Yes, subscriptions are indefinite. You keep paying every month after the 12 month minimum. It generally takes us 2-3 years to make what we would have made if we sold a lump sum site. So ideally we'd like to have clients last at least 5 years to make getting paid over that period of time worth the wait and financially viable. And at that point, the website will be generating more than $175 a month in value for the client, so the site will essentially be paying for itself at that point and we hope our clients continue to see the value in the work we do to keep paying every month so we can continue to do what we do.

No, there is no buyout price to stop paying on the monthly package. As noted in another question, it takes 2-3 years including hosting fees to make what we would have made on a lump sum site. We have this rule because subscriptions really only work out financially if a client stays for 5+ years to be beneficial enough to wait that long for payment. It’s not feasible to be waiting 2 years or so for full payment on every site and then have to replace that monthly subscription. It’s much more beneficial to have just been paid in full up front from the start. We also rely on this monthly recurring income for consistent and reliable income so we don’t have to sell sell sell every month to pay the bills and we can spend more time working on our clients sites and spending time on their support calls and emails. Doing this allows us to be more hands on with our clients and provide a better service than any other agency. So if we had clients buying out of their subscriptions every month, we’d end up having to sell more and more to replace that income and the model begins to break down, and then so does our service.

Yes! We offer $50 a month subscription add on for unlimited edits and support. These are done with a 12 month minimum commitment as well. There's no turning it on and off every other month. Once you end it, if you want to reinstate, it you’ll need to sign another 12 month commitment.

The biggest difference is long term versus short term costs. On subscription, you’ll be paying more over time but it will be in small manageable and affordable monthly payments. The lump sum just gets it all out the way in the beginning and you save more money over the long run because you also paid for the design and development up front. So when deciding which package to choose, it all depends on cash flow and long term versus short term goals. If you don’t want to spend that much up front and value the service that comes with it, then the monthly is your best option. If you don't want or need the monthly service packages, you can get it all out the way up front and save money over the long term.

Yes and no. SEO is comprised of two parts - On-page and Off-page. On-page SEO is everything ON the page like your content, load times, accessibility, and arrangement. Off-page is everything OFF the site like link building, guest posting, citations, etc. We do some on-page SEO with our packages such as incredibly fast load times, accessibility, your meta tags, google search console, sitemap generation, and some content creation. But that’s not the whole story. SEO is more than that. It’s an active and on-going process and that’s what our SEO partner takes care of, but this is separate from our website packages. If you’d like to have professional SEO work done, let us know and we will happily connect you with our partner to go over work, plans, and pricing.

No we do not. E-commerce is a lot more work to set up than a regular business site. Since it has such high costs, we cannot afford to set them up for $150 a month.

Yes, you always own your domain. We never take hostages!

We generally finish a website from start to finish within 2-4 weeks and is all dependent on how soon clients respond to our content and image requests as well as the availability of our designers and developers. Sometimes it can be 2 weeks, sometimes 3.

No, otherwise everyone would do that and we go out of business! But you keep your domain and assets.

Yes. We don’t take hostages. Even if we bought the domain for you, when you cancel your subscription with us we transfer the domain to you.

Nope! Everything we make is built with custom hand written code. No page builders here. That is what separates us from the others - we put the time and effort to do things differently and it shows in our work and our clients online presence after launch.

Security, load times, maintainability, lower costs, easier to customize, less bloat because we don’t need plugins for everything, we never need to update anything like you need to constantly update your Wordpress version otherwise you get hacked and your site redirects to a Chinese gambling site, and we're more responsive. To go into more detail about security, our custom coded sites have no databases or anything so there’s nothing to hack. Our sites are more secure without needing constant updates to be on top of or constant attacks from online hackers trying to barge in. Theres nowhere for them to barge into on our sites no matter how hard they try.

Yup! If somewhere were to happen to me (the owner and operator), we have our dev partners in the US, Canada, and Dubai who know our operations inside and out and have reigned for years to work the way I work and have a granular level access to all the logins and tools we use. And if something happens to all of us, RUN. We’re clearly cursed, something is coming and I fear you’re next.

You send an email to alex@lakegrovewebdesigns.com and it will go into our ticketing system where I and my team can read and fulfill them and mark as solved.