A look inside £99 websites
When you’re having a website built for the first time it’s natural to want to set a relatively low budget for it. It could be that the website’s for your side hustle, or you’re starting up in business and don’t have a large budget. You may have been having success selling on Instagram and Facebook and you consider having a website as a backup; a shopfront for credibility.
Whatever your personal reasons, we don’t recommend spending a fortune on a website when it’s your first one or you’re brand new to business. In fact, it’s why we price all of our websites at under £1,000.
Website pricing can be confusing, with websites ranging from a couple of hundred pounds to tens of thousands. How do you know which one is right for you?
Let’s look at the £99 websites and why they’re not the best solution:
You end up paying way more than £99. In fact, get complacent and it could cost a lot more than the initial outlay for a custom build.
When a website costs £99 per month it can feel like a great solution for cashflow. You know where you’re at each month and you get a website included.
However, that £99 is per month and you’ll need to pay it every month to maintain your website. If you add the costs up - £99 per month for a year is £1,188.. Have it for 2 years and it’s £2,376. Commissioning a new website is no small undertaking what with having to get all the content ready, find a designer you like and all the other parts, it means that most people keep their website for up to 5 years before starting a new one. A £99 website over 5 years £5,940, which is a LOT of money to pay for a design which has an approximate value of £99. In fact if you’re looking to pay anything over £2,500 for the design and build of your website, then you should be looking at custom build options where the website is built completely for you and your brand.
It's most likely they’re using free or cheap software.
To deliver a website for £99 either the designer is working at a loss of they’re using free or really cheap tools. This will mean that your website won’t perform well and it doesn’t have a well thought out design. Many designers who offer this as an option don’t pay attention to things like SEO or accessibility which means that while your website may look good, Search Engines won’t like it. If search engines don’t like it, they won’t recommend it in their search results so you’re effectively paying for a website which doesn’t do anything for your business.
Hosting is expensive - they’re probably not setup with the best servers.
Every website needs to be hosted. This is the server on which the website files sit. There are a wealth of hosting options available but what’s most common for small business websites (including ours) is that the website is hosted on a shared server. This keeps the costs down and it means your website will sit with a cluster of other websites (not necessarily owned by the website designer).
It’s important to know here that not all server and sever solutions are created equal. In real terms this may mean that a server’s overloaded and when someone tries to access the website it has a 500 error message. It can also mean the servers aren’t running the latest versions of software and security can be compromised. When this happens websites can be hacked, malware injected and it can be costly as well as time consuming to sort out.
You may not have access to your website.
In the case of low value websites with high monthly charges you may not have admin access to your website. This means you won’t be able to easily update the images or text, update pricing or do any of the niggly jobs which come with having your own website. You may just have a website ‘as is’, as in, once it’s published you’re stuck with it like that until you have it rebuilt. Or you may have to contact the designer every time you want to make a change, leading to frustrating delays and high monthly bills.
You don’t own your website.
Despite paying £99 per month every month for your website the likelihood is the website doesn’t belong to you. In reality this means that the designer can make any changes they like to the website without your consent. It also means they’re not under obligation to maintain the software or check everything’s working on a monthly basis.
When you have enough of this arrangement you won’t be able to take your website with you and you’ll have to start again with a new designer.
Our Simply Sites websites were created with empowerment for the small business owner in mind. All our website prices are priced for the website which you’ll own at the end of the build. You’re then welcome to stay with us for hosting and maintenance (these are the technical updates to your website) at an ethical, fair price. However, should you want to host and look after it yourself, we’ll happily transfer it to you with no tie-ins or release fee. We’ll even help set you up with your own hosting if you need it.
If you’d like to talk about a Simply Site website for your small business, personal brand or side-hustle, book a free, no-obligation call with us and we’ll help you choose the right website for you.
