Free Website for a Homeschool Co-op: What to Include and How to Set It Up

A free website for a homeschool co-op needs five things: what you offer, what it costs, when and where you meet, your policies, and a clear way for a new family to ask to join. As of November 1, 2026, every LearningSense plan, including Free, comes with a public program website that shows your live classes and fees from your current semester, plus a request to join form that sends new families to you for approval.

Below is what to put on a co-op site, a checklist to get it done in an afternoon, and how join requests and tour requests work once families start finding you.

Does a homeschool co-op really need a website?

Most co-ops grow by word of mouth, and that will not change. What changes is what happens after a friend says you should look at our co-op. The family searches your name. If they find an old Facebook post, a flyer from two years ago, or nothing at all, they have to message someone to learn the basics, and plenty of busy parents will not bother.

A simple site answers the first questions before anyone has to ask: what ages you serve, what day you meet, what it costs, and how to get in. It also saves the director from typing the same answers into a dozen messages every August.

What should a homeschool co-op website include?

Keep it short. A family deciding whether to visit wants the facts, not a long history. Here is what belongs on the page and where each piece usually comes from.

The two sections that cause the most trouble are classes and fees, because they change every semester. A page someone typed up last spring will be wrong by fall, and families notice. That is the main reason the LearningSense program website reads classes and fees from the semester you are already running, instead of asking you to type them twice.

What does the free LearningSense program website include?

As of November 1, 2026, the program website is on every plan, including Free. It shows:

• Your live classes from the current semester, so a class you add shows up without editing the site.
• Your fees, from the same semester and class setup families pay against.
• Your policies, in your own words.
• A request to join form, which you turn on when you are ready for new families.
• A tour request, so a family can ask to visit before they commit.
• Search settings, so you choose how your program is described when people look it up.

A few things are not part of it yet. Photos and sections for your team, news, and safety are coming this winter, and using your own domain name is coming later. For now, share the link to your page in emails, on flyers, and in your host church's bulletin.

You can see what each plan includes on our pricing page.

How do join requests work?

An open signup link works well for returning families. For new families, you may want to talk first and make sure the co-op is a good fit. The join request flow is built for that:

• A family finds your program website and fills out the request to join form.
• The request arrives in Join requests in LearningSense.
• You read it, then approve or decline it.
• If a family wants to see the co-op in person first, they can ask for a tour. You schedule it, and after they come you mark it visited.

That last step is small but useful. When registration opens, you are not digging through texts to remember which family toured in October and which one is still waiting to hear back. It is all in one place, next to the requests you have already approved or declined.

Once a family is approved, the next step is registration. We wrote about what to ask at that point in what to put on a homeschool co-op enrollment form.

A one afternoon checklist for your co-op website

• Write a four or five sentence About section: who you serve, what a co-op day looks like, and what makes your group yours.
• Set up your current semester with classes and fees, so the site has something accurate to show.
• Add your core policies: participation, illness, refunds, and behavior. Summarize the handbook rather than pasting all of it.
• Add your meeting day, hours, and general location. Many co-ops leave the exact address off a public page and share it after approval.
• Fill in the search settings with your co-op's name, town, and the ages you serve.
• Decide whether to turn on the request to join form now or wait until a set date.
• Ask one parent who has never seen the page to read it on their phone and tell you what they could not find.
• Share the link in local homeschool groups, your host church's bulletin, and your email signature.

If you only get through the first three items, you still have a page that answers the questions families ask most.

When should you turn on join requests?

You do not need the form on all year. A common pattern is to keep it on during the months you have room and the weeks before registration, then turn it off once classes are full. If your classes fill fast, a waitlist will serve you better than a long stack of join requests you cannot say yes to.

We covered how to keep that fair in how to run a homeschool co-op waitlist.

Whatever you choose, say it on the page. A line like "We welcome new families each spring. Request a tour anytime." sets expectations and keeps the director from writing a polite no to every inquiry.

What about a general website builder?

A general website builder can work for a co-op, and some groups are happy with one. The tradeoff is upkeep. Someone has to update the class list, fees, and dates by hand each semester, and that job usually lands on the director in the busiest weeks of the year. If your classes and fees already live in LearningSense, the program website keeps those parts current, and you only write the parts that rarely change.

If your co-op does not have a site yet, or has one nobody has updated in a while, take a look at learningsense.org. The Free plan includes the program website, so you can set it up and see how your classes look before you decide anything else.