but this is my exact workflow, and the fact that the technology can just do this is incredible. The photos go in, it converts them and does everything it needs to do, and it was working on that in the background while I kept talking.

One setting matters here. I set the effort to extra high, because then it really takes its time and thinks about the page instead of just turning out some slop. I have the $200 a month plan, the top tier, so I can afford to let it think.

The coaching page: before and after

While it worked, I went back to show how this looked on a page I did before. I had my website set up with a coach page at jerrybanfield.com/coach. So if you go to jerrybanfield.com and click work with me as your coach, I'm here to help you with life, with business, with AI. I can coach all of that. Obviously AI and business are the big ones right now, but we can talk dating, health, money, relationships, all of it. I love that. So schedule a call with me at jerrybanfield.com and talk with me about all kinds of things. You just click on the button and it is done.

Earlier, that page was all garbaged up. To give you an idea of what it looked like, for some reason Claude made something that looked kind of sloppy, and I did not like it. The before and after on that page is a testament to what happens when I just go in with my voice. The last version was so trashed that it had this "business coach" block while I was making the coaching page, and it just looked bad. So I went into the command line interface and said, let's update the coaching page. I pasted some principles and said, this is how it should look. I posted the instructions, this is what I want to do. Then I thought, that is not that great, so I actually skipped that last version and pasted in a simpler set of instructions to make it more basic. Then I pasted another image in so it would have some reference. And it just cranked out this updated coaching page. Look how nice it made it look when I simply gave it instructions. It cleaned up all the extra text, I looked at it, and now it is a proper sales page.

The reason this works so well is that my whole website is already in the project. Claude can go through and read all my other content, which makes it a superpower. It allows me to make sales pages with long-format detail, because it already knows everything I have written and can pull from it. And the page actually sells: lately people click schedule a call and it goes straight into checkout, and you can pay with ICP or you can pay directly with JBBJ. That is the kind of thing that convinced me, as I explained in AI Can Make You a Millionaire If You Change How You Think, that the right way to use these tools is to describe what you want and let them build it.

Watching the console do the work

Back in the console, it was doing everything it needed to do to get the date page updated. I pulled up the dating page one more time so I could compare before I stopped and showed what it looks like after it is done. What you will be amazed by is how easy it is to just talk to this and have it update the page. It is totally customizable and controllable. Those photos I wanted to get rid of, those quotes, I just tell it to fix that, and then I look at the result. I can also tell you how long it had to work on this, and what is cool is that every single thing I did to make the fix is right there in the transcript. That is it. I did not do anything else.

Basically, I have built almost my entire website just by doing this. This is what Dominic Williams is talking about with the future of the self-writing internet, and it is a big part of why I wrote ICP Is the Only Real AI Coin in Crypto. The dashboard page is one example: I said make me a dashboard with all the sales so I can show off how people have paid and exactly what people have bought, and it built it.

Another example is the comeback tour shirt. I just said, make me a comeback tour shirt, and now there is a product page for it. Nine of those have been bought already, and there are 41 spots left, so you can have your name on a shirt that I will be wearing, a shirt that also says Jerry Banfield. There is one more spot on the front and 49 more spots on the back, and there are three more weeks until this closes.

Grab a shirt, and approve the orders I forgot

So you can hop in and grab one of those shirts if you want me going around with your name on it. While I was looking at the page I realized I had not approved a couple of the orders yet. Whoops. I went and did that right away.

This is exactly how the whole thing works. I know it might seem intimidating, but it is super easy, and Claude Fable is so smart. You can build so much with this. Whatever you can think of and describe practically, it can code it and then build it. You just have to be able to take screenshots and talk exactly about what you want: okay, I don't like this, I do like that, move that. Sometimes it takes a few iterations, but it is amazing how quickly it usually gets things right on the very first try.

The same tool runs my video workflow

I also do my video workflow with this. All my blog posts have been built out this way. When I finish a video like this one, I drag it into a folder on the JBAI machine, inside the Claude projects, called Long Videos. I just drop the file into that folder, the video goes straight in, and it cranks out a metadata file. A well-done metadata file is something I can copy and paste straight into my YouTube video, which is so much easier than writing it by hand. It uploads as chapters in all my videos, it has all the keywords written in, which helps the video show up in search and in suggested videos, and it takes the first frame out as the thumbnail. So this helps me with my YouTube workflow too.

And it constantly expands the website. I have a page on my website for my JERRY meme coin, and that page keeps every video I do about JERRY. Each new video gets added to it, so the page just gets bigger and more gets added to it over time. It also has a pay with JERRY, get 10% off offer built in. This is incredible, what this tech can do.

Why it has to be ICP and not Google Cloud

It is essential to have ICP as part of this, because I do not know what other infrastructure I would put it on. I would not want this on Google Cloud. I want it on ICP so it is much more resilient. My website cannot just get canceled if I annoy somebody at Google. It has the whole blockchain security behind it. My Internet Identity signs straight into my website. And I have a second identity too, one that does the uploading, so even if something happens with my computer and the identity used for uploads gets compromised, it does not mess with my main identity. That is a really nice setup, and after what I went through in I'm Building My Business on ICP After Getting Hacked, it is the only setup I trust.

The one thing to keep in mind is that if you put this on extra effort, it can take quite a while. You generally get better output, so it is worth it, but plan for the wait. And while it ran I was not doing anything. It was just telling me what it was doing: running the edits, checking them, confirming that all five photos were rendered in place, and syncing the page. I might even be able to get away with just talking straight through the whole job.

Quick sync straight to the ICP blockchain

Right now I have it set up so it automatically quick syncs straight to the ICP blockchain. I do not have to go into anything and tell it what to do. I do not have to paste anything. I do not have to unlock an identity. I do not have to do any of that. It automatically syncs my new website.

One problem I had is that the canisters do not like to sync over 2,000 different objects at once if you run a full sync on them. So Claude built a script that quick syncs only the exact posts that changed on my website and the exact assets that changed, and sends those straight to the ICP blockchain. That minimizes the cycles I use, which matters because cycles are real money that gets burned, as I went through in Internet Computer (ICP) Burn and Revenue: Is It Real?, and it is much faster than redeploying the entire canister. It is amazing how fast it finishes. When I first went over to the date page it looked like it had not synced yet, but it was going to be done any minute.

If you want help with this, go to jerrybanfield.com. Once you get the command line interface set up and the identity set up, that is the hardest part. Once that is in place, this is really easy to keep using. I have been using it for a couple of days on a fresh machine, because my PC got compromised and I wiped it. The project was on a different drive, so I was able to keep going. I just had to put in a brand new Internet Identity to keep this running, and then everything carried on.

The result: the page refreshed live

It finished revising while I was still talking. I cut the recording to time it, and I could have just kept talking for literally two more minutes, because that is all it needed. Then I refreshed the page and looked at it in real time.

I am not sure this is as nice an improvement as I want yet, but this is the iteration. It shrunk the header picture, and in doing that it made the top look a little weird. It did some things I liked, and I think we are going to need to go back and forth, but compared to that huge header picture I had before, I think this is a bit of an improvement. Reading through it, "I'd love to meet you, first virtual date," all right. It does not explain why I charge for it. Maybe I do not need to explain why I charge for it, or maybe it explains that later. The new pictures up top are better, and I can see it put all the photos in, which is nice. One of them turned out to be a picture of me giving my ex-wife a kiss, so I want that one out. I did get a date off that photo on Hinge, with the hottest woman I have gone out with on Hinge so far, but it still needs to go. So I do the same thing again: I go back and tell it more changes to make, and at some point the page will get locked in exactly right and I will be really happy with it. Then I will be talking to a woman and have to change it all again.

If you want to build a website on ICP, this workflow is incredible. It works really well, it hardly costs anything in cycles, it is super resilient, and it is easy to use. That is the reason I went all in on the Internet Computer in the first place. People keep asking to see an actual workflow and what it actually looks like, and this is it. There is plenty more like this in my ICP Crypto playlist. Thank you for reading, and I am ready to coach you at jerrybanfield.com/coach.

A Troll Attacked My ICP Website. Here's What Happened.

From my video published October 31, 2026.

My website is hosted on ICP at jerrybanfield.com, and today somebody went in and put in hundreds of fake checkout orders on my website, just trying to spam it and waste my cycles. People have tested a bunch of other things on my website to try and attack it too. I am grateful that because the site is hosted on ICP, there is a whole bunch of attack vectors that are automatically blocked in the first place, and the fix was real easy. I went into Claude Fable and said, what happened? Fix it. It was in the process of fixing it while I recorded this, and not only did it fix the attack vector this dummy used to place all those fake orders, it found a few more and fixed all of those too. Great job, by the way. You wasted $2 in cycles out of my ICP wallet.

If this site were hosted somewhere else, I would not have the easy flexibility to just go in and fix it, and that is what is so great about this setup. It is so easy. I probably should not show the exact vulnerabilities and what got fixed, so I will leave those out, but my Claude just cranked out all the fixes for it. The question I want to answer here is why ICP matters in this equation, and what the alternatives are. I went through my own version of this question after I got hacked on my old setup, as I shared in I'm Building My Business on ICP After Getting Hacked, and today was the first real-world test of the result.

Why ICP matters when someone attacks your site

ICP, to begin with, is preventatively blocking a bunch of attacks on my website. For example, if I hosted this on WordPress, there would be all kinds of plugins and all kinds of attack vectors, and I would have to constantly be updating every single plugin all the time. One little attack vector could leave my whole website displaying God knows what if one person snuck in on the admin. Instead, I sign in directly on ICP, straight through the blockchain, on this website. So I am already preventing a whole bunch of things on the front end before anybody even gets to the parts that Claude patched today. I went deeper on what can and cannot be hacked on the Internet Computer in ICP Security: Can the Internet Computer Be Hacked?, and this attack played out exactly the way I hoped it would.

If I hosted this on something like Shopify, which a lot of people use for their websites, that already has a lot of managed security built in. But it does not have the customization, and the customization is what I really want. It is also much more expensive. What is really cool about what I am doing at jerrybanfield.com is that I have my own shop, and the store was updating itself with the fixes even as I was talking about it. In that shop are the Jerry Banfield 2026 Comeback Store shirts. This is something that would be difficult to build out very easily and quickly in Shopify, because it is a custom product that is a preorder. If you want a Jerry Banfield shirt with your name on it, the Founding 50 shirt is how you do that, and in fact the shirt I had on while recording is on there as well. I will sell you the shirt off my back.

So I have built something on my website that is really cool, and if I were in something like WordPress, it would be a nightmare to put it in there. In Shopify, I do not know that I could customize it this easily alongside all the other stuff I am selling on my website. I would also have very little control over things like page speed. They would have security, sure. Meanwhile, I just used AI to build on ICP, and it only took me an hour or so to have AI design the basic shirt and then have AI build the entire page out, where you get a Founding 50 shirt with your name printed on the back. There is at least one, if not a couple of people from the ICP community already in the Founding 50.

How I noticed the attack

I noticed this attack today because when I went up to the top of the shirt page, it said four shirts had been sold, yet it also said 43 spots were taken and the Founding Five were sold out. Those numbers could not both be true, so I knew something was off, and the fake checkout orders were the reason. That is the kind of thing a business owner needs to be able to catch and fix in minutes, not wait on a support ticket for.

This is what business owners need. If you are going to run a real business with AI, you need ICP's infrastructure to do it, because it makes it so you can build everything with AI very securely and just deploy it straight on chain, which you cannot do with Shopify and you cannot do with WordPress. I made the larger argument for why AI and this chain belong together in ICP Is the Only Real AI Coin in Crypto, and today is a small, concrete example of it.

Replit and Lovable versus one smart contract

Now, you do have builders like Replit and Lovable, for example, but the problem with those is that they are built on Web2 infrastructure, which leaves a lot more loose ends. It is a mess, because the data, the code and the computation all do not happen in the exact same place in the same smart contract. So there are a lot more security vulnerabilities and angles where you could get hacked there. And those cost $50 or more a month, whereas it effectively does not cost me hardly anything, maybe $10 a month or less in cycles, to host my whole business on jerrybanfield.com. I already have what I think is a $200-a-month cloud plan for everything else I do with AI, so my website essentially does not cost anything extra, and I get to use Claude to build things like video games.

That is where ICP stands out. There is not another way I could even build the business I have right now. I could try to use something like Shopify or WordPress on one part of it, but if I wanted to build games out, there is literally no other way to do this. This is why I am so bullish. My website can stand up to a whole wide range of attacks from people because it is hosted on ICP, and it can do amazing things that you cannot do on any other hosting platform. I have games that are pay-gated directly on my website, like Top Jerry Banfield Fan.

Crypto payments with a discount, built in 30 minutes

Even if you could build some of these things another way, my site has crypto payments built in, which is so cool. If you have ICP, or if you have JBBJ, you can get a 10% discount when you pay for a shirt with JBBJ, and that is built straight into the website. It was no big deal. You just click over to the crypto option and pay. The AI took maybe 30 minutes to build this. I said, look, give people a discount if they pay with JBBJ on ICP or if they pay with JERRY on Robinhood. Super easy. It would be a nightmare, if not impossible, to get functionality like this on Shopify, and it would be unsafe to try to build something like this on Replit or Lovable, where there would be way more attack vectors than on ICP. This is the kind of everyday on-chain commerce I had in mind in Crypto Mass Adoption Will Only Happen Through ICP: a normal store, a normal checkout, and a crypto discount that just works.

So I am grateful today that ICP's infrastructure is holding up in the real world against people who for some reason have nothing better to do than spam 200 checkout orders on my website. You are a dummy for even doing that, because it took me a few minutes in the AI to shut all of that down so you are not going to be able to do it anymore. And I am grateful that this technology is here, because I have needed it. Content creators need this. Being able to build stuff with AI is cool, but if you cannot build on ICP, it is close to useless. So I am sharing this as a real-world case study: this is my business actually running on ICP.

The cycle-drain risk, and why the burn is real

What is also worth noticing is that if this person had been aware of trying to drain me of cycles, they might have been able to run me out. I probably have $100 or $200 worth of cycles sitting on there. Some of these cyber attacks on ICP, if people have not set their websites up properly, can leave a site like mine wide open to having its cycles drained. On this particular setup, if I had not had things configured the way I do, that could have happened. Attacks on ICP-hosted websites can actually drain a bunch of cycles, and that contributes to ICP being bought and burned to pay for those cycles. I covered how that mechanism works in Internet Computer (ICP) Burn and Revenue: Is It Real?, and today I was one of the people doing the burning.

So this is a dream setup to me, at least in the long term. In the short term, it is not a dream setup, and I get it, the price, duh. I have written about that frustration in ICP Price: Why It's So Low and What It Could Be Worth. But this is real technology. I am actually burning ICP to pay for cycles, I am actually using it, and my website is standing up to attack. That is exactly the kind of boring, steady progress I described in ICP Holding: Why Being Bored in Crypto Means You're Doing It Right, and I am grateful for the chance to share it with you.

Shirts, calls, reviews and what comes next

If you want to grab one of those shirts and have your name on the Jerry Banfield 2026 Founding 50 shirt, they will be sold indefinitely and they will have up to 50 people's names on them. When I recorded this, five of those names were already taken. You can pay straight with a card, with ICP or with JBBJ.

If you want to have a call to talk to me about getting your website built completely out on ICP, I have got it figured out and I will be happy to walk you through it, help you get the Claude command line installed and get started. Once you get started, it is just a matter of taking screenshots and prompting the AI. It is very straightforward once the command line interface is set up. I am also going to test Claude's and ChatGPT's direct integrations with ICP and see how easy those are, which ties into the bigger conversation about AI agents living on chain that I got into in ICP and AI Agents: Dominic Williams and the AI-Chain Debate.

If you want me to review something you are doing, send me this video review. Or if you just want me to make a quick video, you can get a five-minute video for you through my Video For You service. And if you want this exact gold satin shirt I was wearing in the video, that is in the store too, so you can be wearing the same shirt I wear.

For more of what I have learned building and running my business on the Internet Computer, the rest of these videos are in my ICP Crypto playlist. I hope to see you on the ICP blockchain at jerrybanfield.com, and the dumb haters can suck it.

WordPress Sucks Compared to ICP

From my video published October 13, 2026.

If your website is hosted on WordPress, which is one of the most popular platforms people use today, I'm sorry for you. I want to let you know there is a better way to build your website today, and it's how I'm building mine right now. My website is hosted on Internet Computer Protocol because, in my experience, it is the most advanced website hosting in the world. You can have everything hosted directly on the blockchain, which makes it tamper-proof, verifiable, and so much more secure. Plus, you can build the whole thing with AI from scratch. I went deeper on why this combination works in ICP and Claude Code Is the Best Web Hosting Setup Online, and this post is the WordPress side of that story.

Ten Years of WordPress Misery

I used to have my website hosted on WordPress, and it was a nightmare. I used so many different themes and plugins over the years: Elementor, then Elementor Pro, Astra, WooCommerce to run my shop, and LearnDash to try and sell courses. My God, it was miserable. There was always something breaking.

I was paying $100 a month for my web hosting on Kinsta because it was managed hosting on Google Cloud, and I needed to make sure I had enough speed coming through so that if I went viral, my website didn't crash. That fear came from experience. Before Kinsta, I had my WordPress website hosted on some garbage GoDaddy plan, and when I went viral, my whole website went down because the shared server hardly had any capacity.

I tried for years and years. I built website after website on WordPress, and they always came out ugly. People made fun of them. I would try to optimize for page speed, and it never really worked. If you try to change themes, it's a nightmare. If you put something like WooCommerce on, it slows your pages down. You have to constantly update everything. It's horrible, and there's a better way now.

Editing My Homepage Live With Claude

My website at jerrybanfield.com is hosted on Internet Computer Protocol and is built from scratch with AI. What is so helpful about building with AI is that when I look at a page and think, I don't like how I built this, I can just say so. While I was writing this, I decided to prove it. I took a screenshot of my homepage and typed into my Claude terminal: remove that blue line underneath the review button and remove that header image above it. I literally just tell it what to do, and it makes the change almost instantly. I first saw how fast AI could build on the blockchain when Caffeine AI Built Me a Website on the Blockchain in One Prompt, and working directly in the terminal with Claude has taken that even further.

And no more crappy WooCommerce. I am able to build out and sell anything I want on my website, from products and services to physical things I ship in the mail. I can take credit cards. I can take crypto. I have thousands of blog posts on this website. I have built-in email that is super cheap, so I don't have to use Mailchimp or anything like it. There are no security updates I have to do either.

What It Costs to Host on ICP

The web hosting cost for all of this is shockingly small. I have a website with something like 2,000 or 3,000 individual assets: pages, images, URLs. How much do you think it costs to host all of that for a month? Less than $10 a month. That's all in. That's everything. The hosting is disgustingly cheap on ICP.

Because it's built on a blockchain, ICP is able to do micro transactions. Every time someone comes to my website and loads it, it charges a tiny, tiny, tiny amount. If you want the basics of how that works, I laid it out in The Simplest Possible Explanation of ICP. What that gives me is scalability, which is amazing. If 100,000 people come through my website in one day, it's just more micro transactions, and I pay a little bit for that, probably about a dollar. I have thousands of people come through my website every day, which adds up to hundreds of thousands of visits a month, and it costs less than $10 a month. I wrote about why this pricing model matters for the whole industry in Other Blockchains Need ICP to Stay Cheap.

The one thing you do need to pay for is the AI. Whether it's Claude, ChatGPT, or Codex, you need to pay for the AI to build it all out on ICP. For most people, that means at least a $100 a month Claude or ChatGPT plan. However, you can do a ton of other stuff with that plan, and a bunch of you already have AI plans. Once you build the website out initially, you may be able to drop your plan a lot lower. For the initial build-out, though, you may need the higher plan with higher limits.

Getting In, Staying Up

I know that to some of you, it might seem scary to get into the command line and start figuring out how all this works. But if you're a person who's even a bit of a fan of AI, it's really not. Claude and ChatGPT are so good that you can literally copy and paste your way through the command line the entire time. Setting up an Internet Identity, it handles all of that super easily. You can buy ICP directly off an exchange like Coinbase and send it over to fund your wallet very easily. I shared my approach to buying in How to Buy More Crypto and Pay Less Fees on Coinbase. This tech is so vastly superior.

There's another reason I moved. If you're on something like WordPress and you're hosted on Google Cloud, your website could be taken offline if you upset anybody at all. If anyone at Google Cloud gets upset with you, they can take your website off. Any reason you upset your website host, they can take things down. And there are all kinds of terms and conditions on some of these platforms about exactly what you can host there.

The ICP infrastructure is also resilient. My setup on ICP right now is hosted globally. It's not just going to go down because a Google Cloud server went offline for maintenance in whatever data center you picked. I believe there are 13 machines on my subnet, so I think I'd have to lose at least seven of them for my website to go offline at this point. That resilience is a big part of why I believe ICP Could Rebuild the Internet—and Most People Would Never Know.

ICP is also building your own privately controlled version of this, which is just coming out now, called Cloud Engines, for anyone with an enterprise level of demand. But for most entrepreneurs who are just using WordPress, the amount of money you can save and the amount of customization you can have is incredible by comparison.

How I Rebuilt AngelaHutchinson.com

This is a website I just built with Claude, and what's so cool is that if you already have a WordPress website, you can just tell Claude or Codex: here's my existing website, I want you to build something similar. The same goes if you've got Replit or another platform like that.

My friend Angela Hutchinson was paying $50 a month for some garbage vibe coding platform to run her website, AngelaHutchinson.com. When she told me she was paying for that hosting, I thought, let me put that on my ICP system. I literally just went into Claude, gave it the old version of AngelaHutchinson.com, and said: look at this and build me the same version, including the pop-up that was on the last version. It rebuilt her website rapidly, and then I moved it over to the ICP blockchain.

She was paying $50 a month. Now her website is so cheap that I don't even notice the cost. It's less than one cent a month for me to throw her website onto ICP hosting. And if she goes viral, I've got so many cycles sitting in there that probably 100,000 people could come through her website at once and it wouldn't crash, because I'm sitting there with extra cycles in it. If her website doesn't use them, or she wants to move, I can just take those cycles and put them into another website. This setup is so far advanced past what everybody's doing on WordPress.

Want Help Moving Your Website to ICP?

If you want help setting this up, go to jerrybanfield.com, click on the review button, and tell me to look at the website you have. I can look at the website you have and get back to you and tell you: is this something you can move onto ICP, and how hard would it be? In most cases, many of you have simple websites. You could ditch your WooCommerce, ditch your themes, ditch all that stuff, and save a ton of money on hosting.

By the time I finished explaining all of this, the change I asked for was live. I refreshed my homepage and the extra header image was gone, and the blue line under the review button was gone. Almost instantaneously, while I was writing this, Claude stripped off what I didn't like. That's how cool this is. Dealing with WordPress sucks so much by comparison. My God, I spent 10 years fooling with WordPress, making ugly websites. This is miraculous to me.

So if you want to get started, go to jerrybanfield.com and grab a review. Buy a review and say: look, do you think I can move my website over? How hard would it be? How much money could I save? All you need to do is send me your website URL via email. It's a simple workflow. You buy the review, then you send review@jerrybanfield.com your website. If you have a specific question, like could I move this off of WordPress and how hard would it be, I've already done this, so I already know how to do it. I'll tell you something like: yeah, for the website you've got, probably $100 a month for the AI plan to set it up and build it out, then you can drop that way down, and hosting will be nearly free.

At this point, I'm honestly not sure if I want to do the migration itself for other people, but that's something you can ask about. With a setup like this, I can even put up little previews before anything goes live, so I might eventually be able to offer a service where I give you a domain with a rebuilt version of your website so you can see what it would look like. Either way, the place to start would be to grab a review from me to see how easy this would be to do for your website and how much money you could save. I hope to see you on jerrybanfield.com soon.

I use ICP every single day, and I explained why I went ALL IN on Internet Computer Protocol. I'll share more about how I use it in upcoming posts, and you can find all of those videos in my ICP Crypto playlist.

Build and Host a Website on ICP With AI: Cost and Setup

Originally published August 11, 2026.

Short answer: the Internet Computer (ICP) is the best place I have found to host a website right now, and building that site with an AI tool like Claude Code is the fastest way to get it there. For a normal creator or small business site, hosting has come to less than $10 a month for me. The real cost is the AI subscription you pay for while you build. You will end up in a terminal at some point, but less than you would expect.

My own site, jerrybanfield.com, is the proof. For about ten years I ran it on WordPress with Elementor, Astra, WooCommerce and LearnDash, and I paid $100 a month for managed hosting on Kinsta just to be sure a viral week would not crash it. In WordPress Sucks Compared to ICP I explain why I stopped. Now the whole site runs on ICP, and when I want a change I describe it to Claude and it makes the change, sometimes in seconds.

My view developed in stages, so here they are oldest to newest. In June I deleted my earlier Caffeine AI version and rebuilt the site in Claude Code, served from ICP through the command line. In ICP and Claude Code Is the Best Web Hosting Setup Online I reported a PageSpeed score of about 98 on mobile and called it the best way I knew to put a site online. In July I turned that workflow into Launch Your Website on ICP, a ten-step guide from installing Ubuntu on Windows through a custom domain. Its main advice is to start with a static site and add backend canisters only when you need logins, payments or user data.

In August I was at my most excited. In I Built My Entire Website on ICP With AI I showed a chat room, a store, browser games and Stripe and ICP payments all built on the same site, and I argued that AI plus ICP removes the need for a developer. Read that one as a snapshot of what I was building and testing at the time. I said myself that the leaderboard and parts of the store still needed testing.

The newest post, from October, is the one I am most confident about for a typical small business. Most simple websites do not need WooCommerce, a stack of themes or a pile of plugins. I am not yet sure I want to do site migrations for other people, so for now a review is the way to ask me.

Cost is the question people ask first. ICP charges for each visit rather than a fixed monthly fee. My site has something like 2,000 to 3,000 assets, meaning pages, images and URLs, and with thousands of visitors a day it still comes in under $10 a month. The AI is the bigger line item. For most people that means at least a $100-a-month Claude or ChatGPT plan to build the site out. Once it is built, you may be able to drop to a cheaper plan, although the first build may need the higher limits.

You do not need to be a developer. The guide walks through each command, and Claude or ChatGPT can explain any error you hit. Two habits I would not skip: keep the project in Git so you can undo a bad change, and never paste a seed phrase, private key or account recovery phrase into an AI tool. Setting up an Internet Identity and funding a wallet takes a little patience, not skill.

The reason I stay is resilience and control. My site is replicated across its subnet, which I believe has 13 machines, so it would take losing at least seven of them before the site went offline. In my experience a managed host can take a site down if it gets upset with what is on it, and that is much harder to do on ICP. That is the part I value most.

Below this opening you will find all four posts in full, newest first, with a contents list above them. If you want the plain-English basics first, read What is the Internet Computer? If you are weighing a no-code builder against the Claude Code route, my notes on Caffeine AI cover the building side. If you want a straight answer about your own site, you can get a personal video review at jerrybanfield.com/review/.

WordPress Sucks Compared to ICP

From my video published October 13, 2026.

Ten Years of WordPress Misery

Editing My Homepage Live With Claude

What It Costs to Host on ICP

Getting In, Staying Up

How I Rebuilt AngelaHutchinson.com

Want Help Moving Your Website to ICP?

Launch Your Website on ICP

Originally published July 17, 2026.

I launched this very website on the Internet Computer using Claude Code and the ICP CLI, and I turned that real workflow into the step-by-step guide below so you can do the same thing. This is a practical Claude Code + ICP CLI guide for beginners: from no Ubuntu setup to a deployed website on the Internet Computer, with a custom domain workflow you can reuse for your own project.

Who this is for: creators, founders, coaches, communities, small businesses, and builders who want to put a real website on ICP without manually coding every file. What you will build: a static website generated and edited with Claude Code, configured with icp.yaml, deployed with the icp command, and optionally mapped to your domain. One important promise up front: this guide uses ICP CLI commands only — it is written for practical deployment, not theory. Use it as a template and replace the example domain example.com, project name my-icp-site, and canister name frontend with your own values.

The 10-step roadmap

You do not need to understand every part before starting. Work through the steps in order and let Claude Code help you generate, edit, and troubleshoot the project files.

Step	What you do
1. Install Ubuntu	Use WSL on Windows, or use your normal terminal on Mac/Linux.
2. Install Node.js + basics	Install Git, build tools, curl, and a current Node.js LTS.
3. Install Claude Code	Run Claude Code in your project folder and use it as your coding partner.
4. Install ICP CLI	Install the icp command and its companion tool with npm.
5. Create the website	Use Claude Code to create the HTML/CSS/JS or Vite project.
6. Add ICP config	Create icp.yaml and .ic-assets.json5 for the asset canister.
7. Test locally	Build the site and deploy to a local ICP network.
8. Deploy to ICP	Deploy the frontend canister to mainnet with ICP CLI.
9. Add your domain	Add DNS records, deploy /.well-known/ic-domains, and register the domain.
10. Update safely	Make edits, build, deploy or sync, and keep backups.

The fastest path is a static or static-generated website. Add backend canisters later only when you need logins, payments, user data, or dynamic application logic.

Step 1: Install Ubuntu on Windows

If you are on Windows, use Windows Subsystem for Linux so your development environment behaves like a Linux server. Microsoft documents installing WSL with the wsl --install command; new installs default to WSL 2. Mac and Linux users can skip this step and use Terminal.

Run this in PowerShell as Administrator:

wsl --install -d Ubuntu

# After install, restart if Windows asks you to.
# Then open Ubuntu from the Start menu and create your Linux username/password.

Confirm WSL is working:

wsl --list --verbose

Inside Ubuntu, update packages and install basic tools:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt install -y curl git build-essential ca-certificates unzip

Good habits from the beginning:

Keep website projects in your Linux home folder, for example ~/icp-sites.
Avoid spaces in project folder names. Use names like my-icp-site.
Use Git so you can undo mistakes Claude Code or you make.
Do not paste seed phrases, private keys, or account recovery phrases into Claude Code.

Step 2: Install Node.js and Claude Code

Claude Code and ICP CLI both use npm-based installation paths. Claude Code's npm install requires Node.js 18 or later, while the current ICP quickstart recommends Node.js LTS v22+. Use a current LTS version when possible.

Install Node.js and npm:

sudo apt install -y nodejs npm
node --version
npm --version

If your Node version is below the required version, install a newer LTS version before continuing. Ask Claude Code or check Node.js/Ubuntu docs for your current best install path.

Set npm global packages to install without sudo:

mkdir -p ~/.npm-global
npm config set prefix ~/.npm-global
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.npm-global/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

Install Claude Code:

npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code
claude

Claude plan recommendation

For serious website building, a paid Claude plan saves time. The $100/month Max 5x plan gives substantially more usage than Pro and includes access to Claude Code; the $200/month Max 20x tier is for daily heavy use. Pricing can change, so check Anthropic before buying.

When Claude Code asks which model to use, choose the highest Opus model available for planning, architecture, large refactors, and debugging. You can use faster/cheaper models for tiny edits, but Opus is usually worth it when the project is unfamiliar or the deployment is breaking.

Step 3: Install ICP CLI

ICP CLI is the command-line tool used here to build and deploy ICP projects. The official quickstart installs the ICP CLI package and the WebAssembly optimization tool through npm.

npm install -g @icp-sdk/icp-cli @icp-sdk/ic-wasm

icp --version
ic-wasm --version

If you plan to build Motoko backends later, also install the Motoko package manager:

npm install -g ic-mops

For a simple static website, you may not need Motoko or Rust yet. Start with the asset canister path first, then add backend logic when the site actually needs it.

Optional local network dependency

On Windows, ICP's quickstart notes that local networks require WSL and Docker Desktop. If you only deploy to mainnet, you may not need the local network at first, but local testing is useful before publishing changes.

Quick sanity check:

mkdir -p ~/icp-sites
cd ~/icp-sites
icp --help

Step 4: Start a new website project

Create a dedicated folder for the website and run Claude Code from the project root. Do not run Claude Code from a huge parent folder full of unrelated projects.

mkdir -p ~/icp-sites
cd ~/icp-sites
mkdir my-icp-site
cd my-icp-site
claude

Starter prompt for Claude Code

Create a clean static website project that can be deployed to ICP with ICP CLI.

Requirements:
- Use a simple static or Vite-based frontend.
- Keep the project lightweight and easy to understand.
- Add a README with build and deploy commands.
- Add an icp.yaml configured for an asset canister named frontend.
- Add .ic-assets.json5 in the public folder.
- Do not deploy automatically.
- Before editing, inspect the folder and explain your plan.
- After editing, summarize every file changed and how to preview/build/deploy.

What Claude should create

File or folder	Purpose
package.json	Scripts such as npm run dev and npm run build.
src/ or index.html	Your website source files.
public/	Static files copied into the build output.
public/.ic-assets.json5	Asset canister rules, security headers, SPA fallback, hidden file handling.
icp.yaml	ICP CLI project configuration and asset canister recipe.
README.md	How to edit, build, deploy, and maintain the site.

Step 5: Work with Claude Code correctly

Claude Code is powerful because it can inspect files, write code, run commands, and fix errors. Treat it like a fast junior developer with excellent memory: useful, but still requiring your review.

Good operating rules:

Ask Claude to inspect the project before editing.
Ask for a plan, approve the plan, then let it edit.
Use Git before major changes: git init, git add ., git commit.
Do not approve commands you do not understand. Ask Claude to explain them.
Keep deploy commands separate from code-generation commands so you control publishing.

Useful Claude prompts:

Inspect this project and tell me exactly how it builds and deploys with ICP CLI. Do not edit files yet.

Fix the build errors. Make the smallest safe changes and explain what changed.

Add a new page, but preserve the existing design system and do not break deployment.

Review this site for mobile layout, accessibility, broken links, and deployment issues.

Prepare this for ICP deployment, but do not run the mainnet deploy command until I approve.

For complex work, use the highest Opus model available. The extra reasoning is usually cheaper than wasting hours chasing broken configs.

Step 6: Add ICP asset canister configuration

For a website, the simplest ICP deployment target is an asset canister. It hosts static files like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and images directly on ICP. ICP's asset canister docs explain that ICP CLI deploys a pre-built asset canister, creates it if needed, installs it, and syncs your build output directory.

Example icp.yaml:

canisters:
  - name: frontend
    recipe:
      type: "@dfinity/asset-canister@v2.2.1"
      configuration:
        dir: dist
        build:
          - npm install
          - npm run build

The important parts:

frontend is the canister name you deploy and update.
dir: dist must match the output folder created by your build command.
build tells ICP CLI what to run before upload.

Example public/.ic-assets.json5:

[
  {
    "match": ".well-known",
    "ignore": false
  },
  {
    "match": "**/*",
    "security_policy": "standard",
    "headers": {
      "Cache-Control": "public, max-age=0, must-revalidate"
    },
    "allow_raw_access": false
  },
  {
    "match": "assets/**/*",
    "headers": {
      "Cache-Control": "public, max-age=31536000, immutable"
    }
  },
  {
    "match": "**/*",
    "enable_aliasing": true
  }
]

Step 7: Build and test locally

Before deploying to mainnet, build the site and verify that the output folder exists. Most failed deployments are simple build/output-folder problems.

Build the website:

npm install
npm run build
ls -la dist

Start a local ICP network and deploy:

icp network start -d
icp network ping
icp deploy

Open the frontend URL shown in the deploy output. It will look like:

http://<canister-id>.localhost:8000/

Check project and canister state:

icp project show
icp canister list
icp canister status frontend

When finished:

icp network stop

If local testing fails, ask Claude Code to read the error and fix the smallest likely problem. Common issues are missing Node packages, a wrong build output folder, or a canister name mismatch.

Step 8: Deploy to ICP mainnet

Mainnet deployment puts your website on the public Internet Computer. Your frontend will be accessible at a canister URL first, then you can map a custom domain.

Build one last time:

npm run build

Deploy the frontend canister to mainnet:

icp deploy -e ic frontend

Your output should include a canister ID and a URL like:

https://<canister-id>.icp.net/

Verify the canister:

icp canister status frontend

If your deploy fails because the canister needs cycles or an identity setup, pause and follow the current ICP CLI guidance shown in your terminal. Run these help commands to see the exact current workflow:

icp identity --help
icp cycles --help
icp token --help

Security rule: keep your identity files and recovery material private. Never paste private keys, seed phrases, or account recovery text into Claude Code, chat tools, screenshots, or public support forums.

Step 9: Connect your own domain

By default, your site is live at the canister URL. To use your own domain, you need DNS records, a domain ownership file served by the canister, and a registration API call. Replace example.com with your domain.

Add the domain ownership file:

mkdir -p public/.well-known
echo 'example.com' > public/.well-known/ic-domains
npm run build
icp deploy -e ic frontend

Verify the file is live:

curl -sL https://<canister-id>.icp.net/.well-known/ic-domains

Add DNS records at your DNS provider:

Type	Name / Host	Value
CNAME or ALIAS	example.com	example.com.icp1.io
TXT	_canister-id	<canister-id>
CNAME	_acme-challenge	_acme-challenge.example.com.icp2.io

Cloudflare note: use DNS only, not proxied, while registering. If Cloudflare Universal SSL interferes with certificate validation, disable it during registration and re-enable only after the domain is working.

Validate and register:

curl -sL -X GET "https://icp.net/custom-domains/v1/example.com/validate"

curl -sL -X POST "https://icp.net/custom-domains/v1/example.com"

curl -sL -X GET "https://icp.net/custom-domains/v1/example.com"

Wait for certificate provisioning. If the browser shows a certificate warning immediately after registration, give it several minutes, then test again in a private/incognito window.

Step 10: Update, sync, and maintain

Once the site is live, your normal workflow is simple: edit, build, test, deploy, verify. Keep changes small and recoverable.

Everyday update workflow:

git status
# edit with Claude Code
npm run build
icp deploy -e ic frontend
# or, when only static assets changed:
icp sync -e ic frontend

When to use deploy vs sync:

Use	When
icp deploy -e ic frontend	You changed config, build process, or anything that may need a full reinstall/update.
icp sync -e ic frontend	You only changed built static assets and want to upload changed files faster.

Troubleshooting checklist:

Build output empty? Confirm dir in icp.yaml matches the real output folder.
404 on refresh? Make sure .ic-assets.json5 has enable_aliasing: true.
Custom domain validation fails? Check DNS, the .well-known file, and hidden-directory handling.
Wrong site deploys? Check the canister name in icp.yaml and the deploy command.
Ask Claude to explain every error message before trying random fixes.

Reusable Claude Code prompt

Use this prompt when you want Claude Code to create or repair an ICP website project. Replace bracketed text with your own details.

I want to launch a website on ICP using ICP CLI.

Project goal:
[Describe your website: business site, community page, portfolio, app landing page, etc.]

Requirements:
- Build a clean, fast, mobile-friendly static website.
- Configure it for ICP CLI with an asset canister named frontend.
- Use icp.yaml for deployment configuration.
- Use public/.ic-assets.json5 for asset settings.
- Include support for a future custom domain by adding public/.well-known/ic-domains with
  placeholder domain example.com.
- Use npm scripts: dev, build, preview if applicable.
- Add a README explaining local preview, ICP local deploy, mainnet deploy, custom domain
  steps, and update workflow.
- Do not deploy automatically.
- Do not add unnecessary dependencies.
- Inspect the folder first, explain your plan, then make the smallest safe implementation.
- After editing, summarize all files changed and the exact commands I should run next.

For an existing project, add this line:

This project already has files. Preserve the existing design and do not rewrite the whole app unless necessary.

Best practices before sharing your site

A working deployment is not the same as a trustworthy website. Before you send traffic to it, make the site clear, complete, and safe.

Add a clear headline and a simple call to action.
Add About, Contact, Privacy Policy, and Terms pages if you will run ads or collect leads.
Use a custom domain if you want credibility beyond the canister URL.
Compress images before upload so your site stays fast.
Test on mobile, desktop, and private/incognito browser windows.
Keep a private backup of your project and identity material.

If you are running paid ads

Make the landing page focused and trustworthy. Avoid unsupported claims, sensitive personal targeting, misleading guarantees, and broken links. If you use remarketing or analytics, make sure your privacy policy explains how data and cookies may be used.

Simple launch checklist

Ubuntu/terminal works
Node.js current enough
Claude Code installed
ICP CLI installed
Project builds
Local deploy works
Mainnet deploy works
Canister URL works
Custom domain file deployed
DNS records added
Domain registered
HTTPS works
Pages and links tested

Sources and current notes

This guide was generalized from a real website launch workflow — the same one behind the site you are reading right now — and checked against official documentation. Commands and pricing can change, so verify the latest docs if something fails.

Topic	Where to verify
Microsoft WSL installation	learn.microsoft.com/windows/wsl/install
Claude Code npm installation	code.claude.com/docs/en/setup
Claude plan comparison and Max plan pricing	support.claude.com
ICP CLI quickstart and installation	docs.internetcomputer.org/getting-started/quickstart and github.com/dfinity/icp-cli
ICP asset canister configuration	docs.internetcomputer.org/guides/frontends/asset-canister/
ICP custom domains	docs.internetcomputer.org/guides/frontends/custom-domains/

In my own launch, the site was deployed to an ICP asset canister, then the custom domain was connected by adding DNS records, deploying the .well-known/ic-domains file, validating the domain, registering it, and waiting for HTTPS certificate provisioning. Use your own domain and canister ID — and enjoy having a website that runs entirely on the Internet Computer.

ICP and Claude Code Is the Best Web Hosting Setup Online

From my video published June 13, 2026.

Earlier this year I built jerrybanfield.com on Caffeine AI, the no-code builder for the Internet Computer. Yesterday I deleted that version and rebuilt the whole site with Claude Code, hosting it directly on ICP through the ICP command line. The result is faster, cheaper, and completely under my control — and it convinced me this is the best way to put a website online right now.

From Caffeine AI to Claude Code

Caffeine AI is genuinely impressive, and if you are just getting started it is the easier place to begin. But for what I wanted — a long-form sales page for the Jerry Banfield Family — Claude Code produced a better site with far less friction. I described the page I wanted out loud, handed over a few screenshots, and pointed it at my videos and YouTube channels. Claude Code built the entire site from that, and every change I asked for afterward was quick.

I am on the $100-a-month Claude plan and already use it for a ton of work, so the website essentially came along for free on top of everything else. Caffeine AI, by comparison, kept spending credits to regenerate the page, which adds up fast.

Why hosting on ICP changes the math

The part I am most excited about is the hosting. When your site lives on the Internet Computer, you only pay for the cycles people actually use when they visit. There is no fixed monthly bill — none of the roughly $30-a-month cost I was paying whether or not anyone showed up. The site simply sits there and burns a tiny amount of cycles when someone loads it.

That means when traffic is light, my cost is almost nothing. And if one of my videos goes viral and the site gets hammered, it scales right along with the traffic — I just keep it funded with extra cycles. No WordPress theme to buy, no pile of recurring software fees, no server to babysit.

Fast and lightweight by default

Because Claude Code built a clean, lightweight site, it is genuinely quick. PageSpeed lands around 98 on mobile and 100 on desktop, and the total amount of data a visitor has to load is small. Caffeine AI was struggling to reach the nineties; this one is ripping. A fast, optimized page is better for visitors and better for search rankings, and on ICP that same speed keeps cycle costs low.

You don't have to be a developer

Firing up Claude Code and the ICP command line sounds intimidating, but it is not that hard. I was inspired by Rob, who told me about a site he built directly on the Internet Computer — I figured if he could do it, I could try. So I installed the Claude desktop app, signed up for the $100-a-month plan, and went from there. If you can talk through what you want, you can get most of the way.

Turning every video into a blog post

Here is the bigger plan, and the thing that would have been painful on Caffeine AI: I am turning all of my videos and books into blog posts right here on jerrybanfield.com to bring in organic traffic from Google. This article is one of the first. I am also training all of that same material into my custom GPT, so it can answer questions in my voice in real time.

If you want to see how I think about the Internet Computer, you can watch my ICP videos here — this is the kind of infrastructure bet I am making with my own business, not just talking about. Picture web developers discovering this and moving all of their clients over to host on ICP. That is how useful it already is.

Build and Host a Website on ICP With AI: Cost and Setup

On this page

Editing My ICP Website in Claude Live

Showing the real workflow instead of talking about it

Dictating the changes to my date page

Dropping in better pictures from my laptop and my phone

The coaching page: before and after

Watching the console do the work

Grab a shirt, and approve the orders I forgot

The same tool runs my video workflow

Why it has to be ICP and not Google Cloud

Quick sync straight to the ICP blockchain

The result: the page refreshed live

A Troll Attacked My ICP Website. Here's What Happened.

Why ICP matters when someone attacks your site

How I noticed the attack

Replit and Lovable versus one smart contract

Crypto payments with a discount, built in 30 minutes

The cycle-drain risk, and why the burn is real

Shirts, calls, reviews and what comes next

WordPress Sucks Compared to ICP

Ten Years of WordPress Misery

Editing My Homepage Live With Claude

What It Costs to Host on ICP

Getting In, Staying Up

How I Rebuilt AngelaHutchinson.com

Want Help Moving Your Website to ICP?

Build and Host a Website on ICP With AI: Cost and Setup

On this page

WordPress Sucks Compared to ICP

Ten Years of WordPress Misery

Editing My Homepage Live With Claude

What It Costs to Host on ICP

Getting In, Staying Up

How I Rebuilt AngelaHutchinson.com

Want Help Moving Your Website to ICP?

Launch Your Website on ICP

The 10-step roadmap

Step 1: Install Ubuntu on Windows

Step 2: Install Node.js and Claude Code

Claude plan recommendation

Step 3: Install ICP CLI

Optional local network dependency

Step 4: Start a new website project

Starter prompt for Claude Code

What Claude should create

Step 5: Work with Claude Code correctly

Step 6: Add ICP asset canister configuration

Step 7: Build and test locally

Step 8: Deploy to ICP mainnet

Step 9: Connect your own domain

Step 10: Update, sync, and maintain

Reusable Claude Code prompt

Best practices before sharing your site

If you are running paid ads

Simple launch checklist

Sources and current notes

ICP and Claude Code Is the Best Web Hosting Setup Online

From Caffeine AI to Claude Code

Why hosting on ICP changes the math

Fast and lightweight by default

You don't have to be a developer

Turning every video into a blog post

Want me to make a video for you?