What Are Tradesmen's Websites Built On?: We Scanned the Code

LeadFly Websites  ·  Original Research  ·  Updated June 2026

Most reviews of trade websites stop at the surface. We went under the bonnet and ran a technical scan of 788 tradesman sites. The picture is worse than it looks from the front: ancient code, abandoned platforms, and a surprising amount of the early 2000s web still limping along in 2026.

Here is what trade websites are actually built on, why it matters more than it sounds, and the relics we found still in service.

The key findings

• 57% of the 788 sites returned no working page to our scan at all. Some genuinely have no live site; others were too broken or slow to load.
• Of the 230 sites that did load, 83% had no mobile viewport tag, the basic line of code that makes a site usable on a phone.
• 50% had an ancient or missing doctype, and 22% still used legacy HTML like <font> and bgcolor tags retired years ago.
• 19% were running jQuery 1.x and 8% still used Flash, technology browsers dropped support for in 2020.
• Named relics included Microsoft FrontPage and Serif WebPlus, both discontinued, and copyright lines reaching back as far as 1997.

More than half would not even load

The first finding came before we looked at any code. Of the 788 tradesman websites we tried to scan, 57% returned no working page. Some of those businesses have no real site behind the link; others have one so broken, so slow, or so misconfigured that an automated visitor simply gives up.

A human customer is less patient than a scanner, not more. Every one of those sites is a business that, to a chunk of its potential customers, effectively does not exist online.

The code is stuck in the past

Among the 230 sites that did load, the picture is of a trade running on the old web. 83% lack the single line of code (the viewport meta tag) that tells a phone how to display the page, which is why so many trade sites appear as a tiny, zoomed-out mess on mobile. Half have a doctype that is ancient or missing entirely.

Deeper in, 22% still use presentational HTML tags like <font> and bgcolor that were superseded fifteen years ago, 19% load jQuery 1.x, and 8% still reference Flash, which every major browser stopped supporting in 2020. This is not stylistic preference. It is software that has not been touched in a very long time.

The relics we found still in service

Some sites are not just old, they are antiques. Our scan named the tools several were built with: Microsoft FrontPage, which Microsoft discontinued in 2006, and multiple versions of Serif WebPlus, a consumer website maker that was retired around 2015. These are not platforms anyone can properly update anymore.

The copyright lines tell the same story. We found dates frozen across nearly every year from 1997 onward, little stamps showing exactly when each business last paid its website any attention. For a customer checking you out, a 'copyright 1999' in the footer says everything.

Why what it is built on matters

A homeowner does not read your code, but they feel its effects. Old, unmaintained sites are slow, break on phones, often are not secure, and are invisible to the structured data that Google and AI search increasingly rely on. The platform decides all of that before a word of your copy is read.

The flip side is the opportunity. If most of your local competitors are running websites built on abandoned software, a fast, modern, properly built site does not just look better. It works on a different level entirely, and it puts you somewhere most of the trade cannot follow.

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