When you host your website with me, not only are you getting the support of a digital agency veteran who has served organizations all over Boston for 16 years, but the backing and specialized infrastructure of WP Engine, one of the largest and most trusted WordPress managed hosting companies in the country.

All of those providers will help you create a website as part of their plan and also host it on their servers, but at the end of the day, you don’t own the website because the software is proprietary. You’re forever renting it from them. You can’t port it anywhere else, and if the provider folds or changes its service offerings, you’re entirely at their mercy if you want to keep it.

WordPress, on the contrary, is an open source software, meaning it’s free to use and build a website out of. If you build a website using WordPress through me, you will own the website after you pay for a year of hosting, then you can port it anywhere you want. (Although I’ll be sad to lose you.)

You’ll own the full rights to your website if you host with me for at least 1 year. After that point, you can choose to continue to host with me, or cancel your hosting and host elsewhere. If you decide to host elsewhere, I’ll package your website for free so you can set it up on your choice of host.

Yes you can, but if you also want to keep your website and host it elsewhere, you’ll need to pay out the remainder of the hosting for the year (that is $99 x 12 months, or $1188 total). Then you own the website and I’ll package it up so you can set it up on a provider of your choice. Keep in mind that Genesis themes are only free on WP Engine under a dedicated plan, so if you change providers you’ll have to pay for future updates to your theme if you want to keep it updated.

You definitely can get way cheaper hosting out in the wild, but hosting is just where your website lives. There are lots of cheap hosts that cost less than $10/mo. But when you go that route, you’re likely going to be paying separately to have the website itself built (usually by you), before you pay for the hosting. And the really cheap hosts come with some caveats:

• You’ll have to figure out how to connect your custom domain to the website and install it on your web host, as well as use the page builder to create the website yourself.
• You’ll be hosting on a shared plan, which means if other customer websites on the same server as you use up too many resources, it could impact how your website performs.
• Customer support (if available at all) comes from a call center that’s definitely not local. They usually will only help you with the hosting and not managing your website, and only by chat.
• You’ll likely pay extra fees to have it backed up regularly.

Full transparency: the majority of my clients are corporations who want to build a completely custom website, with a hand-crafted design and code. This means bringing in a visual designer as part of my team, and potentially other experts. These websites can cost tens of thousands of dollars and take months of work to build. But I also cater to small businesses who can benefit from a lightly tailored, off-the-shelf website. This means we don’t have to do any hand-crafted design or custom code. Think of it like buying a suit or dress off the rack and having it tailored to your figure, as opposed to creating one from whole cloth.

Normally, small business clients purchase a yearly retainer (a bundle of hours paid up front), to configure the website in this way, then they decide whether or not they want to host with me, or somewhere else. This offer is the reverse: my larger corporate clients subsidize the setup cost, so I can build long-term relationships with businesses in my area.

Your hosting fee is fixed at $99/mo for as long as you host with me.

Yes! I offer yearly retainer agreements for clients that need additional incidental support throughout the year. You purchase a minimum of 15 hours at $150/hr, paid up front as a flat fee. The retainer can then be used for up to a year, after which time any remaining hours expire. You can request consultation and web development on an hourly basis (down to a minimum of 15-minute increments) and I’ll bill that time against your retainer. My response time is within 48 hours and turnaround time for new work is between 3 and 5 business days.

WordPress is an open source software used to build websites—the most popular one on the Internet, in fact. “Open source” means that tens of thousands of developers all over the world work together on the software to make it better every day. I use it to build all my client’s websites, big or small, because it’s easiest to understand for non-technical users.

WordPress.org is a nonprofit organization that offers it for download. Anyone can download it for free and build “themes,” which are unique designs. WordPress.com is a commercial web host where you can pay to host your website for a monthly fee, much like GoDaddy and other third party web hosts.

In short: the $500 down fee covers the cost of my labor to set up your site. This fee is non-refundable. However…

Building a website is a collaborative process. After your free consultation, I’ll guide you through this process step by step. First, I’ll help you select an ideal theme for your business from 211 options: this is the site’s look and feel that we’ll tailor with your branding (colors, fonts, and your logo). You’ll be given a worksheet to write content for all the pages involved, and I’ll advise you on choosing free stock imagery. Then you’ll be able to familiarize yourself with the WordPress Dashboard in a private environment before it goes live, so you can learn how to edit your content going forward.

I’m confident that the broad selection of themes available plus my expert guidance will result in an end product that you’ll love. That being said, there’s no obligation to start your subscription if you don’t like what we’ve built.

Other than the optional add-ons you can opt into above and the license fee for your theme (if you’re not using one of the 10 free themes), the only other fees involved are in buying your domain. If you already have a domain (a dotcom of your own), then you’re already paying ~$20/year or less to maintain it. If you don’t have a dotcom of your own, I will help you purchase it. A domain is required to launch a website. I recommend buying your domain from Cloudflare.com, because they sell domains at cost (less than $12/year). You always want to own a domain in your name, because it’s your website’s most important asset. Think of it like a street address you’re renting from the government. As part of the Insider Package, I will connect your domain to your website.

Also, if you should cancel your hosting with me and you’re using one of the 10 free Genesis themes that come with the Insider Package, keep in mind that these themes are only free under a WP Engine dedicated account. If you want to keep getting security updates from StudioPress (which creates the Genesis themes), you’ll have to pay for your own Genesis Pro subscription.