The Web

The Web was Originally Posted on September 23, 2013 by lavarock

A neighbor (on this island, everyone is a neighbor) approached me about creating a website for her pottery business. I don’t know if she investigated other places to have a web presence, but some of them are SO EXPENSIVE!

As with any purchase, you have to see what you are getting and is it worth the price and lack of hassle? For example, Web.Com offers a professional website for free. well, it free for a while, but based upon your site, you may not own the content and will have to give it up if you change providers. That may be fine, but that locks you into a single provider. Some websites are $110 a month!

You can also get hosting with free sites that display ads on your site to offset the cost. That is fine if you just want to share photos or get an email account, but is not very professional.

So somewhere in between may be a better choice.

I tell people that they can have a nice looking website for $30-$50 a year that includes “boatloads” (a technical term) of webpages, not just 3 or 4. It also can include multiple email accounts. You can add photo galleries and other software all for free. As you add more services, your price goes up a bit, but should not cost you more than $70 a year.

When people ask me my opinion, I try to direct them to a service that best fits what they need, not what somebody wants to sell them.

Websites cost less when you do some of the work. You don’t have to be an expert, but should be somewhat involved. For example, I help people set up shopping carts but I expect that after it is set up, the owner will start to update their own photos and prices, etc. One local site was paying $100 or more just to have a guy go in and update the text on a page of events. He took weeks to months to get to their changes. I moved their website to a different hosting company, redesigned their site and set them up to make their own changes. They now pay 15% or 20% of their yearly cost and have no extra $300 or $400 charges in a year to update some text.

I found that if somebody wants just a page or two of information, or just an email account, I could create a hosting account for them that gives them just what they need, but does not allow them to manage the hosting itself. For example, my Sister needed a business email account, but doesn’t need the ability to create new email accounts herself, so she would call me. I would create the account, set her password and give her the access info.

In cases such as the above, the cost is very low, because I can consolidate these items all under one account. This only works if the included items (website, email, etc) do not change often. Also, the more complex configurations requite a standalone account, at slightly higher cost.

So I still say, if you have a website (and you are not a big company) you should not be paying more than $70 or so a year for it.

On the technical front, I now have a $10 adapter that seems to work for telephone service. The phone number is $1 a month and with hundreds of minutes of calls per month, the total cost is in the $3 to $4 range with no other charges. I just don’t see why people pay more than that a month. Oh, you can add 911 for maybe a $1 or $1.50 extra a month. A family could spend $20, get a free account to connect the phones and call between the units for free, no matter where they are in the world.

I just love saving money!