Monthly support contracts for dental websites

Do you really need one or is it a waste of money?

For some time, there has been a concerted effort by companies in the dental marketing industry to push their clients into monthly support contracts, often with substantial associated costs. But do you really need a support contract or is it simply a means of “easy money” for your supplier?

It’s worth a quick review of what such support contracts actually offer, if they actually represent good value for money and, importantly, what are the alternatives.

The support contract – a typical format

The cheapest dental website support contract you will find costs around £70 per month and offers basic hosting, an email address and limited content updates within a turn-around time of 5 or 6 days. The level of updates provided here are quite basic and will only stretch to simple text modifications and limited work on images. Outside of that, the work is quoted on a project basis. At the other end of the scale, you will see support contracts of £200 -> £300 per month which offer a turn-around of a couple of days for website edits and also support for other elements like content management system updates.

However, it’s worth taking a closer look at what a typical dentist’s website might need in terms of updates and security patches in a typical year. Some sites are updated infrequently, perhaps only a couple of times per year, the majority may have 5 or 6 updates but relatively few are updating once per month or more. Even maintenance “intensive” sites based on WordPress should only need 4 or 5 security patches per year and these can be done very quickly – usually a matter of a few minutes.

So for most dental websites, the intervention required over a typical year is quite low – even where content management systems are employed.

Doesn’t that mean that the monthly fee is often way in excess of the work needed?

In reality, for most sites the answer is a resounding “yes” – money is being spent unnecessarily. Dental marketing companies might advise that you need to shell out for peace of mind or to make sure you are tapped into the latest knowledge but really, it’s a flaky veneer (no pun intended) designed to make a naive user sign-up to a monthly direct debit.

Of course there are some very large, complex websites that do warrant monthly maintenance support, for example where large databases need maintaining or where the client is extremely active and adds content on a regular basis. But these are not typical and very limited in number.

What is the alternative?

The simple alternative is pay-as-you-go support. The majority of our clients at Dental Media work with us on this basis and enjoy very large cost savings with no decrease in service levels. Website edits are all processed within 5 working days and many within 2 days – so actually faster than some of the more expensive “priority” support contracts out there.

What about notifications for legislation changes and GDC updates?

We have a keen interest in making sure that all of our clients remain compliant so we proactively monitor for updates to legislation and standards and advise accordingly. Just because we don’t burden you with monthly fees doesn’t mean we leave you out on your own.

Don’t I need to pay for the latest dental marketing insights?

As you might suspect, there is a lot of smoke and mirrors when it comes to web marketing. Some providers still use this to convince the inexperienced website owner that they need to pay lots to buy into “expert” services when there really is very little given away for free. Usually you will be asked to invest in additional services over and above the monthly support contract they already sold you, so be very wary of the up-sell. You will see lots of advice telling you what you need to do but very little actually telling you how to do it.

Summary

The days of the website monthly support contract seem numbered as more dentists look to control costs and seek real value for money.

Paying for services on an “as required” basis rather than signing up to onerous monthly fees is clearly the enlightened decision and one that is being taken by the increasing number of professionals who transfer their practice websites and upkeep elsewhere.

But don’t take our word for it; if you would like an illustration of what Dental Media can save you or would like to see testimonials from some of our clients, please call us on 01332 672548. We will guarantee to reduce your bills within a few weeks and we’ll look after the transfer process for you. There will be no down-time for you site or emails and the vast majority of transfers to us can be done free of any charges. It’s time to stop paying for services you probably aren’t using and don’t really need.