Siteinspire is a web design inspiration gallery built around a question designers ask constantly: where can I find real, live, high-quality references for the kind of site I'm about to make? It has been personally curated by designer Daniel Howells since 2009. The official About page states that it currently features over 8,000 websites (as of 2026-09-21), all hand-picked by Howells, and explicitly notes that "none of the featured sites are sponsored entries." Unlike jury-scored galleries such as Awwwards, Siteinspire has no awards or ratings; it is closer to a continuously updated personal bookmark collection — in a SuperHi interview published in 2020, Howells himself described it as "still just a personal collection of bookmarks."

Siteinspire homepage: category filter bar above a grid of featured website thumbnails

At a Glance

  • URL: https://www.siteinspire.com/
  • Type: Curated web design gallery / inspiration directory
  • Cost: Free to browse and submit; paid add-ons for agencies such as Premium Profiles (see "Business Model" below)
  • Account: Not required for browsing; a free account is needed to submit sites, add credits to entries, or create a public profile
  • Interface language: English

Background

Siteinspire was founded by UK-based designer and developer Daniel Howells. On his personal site he states, "I founded Siteinspire in 2009 and still run it," a timeline corroborated by the LinkedIn company page and the X account (registered March 2009, bio: "Picked by @howells"). According to the privacy policy, the site is operated by Daniel Howells as a trading style of Halling Howells Ltd., registered in Thame, United Kingdom.

The platform completed its first major rebuild in a decade around 2025: design studio Mast's project note (dated 2025-02-11) describes "the platform's first major update in 10 years — a complete rebuild," and the sponsorship page likewise refers to "the recent redesign and relaunch of the website." The site now runs on Next.js and is actively updated — as of 2026-09-21, the newest entry on the homepage was published on September 17, 2026, with new additions nearly every day over the preceding two weeks.

Browsing and Filtering

Entries are organized along four dimensions — Styles, Types, Subjects, and Platforms — with a "Popular Categories" shortcut row. As of 2026-09-21, the homepage shows popular categories such as Agencies & Consultancies (2,393), Typographic (2,103), Design & Art Direction (1,939), Portfolio (1,430), Web & Interactive Design (908), E-Commerce (885), Minimal (820), and Fashion (796). Each category has its own page (e.g. Minimal Websites, 820 entries), and filters can be combined. The footer links to popularity-based views (today, this week, this month, this year), and a search box sits in the navigation bar.

The Minimal category page: four filter dimensions and popular categories at the top, with the active Minimal filter shown as a chip

Entry Pages and Credits

Each entry has its own page with an outbound link to the featured site, a publication date, category tags, and large interface screenshots. The Lambert | Lambert entry, for example, was published on September 17, 2026 and is filed under six categories including Luxury, Minimal, and Animation & Moving Image. Below each entry are design and development credits, which link to the creators' public profiles on the site; any registered user can use the "Sign up to add a credit" link to claim credit for a featured site they designed or developed. A "Similar Websites" section appears at the bottom of each entry page.

An entry page: publication date, categories, and credits on the left, website screenshots on the right

Behind the credits sits the Profiles Directory (/profiles): a public directory of designers, developers, and agencies, filterable by expertise and location. As of 2026-09-21 it lists 1,656 profiles under Design & Art Direction and 1,351 under Development, across more than a dozen disciplines including Branding & Identity, UX Design, and Product UI Design. Each profile aggregates all of that creator's featured work, and profiles are ordered by number of featured sites — effectively a leaderboard of the studios most often selected.

The Profiles Directory: profile name, disciplines, and location on the left, their featured websites on the right

Submissions and Selection

Anyone can suggest a site, but submission requires a free account (first/last name, email, password); once signed in, URLs are submitted from the Submissions section of the account area (visitors who are not signed in are redirected to the sign-in page). Submissions are free. In the SuperHi interview, Howells said he received around 100 submissions a day at the time, and described several de facto selection rules:

  • Only real, live websites are featured — never Dribbble or Behance concept shots;
  • Sites displaying an award "ribbon" from another CSS gallery are rejected outright;
  • Cheap commercial sites submitted for SEO purposes are cut immediately;
  • There is no rigid written criteria: "If I wish I had made the site myself then I'll feature it right away."

The About page stresses the high daily submission volume and a focus on "creativity and quality visuals, without adhering to rigid selection criteria," while the sponsorship page states plainly: "we currently do not accept paid-for or sponsored website submissions. All featured sites are selected purely on merit."

Business Model and Content Policy

Curation is kept separate from monetization: listings are free and cannot be bought, and revenue comes from advertising and add-on services. Per the sponsorship page (as of 2026-09-21), the site claims over 250,000 monthly visitors and offers agencies Premium Profiles (250/month)andjobpostings(250/month) and job postings (100–300/month), plus a range of sponsorship channels for brands (pricing shared on request by email). The partner placements seen on the site and in the newsletter — such as the recurring slot for the design reference library Mobbin — are this kind of advertising. The sponsorship page puts the audience at 48% Europe, 24% North America, and 21% Asia. In the SuperHi interview, Howells also noted that Squarespace had sponsored the site for a long time.

Two content-policy points are worth flagging:

  1. Copyright of listed content: Entries consist mainly of interface screenshots of the featured sites, with credits contributed by registered community members. There is no open UGC community (no comments or ratings); user-contributed content is limited to submissions, credits, and profile information.
  2. Legal documents: As of 2026-09-21, the only public policy document is the privacy policy (last updated March 11, 2025). No public terms of service or copyright-takedown procedure could be found (/terms returns 404 and no such link appears in the footer); the contact address is mail@siteinspire.com.

Key data practices disclosed in the privacy policy: Google Analytics and EU-hosted PostHog for analytics, Resend for email, and Neon infrastructure in Frankfurt for storage; deleting an account immediately removes its associated submissions and profiles.

Newsletter

Siteinspire runs a weekly newsletter called "the weekly edit" (also referred to as Siteinspire Weekly). The subscribe page invites readers to "join thousands of designers and developers who receive the latest featured sites and news in their inbox every week"; the sign-up checkbox specifies delivery on Tuesdays, and unsubscription is possible at any time. The newsletter also carries sponsorships.

Good For

  • Finding real, live reference sites for a specific industry (e-commerce, fashion, non-profits) or style (minimal, typographic, grid/unusual layouts);
  • Watching web design trends evolve — the archive going back to 2009 is effectively a history of the craft (Howells himself treats the site as a kind of design archive);
  • Discovering agencies or freelancers through the Profiles Directory and judging them by their featured work;
  • Submitting your own work for exposure (selection is entirely at the curator's discretion).

Limitations

  • Subjective selection with no appeal: the whole site is one person's editorial choice; submission volume is high and acceptance unpredictable, and the site itself says it avoids fixed criteria.
  • Shallow entry information: each entry is screenshots, categories, and credits only — no case analysis, tech-stack notes, or commentary; deeper research means visiting the sites themselves.
  • Skews toward English-language and Western work: audience and listings are predominantly European and North American (the sponsorship page claims 72% combined), so coverage of Asian local design is limited.
  • Incomplete public legal documents: no public terms of service or copyright-takedown process as of 2026-09-21 — only a privacy policy.
  • No public API or bulk export: content can only be browsed page by page.
  • English-only interface.

Alternatives

Siteinspire belongs to the long-running "CSS gallery" tradition. Among its peers, Awwwards uses a jury scoring system with awards and has a larger community and commercial operation; Httpster and Land-book also curate web design as screenshot galleries. Siteinspire's distinction is the absence of any awards system and its single curator's sustained, manual selection over more than a decade.

References