There are many companies (and we have clients who have used said companies in the past) that advertise and offer web development/design (or in layperson terms: the service of creating/building a website) to professionals in non-tech-related fields. These professionals and small businesses don’t know how to build a website, don’t want to know how, don’t want to put down the steep initial investment or simply don’t even have a clue as to what to do or how to get started.
Boy, do the web development companies just love these tech-illiterate professionals. These days anyone who’s anyone (and even anyone who’s no one) needs a website so these professionals and small businesses have found themselves in between a rock and hard place and the web development companies are just raking it in.
What is the rock and the hard place so many non-tech-savvy professionals and small businesses find themselves stuck between? Owning a website vs. renting one. The dilemma becomes do these professionals buy and own a website, putting down several hundreds of dollars for a web development company to design a website for them? Or do they rent a website, with no initial lump sum, but small monthly payments that add up over the year and end up costing over $700 each year.
I once read a website sarcastically note, “if you intend on retiring in the next 6 months, then renting a website is a great idea!” However, most small business owners that are contemplating spending money on their first website, a new website, or an overhaul to their current website are certainly hoping to be in business for longer than 6 months.
Many web development companies will offer to design a website starting at around $600-$700, but to have a decent website that stands up to your competitors’ it will usually cost you more. Also, you’ll need some sort of management system, tech support, or retainer for future changes to be made. 99designs.com will offer you web design for anywhere from $600-$2,500. However, this is just the design. If you want an ongoing relationship with the designer, tech support, etc. you’re going to have to pay extra.
Then, there are sites like TherapySites.com and TheWebsiteGeographer.com that will allow you to rent a website, touting the amazing benefits of renting over owning, the main one being that there is no large upfront fee. All you have to do is pay a small monthly fee of $59… for the rest of the business’s existence. They usually fail to discuss that last part: how renting a site will cost you upwards of $700/year… for as long as you rent. Over 10 years, we’re looking at $7,000. Worth it in the long-run? Not in the slightest.
While some of these “rental companies” do have a handful of helpful benefits (like SEO, tech support, etc.), many of the benefits they claim to offer are ridiculously cheaper than $700/year and some are even FREE if you know how to install them on you website.
Below is a list of “features” one rental company claims to offer:
- Personalized Domain Name (usually runs around $12 per year)
- Personalized Template Design (FREE – and just as a side note: I have seen several professionals in the same field and CITY with websites that look almost identical to each other. This is because the “personalized templates” so many of these web development companies offer are much more limited than they seem.)
- Integrated Email Service (the ability to have an email address that reads: yourname@yourdomainname.com: can be roughly $50 per year)
- Website Hosting (can be about $75 per year)
- Add Audio or Video (can be FREE, may require an upgrade to your WordPress theme with a flat rate of $15-$25)
- Shopping Cart (FREE with a plug-in, may require a monthly fee or percentage with whatever company you work with to handle the transactions)
- Website Statistics (FREE with WordPress plug-ins)
- Unlimited Pages (Gosh, golly, gee! Unlimited pages? This is usually FREE.)
Further, if a client is signing up with one of these services, they clearly are not the world’s greatest technology user and won’t be able to partake in or benefit from a long list of tech-related services regardless of how easy the company claims that it can be.
Nevertheless, what I have outlined above only comes out to a fraction of the ~$700 these companies require each year.
So, even though it may seem as though it’s a lose-lose situation, Innovative Biz Consulting really does want you to win. Many years ago, we were right there ourselves, knowing we needed a website and not a clue as to what to do about it. So, we dug in, read, watching tutorials, and somewhere along the way we found that we actually quite enjoyed it. Now, we offer affordable, customized websites for professionals with on-going support. Click here for more information on our pricing, what we can do, and how to get started. It doesn’t have to be a huge lump sum in the beginning or a huge lump sum drawn out over time. Innovative Biz Consulting was started specifically to give businesses a third option to grow.