Most people expect that they get a website built and can switch and swap it to the cheapest provider to save some money if they need to. In some cases that’s easy enough to do, but for customers using proprietary non-WordPress platforms such as those run by Local Search and Telstra these guys are genius at holding onto your hard earnt dollars and demanding whatever price they want.
This article isn’t just about the tricks you come across with our competitors, it’s also about plugin licensing which is often something that is overlooked when trying to save money on budget hosting.
What you’re paying for with any agency is not the product but their time and licensing to build you something custom. The product is an end result that also comes with ongoing responsibility. This is what designer freelancers often overlook when starting a business the idea of responsibility for maintaining a product beyond spending initial time building it. Say they go down the SquareSpace route they then think that solves the problem but they then get to support a website for nothing while SquareSpace takes the dollars. It’s a different problem they are supporting but it’s still time and effort. Charge your one off fee to change that image for the customer making you $200 one off and that sounds great until that happens once a year and every other job they have for you is a 5 minute job you can’t charge for. SquareSpace is non-sustainable for both clients and freelance business owners.
With a WordPress site the only thing I would expect would be kept if a site is migrated out which is an ongoing cost to the agency is font licensing. You can read more about font licensing in my blog. I’ve recently gone through the process of updating licensed fonts for all websites so the original designer won’t have the opportunity to break them.
Licensed Plugins
At Get Leads we always use well known plugins but in order to use the best ones they come at a cost. Gravity Forms licensing is a super popular one for us which is provided with our “website management”, not with the build of the site. It’s an ongoing expense to us therefore we provide it as part of the ongoing, not within the cost of the website. It’s like buying a car and expecting it always comes with a full tank of fuel or that the manufacturer will fill it up for you. This is only one out of a possible 5 plugins we use that comes with licensing.
What happens when Licensing expires?
Things probably won’t break straight away, you’ll get a notice telling you that you need to pay the vendor directly. If you’re with Get Leads this is taken care of for you and we get Agency pricing so it’s cheaper for us compared to if you went direct.
IT Team has packaged this in
This is a terrible idea as the level of knowledge required to run websites is completely different to running websites. It might seem like it’s in the same area but they often won’t take responsibility for the plugins that the agency or freelancer has installed on the website that might break. You can often forget about updates as well. They’re main goal is to resell a hosting plan, not to spend time managing your site. We package domains with our website management because by doing so it helps with our automation and transactional email setups for the domain. However we’ll always give your IT guy/girl direct audited access to the DNS so they can make updates as needed. Usually this is only for the mail service and can consist of 5 or 6 records compared to the 10+ ones your web developer needs to make. You can read about why your agency should be managing your domain in my blog.
What if I want to move my website?
We recommend the person taking responsibility will do an audit of the website to see what plugins are there and understand the ongoing cost here. Not only that but comparing like for like services. A SquareSpace website is really not comparable to a professionally built WordPress site.
With Get Leads AU if you chose to move we will maintain licensing under and services for the remainder of the subscribed service. We’ll work with you to give you access to your domain and backend of the site beyond that it’s up to you or your technical representative to organise. Once you get to the end of the contracted term we’ll disconnect from our side services such as DMARC monitoring, transactional email for your contact form, uptime monitors, CDN’s in use and any licensing which there is always something.
If the exercise is about saving money we suggest we have a chat about the difference in price. A hosting package with someone else might be $30 per month but this is without any of the extra support or licensing we offer. You’ll quickly get to the same price once you have to go buy these yourself.
Conclusion
The goal here isn’t to scare you into keeping your site with Get Leads or to encourage you to switch. It’s just stating what might be misunderstood. It’s being up front and transparent about what it means to have a website.
