This article is an excerpt from our Consumer Awareness Guide to Website Design. Download your copy today for more essential information about how to effectively plan, hire & avoid costly mistakes.
Introduction
Thinking about getting a new website but dreading the huge upfront cost and hassle that comes with hiring a web developer? We can help.
Getting a business website done properly can be both expensive and difficult. Just like in everything, not all professionals are created the same. "Doing it yourself" is beyond the ability of most people. But even paying the big bucks doesn't guarantee that you will get a "better" website.
But what if there was a way to reduce your upfront costs without turning yourself into a proto-web developer? What if you could get all the benefits of great design without paying thousands of dollars upfront and hundreds every year in maintenance and other hidden costs?
In this article, discover the two main ways you can pay for your business website and the pros & cons of each.
Two ways to get your business website
There are two ways developers sell website designs:
- As a product (common)
- As a service (less common)
They both come with their costs and benefits but we, at Supersonic Sites®, have a bias for the second option.
Website as a Product
Let's use an example to understand this model:
Imagine that you paid cash upfront for a new car. It’s not cheap, and it starts depreciating when you drive it off the lot. You’re responsible for maintaining it with oil changes and more. Eventually, you need new tires and a tune-up. Maybe you'll even want to customize it.
Most people don’t have the tools or knowledge to do it themselves.
Like a new car, websites are usually built and delivered as a product. You pay for someone to build your website and to host it. You might have extra bells and whistles that cost you on top of it, depending on what your web designer sold you. Then, upon delivery, you get a website with a login and password. It's 100% yours. Now you have two choices:
- Either you pay for someone to update, maintain, and edit the site when you need to OR
- Do it all yourself
Believe me that you definitely don't want to be stuck with #2. Updating, maintaining and editing your website is NOT what you want to be doing as a business owner. It's especially true if you've got a WordPress site. You'll experience at least 1 or 2 panic moments per year when, for absolutely no reason, your website decides to go down and gives you the "white screen of death." Dealing with hackers, spamware, and ransomware on your website is another nightmare scenario. If you haven't taken the necessary precautions with proper backups, you might lose your site completely.
The other option isn't so appealing either. Do you want to pay up to $79/mo to get someone to be your hacking insurance, keep the software up to date, and make necessary changes when you need it?
How much will it cost?
So, not only did you pay from $2000 to $5000 to get your website...now you are going to pay about $1000 per year to keep it alive.
Read "5 Hidden Costs of Building a Website" to learn more!
Pros
- 100% ownership
- Very flexible & customizable
Cons
- Expensive in maintenance and care
- Costly upfront
Website As A Service
The other option is to get your website as a service, instead of a product. What if you could get your business website up and running by paying a single monthly payment for as long as you need your website? The day you don't need it anymore, you simply stop paying, and that's that. The monthly cost would cover:
- Design implementation
- Content for the website
- Optimization for search
- Content edits when needed
- Maintenance
- Monthly Performance Report
- etc.
How much will it cost?
Those services range from $49/mo all the way to $250/mo. When you factor in the hidden costs that come with owning and maintaining your own website as a product, website as a service is cheaper every time. Another benefit includes the extra incentive for your website provider. They want to add value to you over the long run so you keep doing business with them.
Pros
- Much less costly
- Simple and transparent pricing
- Incentives are aligned
Cons
- Less control
- You're not the owner of the web design (but you still own the domain)
Why did Supersonic switch to Website as a Service?
We used to operate a digital marketing consulting agency where we also made and maintained websites for our clients. Five years in, we discovered that all of our clients, small to medium-size business owners, didn't want anything to do with the web stuff. They couldn't care less if they had the ability to change the content on their site...they just wanted to have it done so they could focus on their business.
We made less than optimal technology choices (WordPress) only to realize that they didn't need any of the features it had for them.
Most business owners need a simple 5 page website:
- Home
- About
- Services
- Booking/Scheduling page
- Contact page
So why would you need to have a giant behemoth of a software like WordPress to deal with something that simple? You don't.
It's for this reason that we created a high-performance framework that can be customized to deliver a website in a week (once we've compiled our content). For $49/mo, you can get a website that never goes down, never breaks, and always gets the job done.
Conclusion
Each model has its pros and cons. It all depends on your needs, your ability to tinker around with your website, and your budget. We believe that more businesses would benefit by considering the "website as a service" as an option.
We hoped you've enjoyed learning about how to save on the huge upfront cost of getting a website. Now you can make a more informed decision moving forward!
Download a copy of our Consumer Awareness Guide to Website Design so that you can be armed with all the knowledge you need to make an educated decision on how to go about getting a website without getting ripped off.