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Price, cost, and value of a good web person

Personal Accountability

I recently got into what could only affectionately be called a “pissing match” with another 15-year veteran of web development. The basic gist of the argument was this:

I believe it’s perfectly OK for you to use discount (HostGator, BlueHost, etc) hosting if you’re a newbie*

(*you know, as long as you back up your site regularly, have an escape plan, and understand that it won’t be the fastest, most stable hosting on earth)

The other web person didn’t believe in discount hosting under any circumstances, because “they’d been on the wrong host and had cost them big time”. Rather than continuing to duke it out on Facebook, I wrote this post.

I posit to you, any expert worth their salt will have processes in place to avoid getting caught with their pants down if a tool fails ’em, no matter what tools they’re using. If an expert gets hosed using sub-par tools and upgrades their tools, but not their processes, they’re probably not a very good “expert”. It’s like smashing your thumb with an entry-level hammer and then buying another, fancier hammer instead of learning where to put your fingers more carefully (or using a clothespin to hold the nail). That’s not to say that you should ignore when a project calls for a lathe rather than a chisel – just that, until you can afford a lathe, you can probably make a chisel work.

My friend Paul Hummer said, “If you pay $4/mo in hosting, you get to complain about it exactly as much as anything else that costs $4, once per month, and then you’re done.” I agree with him.

At the same time, a good web person knows not every business or solopreneur can afford $20/mo hosting. A great web person knows how to compensate for entry-level hosting with processes.

The value of a good web person goes far beyond cost savings – they’ll not only help protect you in advance from some of the more dire consequences of your choices (good or bad), they’ll also help you out when things do go wrong.

If I had to spring for managed $20/mo hosting when I first started, I’d never have gotten out of my first year. $240 in website hosting costs for a year would have been covered by one client back then, but also – it would have paid for about a month and a half of groceries, two months worth of gas, a third of my rent, or… well, you get the idea.

Evaluating your choices over time and setting up “tripwires” for yourself so you know that there’s a decision to be made makes using entry-level hosting a manageable stepping stone instead of a stumbling block.

So how do you choose hosting?

Almost every entry-level hosting provider is owned by the same parent company. Except for GoDaddy and a few others, your experience will be mostly the same. Trust me when I say that GoDaddy’s hosting is a particular brand of awful.

I’ve had really decent luck with HostGator and BlueHost. Both provide direct cpanel access and FTP accounts, MyPHPAdmin (SQL Database) management, and a few other niceties.

When it comes to discount hosting providers, you just want something with as little overhead as possible. You want cpanel, you want FTP access (without having to make multiple accounts), you want easy email address and forwarder setup, you want easy access to install WordPress or whatever CMS you opt for – and you want something that doesn’t require you to fill in the FTP user and password each time you try to upgrade WordPress.

If your host has custom junkware cpanel stuff, it is probably more trouble than its worth.

Fine. So, so I want to go the entry-level hosting route. What do I need to know?

First, you want to track all your important logins:

  • Domain Name Login Credentials
  • Control Panel Login Credentials
  • FTP username and password (and what to use as the FTP address if it’s not your domain name)
  • Database username and password (and where to go to log in, if it’s separate from cpanel)

Second, you want to get your site backed up:

  • If you are using WordPress, use UpdraftPlus to backup to DropBox (keep one or two sets of backups).
  • If you aren’t using WordPress, there are a number of different plugins you might want to look into. The key is that it backs up your wp-content folder (contains all the unique bits of your WordPress install) and your SQL database REMOTELY so you can recover your site even if your hosting provider goes down.

Third, you’ll want to have a little redundancy in your setup:

I highly recommend using Google Apps for email (or a third-party email hosting provider) for your primary email. That way, if your website server goes down, your email server won’t go down with it. Paying $5/mo or $50/yr for Google Apps is also an easier pill to swallow than $240/year for hosting.

Fourth, you want to make sure you know the process of recovering your site from raw files:

Pay a geek (like me) to create instructions for you in the event you ever have to use ’em. You’ll need to swap settings in your domain, you’ll probably be starting from scratch with your email (if you were using your web host as your email server, too), you’ll need to re-install WordPress, and you’ll need to get your site up and running again.

Also, and this is really important, know where you’re going to switch to IN ADVANCE.

If you can’t do this yourself, set aside $150 for emergency help with your site – it’ll come in handy to get someone’s help to recover your site.

Fifth, know how to analyze whether your hosting provider is just temporarily down or down for a while:

Set a deadline (3 hours? 6 hours?). Know the support Twitter accounts of your hosting provider and ask for updates. Know the support number. Ask what’s wrong and for an ETA on when it should come back up. If you don’t like the answers you’re getting, you know what to do.

Finally, assess whether all this work is worth paying the $20/mo for managed hosting.

This is all a LOT of work, right? It’s probably not how you’d opt to spend a week of your productive time. Managed hosting takes care of all of this for you – but then again, so does a good web person. Both have costs and values which vary wildly from the price tag. Choose accordingly! Low price doesn’t mean you can’t squeeze as much value as possible out of it. High price doesn’t mean you aren’t overpaying or getting too much value that you can’t put to good use – a mom-and-pop 100-visitor-per-week website probably doesn’t need managed hosting yet.

Entry-level hosting is not a fatal choice if you go in with the right expectations and mitigate the risks with good processes.

Note: This post is part of the monthly Word Carnival. Every month, a whole slew of experts in their respective fields get together and blog around a common theme (cool, right!?) This month’s topic: Price vs Value. Click the link to check out the rest!

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Recently Awesome Folks

  • Carol Lynn Rivera on Price, cost, and value of a good web person

    Sounds like managed hosting!!
    Posted Jul 09, 2014
  • Carol Lynn Rivera on Price, cost, and value of a good web person

    I LOVE the idea of sending people that upsell email to update their WP/plugins. I might have to steal that...
    Posted Jul 08, 2014
  • Molly McCowan on Price, cost, and value of a good web person

    Well I've bookmarked this post! As someone who is fairly unfamiliar with what can go wrong with bad hosting (I've...
    Posted Jun 27, 2014
  • Sharon Hurley Hall on Price, cost, and value of a good web person

    Excellent advice, Nick. I've had good luck with Bluehost on most of my sites, except for Get Paid to Write...
    Posted Jun 26, 2014
  • Carol Lynn Rivera on Price, cost, and value of a good web person

    Sigh. I have just had SOOOOOOO many bad bad experiences with the cheap hosting. I don't know any non-tech person...
    Posted Jun 25, 2014

What our clients say:

"We worked along side Nick for a year and half and would recommend his talent and creativeness to anyone willing to take a look at the “standard” way of doing things a little differently that still achieve lasting results."

- Jan Peters, Fort Collins Brewery
2014-01-01T11:58:52-07:00
"We worked along side Nick for a year and half and would recommend his talent and creativeness to anyone willing to take a look at the “standard” way of doing things a little differently that still achieve lasting results." - Jan Peters, Fort Collins Brewery
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"There are very few individuals in this day-and-age that commit themselves so passionately into their profession and Nick Armstrong is one. I would recommend him to anyone, especially to those who don’t completely understand the backside of setting up a business website. He was great!"

- Linda Griego, Java Raiz
2014-01-01T12:06:09-07:00
"There are very few individuals in this day-and-age that commit themselves so passionately into their profession and Nick Armstrong is one. I would recommend him to anyone, especially to those who don’t completely understand the backside of setting up a business website. He was great!" - Linda Griego, Java Raiz
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“Nick and his team delivered a great new website for my company. I am happy with the results and the feedback from our clients and friends was super positive.”

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2014-01-01T11:49:52-07:00
“Nick and his team delivered a great new website for my company. I am happy with the results and the feedback from our clients and friends was super positive.” - Betsy Craig, MenuTrinfo
https://pixelatedonpurpose.com/testimonials/betsy-craig-menutrinfo/
"As an expert web developer, Nick can do almost anything you ask him to! He really does need to wear a cape to work. Nick is very generous with his time, and he genuinely loves to help people solve problems. I am looking forward to working with Nick on many more exciting projects."

- Molly McCowan, InkBot Editing
2014-01-01T12:03:37-07:00
"As an expert web developer, Nick can do almost anything you ask him to! He really does need to wear a cape to work. Nick is very generous with his time, and he genuinely loves to help people solve problems. I am looking forward to working with Nick on many more exciting projects." - Molly McCowan, InkBot Editing
https://pixelatedonpurpose.com/testimonials/molly-mccowan-inkbot-editing/
"Nick Armstrong has been a wonderful WordPress consultant for my business. His tutoring expertise was extremely helpful. Nick is a tremendous WordPress resource and expert."

- Catherine Rogers, Coldwell Banker
2013-12-28T13:28:40-07:00
"Nick Armstrong has been a wonderful WordPress consultant for my business. His tutoring expertise was extremely helpful. Nick is a tremendous WordPress resource and expert." - Catherine Rogers, Coldwell Banker
https://pixelatedonpurpose.com/testimonials/catherine-rogers-coldwell-banker/
"Nick has done an awesome job firstly recreating my program's website, then improved on it, and followed up with great training materials and a promise to be there when we will expand the website."

- Linda Hodgson, ChangeLabs
2013-12-27T21:53:40-07:00
"Nick has done an awesome job firstly recreating my program's website, then improved on it, and followed up with great training materials and a promise to be there when we will expand the website." - Linda Hodgson, ChangeLabs
https://pixelatedonpurpose.com/testimonials/linda-hodgson-changelabs/
"Nick is the Yoda of the programming and marketing world: he is wise and powerful in the ways of the code; he wields his mouse with great speed and agility; he continually ponders the mysteries of marketing; and he is an excellent and effective instructor with a mischievous sense of humor :-)"

- Megan Henderson, Henderson + Company
2014-01-01T11:57:28-07:00
"Nick is the Yoda of the programming and marketing world: he is wise and powerful in the ways of the code; he wields his mouse with great speed and agility; he continually ponders the mysteries of marketing; and he is an excellent and effective instructor with a mischievous sense of humor :-)" - Megan Henderson, Henderson + Company
https://pixelatedonpurpose.com/testimonials/megan-henderson-henderson-company/
“Nick has been a great asset on the project we worked on together. His knowledge and expertise made the process go smoothly. I would hire him for future projects when the opportunity presents itself.“

-  Sam Haltom, Another Color, Inc
2014-01-01T11:49:09-07:00
“Nick has been a great asset on the project we worked on together. His knowledge and expertise made the process go smoothly. I would hire him for future projects when the opportunity presents itself.“ -  Sam Haltom, Another Color, Inc
https://pixelatedonpurpose.com/testimonials/sam-haltom-another-color-inc/
"We enjoyed working with Nick, he was fun, very responsive, and has great ideas. We like the look of our new website, functionality, and how it tells our message of what Greenpoint Landscaping really is. He also set us up on a blogging plan to help drive traffic to our website."

- Peter Roberts, Greenpoint Landscaping
2014-09-10T15:47:51-06:00
"We enjoyed working with Nick, he was fun, very responsive, and has great ideas. We like the look of our new website, functionality, and how it tells our message of what Greenpoint Landscaping really is. He also set us up on a blogging plan to help drive traffic to our website." - Peter Roberts, Greenpoint Landscaping
https://pixelatedonpurpose.com/testimonials/peter-roberts-greenpoint-landscaping/
"Nick has an eye for creative and fun ways to step a business up a notch. He’s passionate, experienced, and knowledgeable about marketing and web development. He helped redesign our website for easier management and created campaigns for our social media outreach for a reasonable cost. Nick is a great person to have on board any business team."

- Chelsey Walker, Ridekick
2014-01-01T14:05:33-07:00
"Nick has an eye for creative and fun ways to step a business up a notch. He’s passionate, experienced, and knowledgeable about marketing and web development. He helped redesign our website for easier management and created campaigns for our social media outreach for a reasonable cost. Nick is a great person to have on board any business team." - Chelsey Walker, Ridekick
https://pixelatedonpurpose.com/testimonials/chelsey-walker-ridekick/
"Nick Armstrong is brilliant and made us feel cared for. He is talented and his work is of the highest quality. Nick respects his work and his cost is reasonable and he delivers on time."

- Ed and Deb Shapiro, Be The Change
2014-01-01T14:06:05-07:00
"Nick Armstrong is brilliant and made us feel cared for. He is talented and his work is of the highest quality. Nick respects his work and his cost is reasonable and he delivers on time." - Ed and Deb Shapiro, Be The Change
https://pixelatedonpurpose.com/testimonials/ed-and-deb-shapiro-be-the-change/

A division of WTF MarketingPixelated on Purpose is a small business web design company in Fort Collins, Colorado and a division of WTF Marketing.

Pixelated on Purpose
#177 2614 S. Timberline Road Ste 109
Fort Collins, CO 80525
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