Questions, answered
without a call first.
Eighteen of them, including the ones about price and contracts that most agencies make you sit through a discovery call to hear.
What it costs, and why
What is the average cost for a website designer?
In Cincinnati, published agency rates run from about $4,000 to $30,000 up front for a small business site, and monthly plans in this market typically run $299 to $599. That is the range this site is priced against. A website here is $99 a month with nothing down, and hosting, SSL, the domain, security and unlimited content updates are inside that figure rather than added to it.
What is the catch at $99 a month?
There is not one, but there is a trade. Most of an agency quote is overhead you get no value from: sales staff, account managers, project managers and an office. Strip that out and spread the rest monthly and $99 works. The trade is that there is no CMS for you to log into. You email or call and I make the change instead.
Why is this cheaper than the $5,000 quote I got?
You are getting the same 10 to 15 pages without the agency layer on top, and paying over time instead of all at once. A small business should not have to find four thousand dollars to discover whether a website works.
I found someone at $125 a month. How does that compare?
Read what is included before comparing the headline. Most monthly plans in this market list hosting, domain and SSL as optional add-ons, and content updates as a separate tier on top, so the real monthly figure lands well above the advertised one. Here they are not add-ons, they are the plan. Compare the totals.
Is there a setup fee?
No. $0 down, $99 on day one and every month after.
Do I have to buy all three services?
No. Most people start with the website. Review automation and local SEO can be added later and the bundle price applies automatically when they are: $425 a month for all three instead of $497.
Contracts, cancelling and who owns what
How long am I locked in?
The website is a 12 month term, because I am building 10 to 15 pages up front and charging nothing down, so the early months cover the build. After 12 months it continues month to month on the same 30 days notice. Review automation and local SEO have no term at all.
Who owns the site?
The website becomes yours to keep once the first 12 months are complete. Your domain is yours from day one and stays in your name, always. Because the site is standard HTML, CSS and JavaScript rather than a proprietary builder, another developer can pick it up without a migration.
How do I cancel?
Cancel any service with 30 days written notice. There is a 100% satisfaction guarantee: if you are not happy with the work, I will make it right.
What happens after the 12 months?
The site is yours, and the plan continues month to month on the same 30 days notice. Hosting, maintenance and unlimited content updates carry on at the same price for as long as you want them.
How the work actually goes
How fast can you build it?
One to two weeks for most sites, depending on how quickly we get through content and feedback. That is the finished site, not a first draft.
Can I edit the site myself?
No, and I would rather be straight about that than sell you a dashboard you would never open. These are hand-coded, so there is no CMS. You email or call and I make the change, usually the same day, as many times as you like. If editing it yourself genuinely matters to you, I am not the right fit and I will say so.
What if I already have a website?
Then it is a rebuild rather than a new build, and the price is identical. Your current site stays up until you have approved the new one, and existing URLs are kept or redirected so the pages Google already knows about keep their history.
What if I need ecommerce?
That is available. The store platform itself, Shopify or Snipcart, is billed separately by them because it is their software. Everything else stays $99 a month.
Do you actually have clients?
22, listed on this site with links to the live sites so you can go and look. 5.0 on Google across 23 reviews, and currently first in the Cincinnati map pack.
Web design questions people ask Google
Is web design still worth it in 2026?
For a local business, yes, but for a narrower reason than it used to be. Most people now find you through Google's map pack, a review, or a recommendation, and then check the website before calling. The site is rarely what gets you found. It is what decides whether the person who found you picks up the phone. That job has not gone away, and an AI-generated page that says nothing specific about your business does it badly.
What are the 7 C's of website design?
It comes from Rayport and Jaworski's customer interface framework: context, content, community, customization, communication, connection and commerce. It is a useful checklist rather than a standard, and other lists circulate with different words. For a local service business, three of them carry almost all the weight: content that says specifically what you do and where, communication that makes contacting you obvious, and context, meaning the site loads fast and is readable on a phone.
What is the 3 second rule in website design?
Two things get called this. The one that matters is load time: Google's widely cited figure is that 53% of mobile visits are abandoned when a page takes longer than three seconds to load. The other is the idea that a visitor decides within about three seconds whether the site is relevant, which is why what you do and where you do it belongs at the top of the page rather than below a slideshow.
Still got a question?
Call and ask it. Fifteen minutes, no pitch, and I will tell you if the answer is that I am not the right fit.
