Website as a Service in Newcastle & the Hunter

The one-off build has a failure mode that shows up about four months after launch, not at launch. Someone needs a price changed. The person who built the site has moved on to their next project and quotes for an hour's work with a two-week lead time. It is not worth the hassle for one line of text, so the price stays wrong. Six months later there are eleven things wrong, the contact form has been silently failing since a plugin update, and nobody has noticed because nobody is looking.

This is a structural problem rather than a failure of anyone's diligence. The overwhelming majority of Australian businesses are small enough that there is no marketing department and no in-house IT — the website is somebody's fourth priority on a good week. A model that assumes a client will proactively commission maintenance is a model that assumes staffing most businesses do not have.

So the site ages out. Content goes stale, the framework falls behind on security updates, and the practical online presence drifts to whichever platform is easiest to post to — which is usually one somebody else owns and can change the rules on. None of that is a decision anyone made. It is what happens by default when a website is treated as a thing you buy once instead of a system that has to be run.

There are three parts to it, and it is worth separating them because most confusion about website subscriptions comes from collapsing them into one number. First, the build: discovery, content, design and development of the site itself. Second, the platform it runs on: hosting, certificates, backups, monitoring, and the security and framework updates that keep it standing up. Third, the support allowance: included time each month for the changes you will inevitably want.

Key benefit for our clients is it's not just a one-off payment and no support, but we are with them on the journey.

The allowance is typically around an hour a month, though the exact figure depends on which tier you are on and what your site demands — a five-page brochure site and a thirty-page site with a booking integration do not generate the same amount of work. Tiers differ mainly in how much included time you get and how much tailored SEO effort comes with it. What does not change between tiers is that the site stays hosted, patched, backed up and monitored.

The build stack is decided per client. We build custom sites — Astro or similar — and we build on WordPress, and we do not push one over the other because they are genuinely better at different jobs. Alongside the site itself we deliver copywriting and content, branding, logo and graphic design work, and integration into CRM, booking and business systems. We do not do Google Ads or paid media, and we will tell you that rather than subcontract it and take a margin.

• →Copywriting and content — the pages themselves, written to sound like your business rather than a template
• →Branding, logo and graphic design where the visual identity needs work before the site can be built on it
• →CRM, booking and business systems integration, so enquiries land where your team already works
• →Hosting, backups, certificates and uptime monitoring, all included rather than organised separately
• →Security and framework patching applied as part of the service, not on request
• →Tailored SEO at higher tiers, on top of the technical foundation every build gets

A support allowance is for changes and upkeep. It is generous about the small stuff — genuinely, ask for the price change, that is what it is there for — and it is not a substitute for a project budget. The distinction matters because getting it wrong is how these arrangements sour: a client asks for something that is quietly a three-week build, the provider absorbs it or resents it, and the relationship is worse either way.

So it is worth being explicit. Anything on the right-hand side below is work we do and would be glad to do. It is quoted as its own piece of work rather than drawn down from your monthly time.

Some providers answer this question with a rate card, and a rate card answers a different question than the one you are asking. The number that matters is not the build price. It is what the website costs you over the years you will own it: the build, plus the rebuild when it ages out, plus every ad-hoc hour you pay for a change, plus hosting, plus the changes you did not make because getting them done was too much friction.

This calculator can conclude that a subscription is not worth it, and it regularly does.

We do not publish prices, so instead of asking you to trust a number we made up, the calculator below runs the comparison on yours. Put in the build quote you have been given, how often you would realistically rebuild, how many changes you would ask for in a year, and whatever monthly figure you are comparing — ours or anyone else's. Every field opens on an illustrative figure so it produces a result immediately; none of them are Peritus prices, and you should replace them with your own.

It is worth saying plainly that this calculator can conclude a subscription is not worth it, and it regularly does. If you ask for two changes a year and have somewhere to host it, the maths favours the one-off build and no amount of framing changes that. We would rather you find that out here, in your own numbers, than three months into an arrangement that was never going to suit you.

The model suits businesses where the website is a working part of the operation and there is nobody inside the business whose job is to look after it. That describes most small businesses, which is why most of our web clients are on it — but it is not everyone, and the cases where it is the wrong buy are easy enough to state.

If you employ someone who can already maintain the site, you are paying monthly for hours you will not use.

The clearest one is in-house capability. If you employ someone who can already edit and maintain the site — a marketing coordinator who is comfortable in a CMS, or a developer — you are paying monthly for hours you will not use. Buy the build once, host it properly, and keep the money. The second is a site that genuinely will not change. Plenty of trade and professional businesses have a site that has been accurate for five years and will be accurate for five more; if the changes never come, the allowance is not the thing earning its keep and a one-off build is the straighter buy.

A third worth naming is the fixed-life site: a campaign, an event, a single-season promotion with a known end date. There is no long-term ownership problem to solve, so there is nothing for a long-term arrangement to fix. In all three cases the honest answer is a one-off build, and we will give you that answer.

• →Good fit — your site needs regular changes and there is nobody in the business whose job that is
• →Good fit — you have been burned by a build you could not get anyone to maintain afterwards
• →Good fit — you would rather a predictable monthly cost than an unpredictable series of ad-hoc invoices
• →Good fit — your website matters commercially enough that a week of downtime or a stale price is a real cost
• →Good fit — we already run your IT, and it makes little sense for the website to be the one thing outside that
• →Better off with a one-off build — you employ someone who can already edit and maintain the site themselves
• →Better off with a one-off build — the site is essentially static and genuinely will not change from year to year
• →Better off with a one-off build — it is a campaign, event or single-season site with a known end date
• →Probably not us — what you actually need next is paid advertising, which we do not offer

Your domain is registered in your business's name and stays that way. Your content — the words, the images, the pages you have paid to have written — is yours. Neither of those is conditional on you staying, and neither is something you have to negotiate for later.

These are the questions worth asking every provider you are weighing up. Us included.

What happens to the build itself is a commercial term rather than a universal rule. It depends on how the work is structured and what the arrangement is priced to do, so it is settled in your agreement rather than asserted on a web page — and we will walk you through that part during the quote, before you sign, rather than after you ask. The arrangement is meant to be one you stay on because the site keeps getting better, not one you stay on because leaving is difficult.

All of that is worth testing on any provider, us included. If you are weighing up a website subscription from anyone in the Hunter, these are the questions worth asking all of them:

• →Who is the domain registered to — my business, or yours?
• →If I leave, what exactly do I get, and in what format?
• →What is the notice period, and is there a minimum term?
• →What is included in the monthly fee, in writing, and what is quoted separately?
• →How much support time do I get, and what happens to time I do not use?
• →Who is responsible for security updates and backups, and how would I know if they stopped?
• →If the site goes down, whose job is it to get it back, and how do I reach them?
• →What does this cost me over three years, against buying the build outright?