Health facilities across Kenya are going online fast, and most of them are doing it for the same reason: patients look you up before they walk in. A clinic with no website is judged against one that has three photographs and a phone number that works. This guide covers what to put on the site, what Kenyan law expects of you, and what it costs.
What patients actually search for
Patients rarely search for your facility by name unless somebody referred them. They search for a problem and a place: "dental clinic Nairobi", "maternity hospital Nakuru", "laboratory near me", "paediatrician Mombasa". They then open two or three results and pick the one that answers their questions fastest.
That is the whole job of the website. Not to look impressive, but to answer, in order: are you open, do you treat this, do you take my cover, who will I see, where exactly are you, and how do I book.
The pages your site needs
- Services and specialities in plain words. "Antenatal care" beats "obstetric services". Write what a worried patient would type.
- Practitioner profiles with speciality, qualification and clinic days. Patients trust named people more than institutions, and a referring doctor wants to know who they are sending someone to.
- Opening hours, including whether you run a 24 hour casualty or an on-call line, and what happens on Sunday.
- Cover and payment. See the section below, because this has changed.
- Location with a map, a landmark and a matatu or boda direction. Outside the big towns a map pin on its own is not enough.
- One obvious way to book, repeated at the bottom of every page.
- Contact and emergency numbers that are clickable on a phone.
Insurance and cover: say SHA, not NHIF
This is the most common thing we see wrong on Kenyan health websites. NHIF no longer exists. It was replaced by the Social Health Authority (SHA) under the Social Health Insurance Act, and SHA began operating on 1 October 2024.
A site that still lists "NHIF accepted" tells every visitor that nobody has touched the page in over a year. If you are an SHA contracted facility, say so clearly. List the private insurers you work with as well, because that is the question your front desk answers all day. Keep the list current: an out of date insurer list causes an argument at the counter.
Patient data and the Data Protection Act 2019
Health status is sensitive personal data under Kenya's Data Protection Act 2019. There is a consequence that catches small facilities by surprise: organisations that process sensitive personal data, health care among them, are expected to register with the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner even when they are below the turnover and staff thresholds that would otherwise exempt a small business.
Registration is something you do with the ODPC directly. No hosting company can do it for you, and none can make you compliant by selling you a plan. What hosting gives you is the technical layer: HTTPS on every page, secure mailboxes, access control and backups.
Two practical rules for the website itself. First, your public website should not hold clinical records. If you run an electronic medical records system, keep it separate. Second, if you collect anything through a form, even just a name and a phone number for a callback, say on the page what you will do with it and publish a privacy policy.
One more thing worth stating plainly: HIPAA is United States law and does not apply in Kenya. If a vendor offers you "HIPAA compliant" hosting for a Kenyan clinic, they are reusing American marketing copy.
Choosing your domain
Kenyan domains are managed by KENIC, and the ones that matter to a health facility are:
- yourclinic.co.ke — the normal choice for a private hospital, clinic, laboratory, pharmacy or dental practice. It is what patients expect to type.
- yourmission.or.ke — .or.ke is the Kenyan namespace for non-profit organisations, so it suits a mission hospital or a health NGO.
- drsurname.co.ke — for an individual consultant in private practice.
Note the spelling: the Kenyan non-profit domain is .or.ke. There is no .org.ke, and a lot of guides get this wrong. If you are not sure which fits you, ask before you buy, because moving later means reprinting everything.
Booking: start simple
Full calendar booking with live slot availability sounds appealing and is usually the wrong place to start. Most Kenyan facilities do better with a short request form that emails the front desk, sitting next to a WhatsApp link, because WhatsApp is what patients already use. Add real booking once you know the volume and somebody owns the diary. An unattended booking calendar is worse than no calendar.
Photographs, and the trust problem
Use photographs of your actual premises, your actual reception, your actual staff. Stock images of smiling doctors in unfamiliar hospitals do the opposite of what you want, because patients recognise them. Three honest photographs of a clean, real clinic beat twenty stock ones. If your building is modest, photograph it well rather than hiding it.
What it costs
Less than most people expect. A .co.ke domain is KSh 1,200 to register and KSh 1,700 a year to renew, and promotional first-year pricing shows on the domains page when one is running. Shared hosting starts at KSh 80 a month, and a typical clinic sits comfortably on a mid plan because of the photographs and downloadable forms. You pay by M-Pesa. If you would rather not build it yourself, we can build it for you.
Common mistakes
- Listing NHIF instead of SHA, which dates the page instantly.
- A phone number that is not clickable on a mobile, when almost every visitor is on one.
- Burying opening hours in a PDF.
- Collecting patient details through an unsecured form with no privacy policy.
- Letting the domain expire, which takes the site and the email down together.
- Putting clinical records on the public website.
Next step
If you run a hospital, clinic, nursing home, laboratory or dental practice in Kenya, our hosting for health facilities page sets out what is included, what we do not do, and the plan most clinics choose. Migration from an existing host is free and we do the work.