Buying a 3D website with a one-time payment: what to check before you pay

1. Do you get every file, and can you host it yourself?

Why it matters. With the files you can change host, pay someone to change a detail, or keep the site online if the company that sold it closes. Without them, the site lives on someone else’s platform, on their terms.

How to check. Ask what arrives when you pay (a zip, a code export, a login), whether the site runs on an ordinary static host, and whether any part of it (the 3D engine, the models, the typefaces) still loads from the seller’s servers. Spline is a useful example: its public links and embeds load from its servers, downloading a code export takes its Pro plan, and a fully self-contained export, runtime and assets in one zip, is on its Enterprise plan. PeachWeb’s pricing page lists hosting plans and doesn’t mention a download.

Promti. The site comes as a .zip at the first download: plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript, your pictures and model in a media folder, the typefaces copied in, a legal page, robots.txt, a page for broken links and a README with the guides. It needs no server of its own and runs wherever files can be served; the guide that comes with it publishes it on Cloudflare Pages’ free plan, which accepts files of up to 25 MiB. Nothing in it links back to Promti, and it runs without calling Promti.

2. Does it work on a phone?

Why it matters. Google builds its index and its rankings from the mobile version of a site, and a phone is where 3D is hardest to run: less graphics power, a screen held upright, a thumb instead of a pointer. A scene composed for a wide screen can leave a phone with the subject cut in half or the words sitting on top of it.

How to check. Open the live demo on your own phone, upright, on mobile data rather than Wi-Fi. Notice how long the first screen takes, whether the words stay readable over the scene, and whether the scroll stays smooth. A video on a sales page shows what its maker filmed; a demo you can open shows what your visitors will get.

Promti. Each kit has a live demo to try on your phone, and the wizard previews your own site at a phone’s size as you type. The scenes recompose for an upright screen: Product and App pull the camera back and lift the subject so the words sit underneath, Studio steps back and widens its view of the gallery, and Forest crops each photo to the screen and pans across it. No kit draws at more than 1.75 times the layout’s resolution, Forest at 1.5 on phones, and when frames come too slowly a kit lowers its resolution instead of stuttering.

3. What does it show when the 3D can’t run?

Why it matters. Some visitors can’t run the scene at all. Can I use puts support for WebGL 2 at 96.44% of users worldwide, from StatCounter’s figures for August 2026: roughly one visitor in 28 has none. A page whose words and buttons exist only inside the 3D shows them nothing. Adrián Pozo Esteban, a Three.js developer, recommends offering those visitors an alternative: photos, a written description, a mode with less motion.

How to check. Ask what the page shows without WebGL: a picture, the text alone, or an empty screen. Ask too whether it follows the setting for reduced motion that phones and computers have, and try it. On an iPhone it’s Settings > Accessibility > Motion > Reduce Motion; on Android, Settings > Accessibility > Color and motion > Remove animations; MDN lists the other systems. Then open the demo again.

Promti. On a device without WebGL 2, every kit keeps its words, prices, buttons and links on the page, working. Forest then shows your six photos flat, one per screen. In Product, App and Studio, the product, the app’s screens and the projects’ pictures live in the scene, so those visitors get the page without them. With reduced motion on, scrolling is left to the browser, text appears in place without moving in, the scene no longer tracks the pointer, and Forest fades between photos rather than flying into each.

4. Can you change the words and pictures yourself?

Why it matters. Prices change, better photos arrive, a phone number moves. If every change is a request to whoever made the site, the single payment was only the first one.

How to check. Ask how a line of text or a photo gets changed once the site is live, who can do it and what it costs. If the answer is the provider’s editor, ask what happens to it when you stop paying: PeachWeb’s terms, for one, license its builder only for as long as the agreement lasts. If you’re getting code, ask where the words live in it.

Promti. There’s no content manager and no account to log in to. To change a price, a sentence or a photo, you reopen the wizard in the browser where you made the site, change it, download again and upload the new folder over the old one, as often as you need to. Your answers are kept in that browser, not on Promti’s servers, so keep the zip: another computer can’t open them. The files are ordinary HTML, CSS and JavaScript if you’d rather edit them by hand, but a later download from the wizard won’t carry those edits.

5. Is there anything to pay every month?

Why it matters. A monthly fee turns a purchase into a rental, and a small fee kept up for three years can pass a one-off price. With some tools the 3D also stops when the payments do: Vectary’s pricing page says that a workspace whose plan isn’t renewed is locked, and that its public links and embeds become unavailable.

How to check. Add up everything that recurs (the tool’s plan, hosting, the domain) and look for limits that make the bill grow: rooom’s showroom plans count views each month, 500 on its €9 Base plan, and cap how many people can be inside at once. Check whether the price includes VAT; PeachWeb’s, rooom’s and Vectary’s don’t. And ask what happens on the day you stop paying.

Promti. €500, once, taxes included, with no subscription and nothing to pay Promti afterwards. Cloudflare Pages’ free plan hosts the site with unlimited requests and bandwidth; a domain of your own costs €10–15 a year, according to Socialmediapymes. Whatever you connect (Stripe for payments, a form service, a booking page) bills you directly, on its own terms.

6. Is it yours to use for your business?

Why it matters. Paying for a site doesn’t make it yours. A licence can tie it to one site, rule out commercial use, keep the code with its maker, or run out, and the models and typefaces inside can carry licences of their own. Adrián Pozo Esteban puts code ownership and the licences of 3D assets among the things to settle before hiring anyone.

How to check. Read the licence before paying and look for four answers: can you use it for a business that earns money, for how many sites, may you change it, and does it expire. Marketplaces write this down: Envato’s standard licences cover one end product each, and neither lets you turn the item into a template or a stock item.

Promti. The terms of sale make the site yours: publish it for your business, host it anywhere and change anything, with no time limit. What they rule out is reselling or giving away the kit or its code as a template, and using one kit for other businesses’ sites; each business needs its own. The open-source parts inside — three.js, SplitType, a small piece of Vite and the typefaces — keep their own free licences, listed in the LICENSES.txt file in the zip.

7. What if you change your mind, or get stuck?

Why it matters. Buying online you usually have 14 days to change your mind, but not always with a download. EU consumer law lets that right end once the download begins, if you asked for it to begin within those 14 days and acknowledged that you’d lose the right (Directive 2011/83/EU, article 16(m); in Spain, article 103 m of the consumer protection law). So what the seller offers before and after the download, and the help that comes with the price, count as much as the price.

How to check. Read the box you’re asked to tick before paying, then the refund terms before and after the download. Ask what help is included (written guides, a call, email, nothing) and for how long.

Promti. Before paying, you tick a box asking for your site straight away and confirming you know that downloading it ends your right to withdraw. Until you download it, you can still withdraw within 14 days of paying and get the whole amount back, the same way you paid, within 14 days. If the site doesn’t work the way the wizard showed it, Promti puts it right or refunds you. Each kit comes with step-by-step guides (publishing, your domain, email at your domain, visitor stats, Google, and payments, bookings or a form depending on the kit) and a 30-minute call with Eric, which you arrange by writing to hello@promti.app.

What a Promti kit doesn’t do

One page, in one language, English or Spanish. No content manager and no blog. No shop cart: Product’s buy button and App’s plans go to payment links you create in Stripe, Forest’s booking button goes to your booking page, and Studio’s form reaches your inbox through a form service.

The kit supplies the 3D scene; nobody designs one for you. What goes into it is yours: words, colours, pictures and, in Product, a .glb model of your product, with the kit’s flask carrying your product’s name until you have one. Nobody hosts or maintains the site for you: you publish it with a guide, and it stays as it is until you change it.

If you need several pages, two languages, a shop or a scene made from scratch, another route will suit you better; alternatives to a 3D agency goes through them.

Questions

Can I buy a 3D website with no monthly fee?

Yes. A kit, a template you host yourself, or a site built by a freelancer or a studio and handed over as files are paid once, and a static site can then be hosted for free. Spline, PeachWeb’s hosting, Vectary and rooom are subscriptions. A Promti kit costs €500, once, taxes included.

What happens to a 3D website if I stop paying for the tool?

It depends on the tool, so ask before building on it. Vectary locks a workspace whose plan isn’t renewed, and its public links and embeds stop working; PeachWeb’s terms end your use of its service when the agreement ends. A site you hold as files keeps running wherever you host it.

Can I get a refund after downloading a website?

Not through the 14-day right of withdrawal, if you asked for immediate delivery and acknowledged losing it: EU law allows that for digital content. A seller can still offer more. With Promti you can withdraw within 14 days as long as you haven’t downloaded, and a site that doesn’t work as the wizard showed it is fixed or refunded.

Can I move a 3D website to another host later?

If you have its files and they don’t depend on the seller’s servers, yes: a static site moves by uploading its folder somewhere else. A Promti site runs on any host that serves files; its guide uses Cloudflare Pages.

Will I need a developer to keep it up to date?

Not for a Promti kit’s words, prices and pictures, which you change in the wizard. For changes to the code, yes, unless you write HTML and CSS yourself. A custom immersive site is another matter: Metabole suggests setting aside €200–800 a month to keep one working.