If you are a small business owner, running a non-profit organization, or maybe even working in a church, you may be shocked to see how much buying, developing, designing, and maintaining a website can cost.
In this day and age, having a website is essential to your success. There isn’t any way around it. But the upfront costs of creating a website for your business can be astronomical. This cost alone can put a quality website out of reach for many churches, nonprofits, or small business owners.
What you may not know is there is a more budget-friendly way to obtain a beautifully designed and effective website for your business.
Renting or leasing a website could be a great option for you!
What does that mean? We are glad you asked.
Leasing or renting a website is just as it sounds. Let’s compare it to real estate. When you rent a property, it is yours to customize, decorate, and fill with your belongings, you have access to the whole place without limitations. When maintenance is needed your landlord comes out and fixes things, and when something breaks it’s taken care of. All you have to do is pay a monthly rental fee.
With a rented website, you have the freedom to create your content and customize your website to represent your business (with all the help you could need) you have access to the back end of your website. When ongoing updates and website maintenance are needed, it will be taken care of for you. If something breaks or crashes you have emergency support. All you have to do is pay a monthly fee.
Renting Vs. Owning a Website
Before you commit to renting a website, let’s get an understanding of what owning a website may look like. It’s less common than you may think. As long as you are working with some other third party, it is likely that some components of your website will be proprietary to them.
When you go to build your website, you will likely invest a lot of time and money into creating the content and building the website. If you utilize a web designer that will come with a hefty fee. You will also have to pay an ongoing website hosting fee.
Once your website is launched you will need to work hard to keep up with any suggested updates or maintenance required. Technology is changing fast and your website will need to keep up to be effective. If something breaks or crashes you will need to take emergency action to fix it and likely pay another hefty fee for emergency IT services.
Not to say it’s impossible, but owning your website will be a hands-on project that will take a big investment of both your time and money. Some companies have no problem doing this, but for others, it’s not realistic or smart.
The Pros and Cons of Renting a Website
Pros
- Very little, if any, upfront cost or fees
- Affordable monthly fees that fit within your budget
- Help in designing a beautiful website to represent your business
- Website Maintenance is taken care of- This includes security updates, malware/virus detection, software updates, etc…
- Options to update the content at any time
Cons
- In the long run, renting could cost more, but planned monthly fees can be budgeted for instead of the unexpected costs of owning
- Should you choose to end your rental, some or all content may be unavailable for you to take with you
The Pros and Cons of Owning a Website
Pros
- You are in control of who works on your website, if you don’t like a designer, you can hire a different one (with a cost)
- The content and the website design are yours forever
Cons
- Substantial upfront costs and fees
- You will need to pay an additional hosting fee to have your website live
- You will need to monitor and maintain your website
- If you get hacked, your website crashes, or something goes wrong, you will likely need to pay a professional to fix it, that’s expensive!
Website Design For Small Businesses
Whether they say it outright, or not, many website design companies operate on the leasing model. For a monthly fee, that fits your budget, you get the benefit of having knowledgeable and experienced web developers and designers at your service.
At Torrch we are happy to offer small businesses, non-profits, and churches this option that allows them to get a well-designed website within their budgets. Contact us today if this seems like a good option for your new website!