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Copyright © 2016 - 2024 SiteDistrict, All Rights ReservedLove using SITE DISTRICT, but afraid your clients will think it's "too expensive"? This page has some answers.
You enjoy building sites on SITE DISTRICT, because of the speed, tools, and support. You also know that your client will have a better, faster, more secure website if they host their site on SITE DISTRICT.
You know that there are other hosting providers out there that offer discounted or cheaper WordPress hosting, and you're trying to figure out how you're going to convince them that hosting their site on SITE DISTRICT for $25 per month is worth it.
First of all, you might be creating a problem where there wasn't one in the first place.
We have found that many clients just know they want a website. The might have a rough idea about how much hosting a website should cost, or they might not have any idea at all. They definitely haven't decided in their head already that "website hosting should cost $X/month", or something like that.
In this case, you can often just tell your client that hosting their website will costs $25 per month, and they'll say "OK". Some might ask if there are cheaper options, and if you're lucky, you can just say something like this:
There are other hosts that are either cheaper, or seem cheaper, but they are less secure, slower, and they charge you extra for a lot of the things that you need for your website, that are already included in the monthly price on SITE DISTRICT.
There's plenty more you can say, but this is a good start. Next, let's talk about some more specific scenarios.
When a new client comes to you to develope their WordPress site, you don't even need to have a hosting conversation. Because development sites on SITE DISTRICT are free and easy to set up, and you don't even need a domain to get started, you can just start building the WordPress site for the client.
When it comes time to launch the website, you recommend that they host their website on SITE DISTRICT, where you built it, and tell them it will cost $25/month.
Your WordPress site is up and running. You can try it out [here] (insert link to development site). I built the site on SITE DISTRICT, which is a fast, secure hosting platform designed specifically for WordPress. It costs $25/month to host your site, which includes everything on their platform. Once you're ready to launch your site, I'll invite you to the account, you can enter your credit card information, and then the site will be live as soon as we update the DNS settings for the domain.
In many cases, that's enough. You're done. Client is sold, and you've build another fast, secure WordPress site that you know you won't have to worry about. If you're going to be doing more work or maintenance, you know you'll have the tools & support you need to get the job done efficiently.
What if your client says they want to host elsewhere, because they:
This is where you again re-iterate the same message from above:
There are other hosts that are either cheaper, or seem cheaper, but they are less secure, slower, and they charge you extra for a lot of the things that you need for your website, that are already included in the monthly price on SITE DISTRICT.
You can also add some extra reasons:
By the time you pay for other add-ons like security, backups, an SSL certificate, etc. you will be paying as much or more as you will on SITE DISTRICT, and your site still will be slower. I've worked with a lost of different hosting providers, and I don't think you can find a better value for WordPress hosting.
Finally - and this is where it gets fun - you also get to add in this:
I can move your website to Slow WordPress Hosting Brand X, but it will cost you $X extra, because it will take up more of my time.
Yes. You heard it right. Tell them that you will charge them extra to move to a slower host. If you are charging them hourly, at say $100/hour (you're worth at least that much, right?), then that extra hour to move the site (it might take less, but probably better to budget at least an hour) is going to blow a good chunk of their "savings" right there.
If that's not enough, you can also say:
It will also cost you extra for any maintenance on Slow Hosting Provider Brand X, because it will take me longer to make updates on their platform.
This will make a lost of clients think twice.
Now, maybe you're not comfortable with this idea, and you're thinking:
I didn't ask them when I started where we should host their site. It's not fair to charge them to move it to a different host, if I didn't ask them.
Maybe so, but remember: you also didn't make them pay to create a hosting account from the start. You developed their WordPress site on SITE DISTRICT for free, without them having to do anyting - including sign up for hosting or even put in their credit card details.
Also, you've been developing their site on SITE DISTRICT, which you know is much faster than Slow WordPress Hosting Brand X, which means that - if you're charging hourly, or based your quote on your expected time - you just saved them a bunch of money.
So, ask yourself again, what is fair & reasonable?
If your client happens to say, "I didn't ask you to develop on SITE DISTRICT. Why should I pay you to move the site.", then you also have a response for that too:
If I hadn't developed the site on SITE DISTRICT, I would have charged you twice as much, because it would have taken longer to build the site, and because dealing with Slow Hosting Provider Brand X is miserable compared to working on SITE DISTRICT.
Subsitute your own number for "twice as much" and "miserable". You get the idea.
We'd like to think that if you take this approach with your clients, not only will they respect you more, but you'll also find yourself with better clients. If your client thinks $25/month for hosting their WordPress site is too much, then they're probably not paying you what you deserve, either.
In many cases, a client might have an old version of their WordPress site on a slower, more cumbersome hosting provider.
This doesn't mean you need to build the new version of the site there too.
As an experienced SITE DISTRICT user, you know that you can import a WordPress site to SITE DISTRICT, in very little time at all.
In many cases, the old hosting provider won't provide any kind of staging functionality for making a copy of the live site anyway. In order to make your changes or complete your redesign you're going to need a copy of the site somewhere.
Even on WordPress hosts that do provide staging, it's often not as easy or quick as on SITE DISTRICT, and you may be left replacing URLs by hand, struggling to get HTTPS working on the cloned site, or something else.
So, first thing you do is add the site to SITE DISTRICT and import a copy so that you can start making changes. You can tell your client you're doing this, if it makes sense, but for many less technical clients, it's not even necessary.
Once you've imported the site, you can make your changes and updates, in a faster environment, with automated backups and lots of useful tools at your disposal.
After you've finished, you're back now at the same point you would be if you'd built the site from scratch. You might say:
Here's the new version of your website. As you can see, it's much faster than your old site on Slow Hosting Provider Brand X. I recommend that you switch hosting, to take advantage of the increased speed and security, and because it will cost less in the long-run to maintain.
If they object, you can use some of the talking points listed above.
We hope that this page helped you understand some options for convincing your clients to host on SITE DISTRICT.
You won't be able to convince everyone to host on SITE DISTRICT, but if you follow this approach, we think a vast majority will choose to host their live website with us. Either way, you'll still retain the benefit of being able to do your WordPress development on your favorite WordPress hosting platform.