EST. 2014 · INDIA & WORLDWIDE
A small studio making free HTML templates.
We've quietly shipped 800+ free HTML templates over eleven years, helped three thousand small businesses move online, and built a newsletter our readers actually open.
html.design started in 2014 as a side project: a folder of HTML templates one of our founders kept re-using across freelance jobs, finally uploaded to a domain he'd bought for $9 on a whim. The first month, twenty people downloaded something. The next month, two hundred. A year later, the project had an email list, a small team, and the founder had quit his day job.
Eleven years on we're still small, still independent, and still primarily known for what we started with — carefully hand-coded HTML templates that designers and developers can download for free, modify, and ship. Eight hundred templates and counting, all hand-reviewed, all free to use commercially under a permissive Creative Commons license.
What we actually do
Alongside the template library we run three small service businesses that pay the bills: we convert PSD and Figma designs into production-ready HTML, we turn HTML sites into properly-coded WordPress themes, and we maintain websites for small businesses that want one place to call when something breaks. Each service is run by a senior developer who's been with us for years, not a rotating pool of freelancers.
We don't take VC money. We don't push AI tools. We don't gate the best templates behind a paywall. Every template on the site is free, today and forever. We keep the servers running by selling our time for custom work, and by running a small number of tastefully-chosen sponsorships. The newsletter has been ad-free since 2019 and will stay that way.
"We wanted a place where a freelancer in São Paulo could download a clean template on a Tuesday night, ship a client site by Friday, and not owe anyone anything. That's still the whole thing."
— from the 2018 founder's letterEleven years, briefly
Domain bought, first 20 templates
Started as a folder of HTML snippets re-used across freelance projects.
100 templates · full-time team
The side project became the main project. First hire: a senior WordPress developer.
Newsletter crosses 10,000 subscribers
Weekly, still written by one person, still no ads.
500 templates, site redesigned
Ground-up rewrite in Laravel, all free, no paywall.
800+ templates · 100K monthly readers
Still free, still hand-reviewed, still run by the original team plus four.
What we value
Three things we never skip.
Every template is hand-reviewed
We've turned down more than we've shipped. If a template passes theme-check, responsive review, and reads clean on inspect-element, it gets added. Otherwise it doesn't.
Free stays free
No freemium tiers, no "pro" version behind a paywall. Every template on the site today will be free to download five years from now.
One team, no outsourcing
The developer who converts your PSD is the same person who answers your email three weeks later. We've never hired a "customer success" person.
Say hello.
Whether it's a freelance project, a tip for the newsletter, a press inquiry, or just to let us know a template helped — the inbox is open.