Set up Claude the right way

You’ve decided to build with Claude — good. (If you skipped the first guide, what you’re building, and why this way is the map of the whole path; start there.) Before any building begins, about ten minutes of setup will save you hours of friction later: a free account, one honest decision about whether to pay, and a single move that keeps your whole project organized.

None of this is technical. There’s nothing to install and nothing to break. Let’s get you ready.

How do I create a Claude account?

Go to claude.ai and sign up with your Google account, your Apple ID, or an email address. There’s no payment and no credit card required — you’re using Claude within a minute.

Pick whichever sign-in you’ll actually remember six months from now; there’s no real advantage to one over another. If you use an email address, you’ll confirm it with a quick click in your inbox. Once you’re in, you’re looking at a simple chat box — that’s the same Claude this entire series is about, the one that’s going to build your site.

Should I pay for Claude, or is the free plan enough?

Start free. The free plan already includes everything you need to build a website — Claude’s capable default model, the live preview where your site takes shape, Projects, and file uploads. Upgrade to Pro (about $20/month) only when you actually run into the limits, not before.

Here’s the honest breakdown so you can decide for yourself.

The free plan gives you a genuinely capable Claude, the ability to upload your files, save Projects, and — importantly — the built-in preview window where a website Claude builds for you appears and updates as you refine it. The real ceiling is usage: roughly 10 to 20 back-and-forth messages in a five-hour window. Building a site is a conversation, so a long, focused session can bump into that. One more thing worth knowing up front: on the free plan, your conversations may be used to help improve Claude’s models.

Pro, at about $20/month, gives you roughly five times the usage, steadier access during busy hours, and a setting that turns that data collection off — plus a few extras you won’t strictly need just to build a website.

The call I’d make: don’t upgrade before you’ve felt a reason to. Build on free. If you keep hitting the message cap in the middle of a session, or you’d simply prefer the privacy setting, upgrade then — it takes effect immediately, and you can change your mind later. A website build is bursty work; plenty of people do the whole thing on free, and others pay for a single focused month. Either is fine.

What is a Project, and why set one up before building?

A Project is a private workspace inside Claude that keeps one body of work — your whole website — together in one place: its own chats, its own uploaded files, and a set of standing instructions that Claude follows every single time you work in it.

Here’s why that matters. Without a Project, every new chat with Claude starts from a blank slate, and you’d re-explain your business, your brand, and what you’re building over and over. With a Project, you tell Claude once — who you are, what you do, how you want it to work — and every conversation inside that Project already knows. Over a multi-day website build, that’s the difference between smooth and maddening.

Free accounts can create up to five Projects. You only need one for this.

How do I set up my website Project?

Go to claude.ai/projects, click ”+ New Project” in the top-right corner, give it a name, and add a few lines of instructions. Five minutes, and you’ll never have to re-brief Claude again.

Step by step:

1. Open claude.ai/projects and click ”+ New Project.”
2. Name it something obvious, like “[Your Business] Website.” The name is just for you — Claude doesn’t read it as context, so the instructions that actually matter go in the next step.
3. Add project instructions. This is the important part: a short standing brief that loads automatically into every chat inside the Project. Use the starter below and fill in the brackets.
4. (Optional) Upload brand files. If you have anything that defines your look — an existing flyer, a logo, notes on your colors — add it to the Project so Claude can match it later.
5. Start a chat inside the Project. That’s exactly where the next guide picks up.

Here’s a project-instructions starter you can paste in and adapt:

You can refine these instructions any time — after a few chats you’ll notice what’s worth adding. That’s normal; good instructions get better with use.

What about Memory — do I need to set that up too?

No, not for this. Claude also has a feature called Memory that remembers details about you across all of your chats, and it’s on every plan, including free. It’s handy in general, but for building one website your Project does the focused work — everything the build needs lives inside it. There’s nothing extra to configure here. Just know Memory exists for later.

That’s the whole setup: your account is live, you’ve made a clear-eyed call on the plan, and a Project is waiting with your business details already loaded.

Next comes the step that decides how good your site actually turns out — briefing Claude the way you’d brief a web designer you hired, so the first draft comes back close to right instead of generic. That’s Brief Claude like a pro client, the next guide in this series.