Pay Per Month Website Companies | For Better or Worse

I have very mixed emotions about the growing business of offering pay per month websites. They definitely fill a need for people who don't want to invest in a webmaster (or don't even know how to find one) and those who want to update their website with minimal training.

I am glad these companies exist because the alternative IS more work and there is an extra layer of vulnerability in having to find and work with an individual webmaster or learning how to do some things yourself.

Promising the World but Delivering The Minimum?

These companies do provide you with a decent looking website. These companies do provide you with a way to be completely non-techie and still make web updates. And these companies will know what to do if a server goes down (and your website crashes.) They maintain stuff on their end. Stuff you don't even know about and probably have no interest in knowing about.

But... did you know that you can get get a "host" for your website and buy your own domain name for under $50 a YEAR? That's right, take the 11 months you're also paying $50/month and imagine what you could be doing with that cash. And then take those 11 months of savings ($605/year) and add up having your website for many years to come. As I mention in the webmaster section, you'll likely spend at least $1,000 to have someone design a website. But in LESS than two years it pays for itself if you do not go with the pay per month services. And once you have "saved" that money, every year that you have your own website is another savings of $605. Imagine having your website indefinitely and spending $605 a year, every year. Over 5 years you will spend $3,000. Your own website would cost $625. (Obviously add in the cost of designing a website.) But imagine what youc ould do with that $2,375. That is a ton of marketing, advertising, or just plain "free time" not having to work to earn that money!

And one of the BIGGEST issues I have with pay per month websites? You are completely branded to them and if you ever want to grow, expand, change your entire website, you lose everything. You have to start all over, from scratch, with a webmaster. The company owns all the graphics, the layout, everything.

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The REAL Low Down on the Included Features

I just grabbed a common company, well established than some of you may actually be using. I will not mention the company but will list their promises for their $59/month services:

"Professional website" - means quite generic and many people share the identical looking website, but yes, they generally look OK, if not "corporate blah"

"Personalized domain name" - Considering websites are $10 a YEAR, I would hope spending $708 a year gets you a domain name! They claim this is a $19.95 value for free when it's a standard $9.95 value and if you already have a domain name and transfer it to them, you've already spent the $9.95. I guess they will renew it for you for a year, but it makes me wonder if they own the domain name?

"Integrated Email Service" - They say that you get your own custom email (yourname@your website.com) and they can even forward that email to an email you currently use. You can do this yourself for free already.

"Website Page Content" - This is therapist-specific content you can remove or keep to help beef up your website. That's fine but you can do this for free, on your own, with your own material or any number of articles you often give to your clients. This generic content does not help you with search engines (where content is necessary to beef up your site.) Search engines want UNIQUE content, and will ignore pages that are identical to other pages. There is also a huge self-interest of this company because they will give you articles that link to THEIR main website which will advertise their main therapy directory. You could accidently lose a client who goes web surfing from your articles and never returns.

"Easy to Use Editing Tools" - Easy ways to edit your website. They're right. But this also means you get a lot of junk code added to your website and you likely don't have full control because they have to block off areas of your website to protect you from destroying it. Some companies also "decide" what you can edit (very frustrating when you learn about search engine optimization and don't have access to important areas of your page.) And some like homestead.com are very restrictive in what you can upload and what files can be used.

"Website Hosting" - Speedy, great service, your website will never go down. That's great. But the line, "No extra fees" is hilarious - $59 per MONTH is a big fee considering you can get an extremely robust host for under $10 per month.

"Client Forms" - Use theirs, upload your own. A basic webmaster can do this for you as well and is not high tech.

"Appointment Requests" - I am wondering what "alerts" they are talking about. You can easily set up something on your site to get an email, page, text message if someone wants to schedule an appointment. There are ONLINE schedulers but for many therapists that's a bit scary because you have to literally be up to the minute on your appointments so if someone books online, you haven't just promised that time to the client you're seeing at the end of that session.

Now you'll know instantly when a client wants to schedule an appointment with you. Alerts will be sent to you automatically. Say goodbye to missed calls and opportunities.

"Mental Health Resources" - They're saying your customers will be linked to the greatest resources for mental health. First of all, don't YOU want to provide those services? And secondly, links back to their resources means your web surfer is going to be heading towards websites that are going to advertise your competition with their large directories. This company has a very strong self-interest in having as many links back to their websites as possible and is happy to set up all websites from you back to them without letting you know it doesn't actually help you at all.

"Accept Credit Cards" - You can do this on your own, for the same 30 cent per transaction fee and 2.9% fee. They don't tell you that by setting it up with them they actually earn .5% of your earnings (up to $1,000 per new therapist.) Tricky, tricky! There are many other options besides Pay Pal to take credit cards. And they all take minimal work to set up on your own.

"Optimized Website" = All they mean is you have access to the main areas "behind the scenes", so if you knew exactly what you were doing, you can make your own edits. This should be a GIVEN, no matter what website you're working with. This does not mean you will actually show up with Google because there is a lot of work involved in showing up in search engines. And they may say they "submit your website to search engines" but that is not the way search engines operate and is one of the single biggest myths out there.

"Website Statistics" - They use Google Analytics, which is a great tool but not nearly as accurate as if you went with a standard traffic tool sitting directly on your host. Google Analaytics requires a "Javascript" program to run on your computer and many people have that shut off, so you won't really see the most accurate data.

"Money Back Guarentee" - They just give you 30 days! People who will sign up for this won't know in 30 quick days if it works, if they like it, or how they may have benefited by using another system.

"Customer Service" - I sure hope for $59 a month they have customer service! When my host goes down I have instant support online, or I have the tools to fix my own stuff. When using anyone elses tools it's goig to have bugs in it and cause errors so it's important they have customer service.