Do I need a monthly maintenance contract for my dental website?

Here’s why not….

One of the reasons why more and more dentists are transferring to Dental Media is that we don’t insist on monthly maintenance contracts for their websites. Unless your needs are extremely complex, your website can be looked after perfectly well on a pay-as-you-go plan and at a significantly lower cost when compared to an expensive, and unnecessary, monthly service contract.

It’s worth remembering that the companies who push such plans probably have substantial infrastructure costs to cover and need your cash to survive. Surprisingly, lots of dentists fork out for the monthly fee even when they are having little work done on the website. Some even tell us that they paid for years and had nothing done. All rather illogical and of course, there is a far more cost-effective way.

In this article we will look at some of the reasons given by design agencies when trying to up-sell monthly support to a dentist. We also look at the real reasons to show why you don’t need to fork out. Please read on and prepare to save some money….

The myth of the service contract

Myth 1 – “your monthly contract provides access to comprehensive web analytics to show how many visitors reach your site”

All good hosting provides analytics services as standard. In addition we provide Google Analytics for all of our web marketing clients. This should not be subject to monthly fees.

Myth 2 – “you need a monthly support contract to ensure that your website is updated regularly”

More often than not, there is no proactive updating of websites, even where a support contract is in place. Updates are left for the client to initiate and very often, anything other than small text or image changes are subject to additional charges.

Myth 3 – “a large proportion of your monthly fee is needed to cover the professional hosting services that we provide”

In reality most dental design and marketing companies use “shared” servers that hold hundreds of websites. The unit cost to them is very little, likely less than £1 per month.

Myth 4 – “you’ve selected a WordPress site that needs to be updated monthly to keep it secure; we can only do this if you have a support contract”

Whilst it’s true that modern dental websites built on content management platforms such as WordPress do need periodic security updates, it’s very simple and quick to do. In fact multiple sites can be updated from a single management interface in minutes. In our experience, you may need to update 4 or 5 times per year which can be done very cost-effectively on a PAYG basis. At Dental Media, we monitor all of our CMS sites and will advise when you need to update as part of our hosting arrangement with you.

Myth 5 – “as part of your service contract, we will make keyword changes to your site and build back-links to keep you buoyant in Google. We will produce a bespoke SEO report and send this to you every month”

Many of the sites we have seen that have apparently benefited from such attention, have in fact not been changed for months, or any back-links built. It’s easy to check this if you know how. The bespoke reports that are offered are actually auto-generated from Google Analytics and require minimal intervention to produce.

Myth 6 – “our service contract will be more cost-effective than PAYG. All PAYG is charged at excessive rates even for minor changes”

This is simply not true; please see the case study below to see how PAYG website maintenance typically saves a dental practice hundreds of pounds per year.

Myth 7 – “we can only provide more than one email address if you take our monthly service option”

All good web hosting accounts will allow the use of several email accounts. Our standard hosting provides 5 accounts without additional charge. If you need more, these can be provided for just a few pounds.

Myth 8 – “you will have to wait for weeks for changes to be done if you don’t take out the service contract”

All of our client changes are complete within 7 days, many within 1 or 2 days. Quality and speed does not suffer just because you choose PAYG.

A case study

I made a quick check of three accounts who transferred to us from other dental marketing agencies around a year ago. I picked a small, medium and large site to get a decent spread and to provide the best indication of the savings potential.

In all cases, our current hosting fee of £95 per year applied.

All three websites were maintained professionally and quickly, including making sure that they were compliant with GDC standards. One of the sites had three minor changes, the larger site, 5 updates including changes to the treatment gallery and the addition of two new staff biographies. The medium size site, based on a CMS, had 3 security updates and a couple of content changes.

The total yearly fees for the above ranged from £130 -> £240. Comparing to typical monthly service costs which range from £60 per month to £200+ per month, you can quickly work out the savings potential.

Summary

If you are considering whether you need a monthly maintenance contract for your website, then the answer is almost certainly no. Changes can be done efficiently, professionally and very cost-effectively on a pay-as-you-go basis. Our new clients select us not just because we provide excellent websites but also because we can provide the most cost-effective means of keeping them updated. Please call us on 01332 672548 to discuss how we can help you to make considerable savings – we will even migrate your website to the Dental Media servers free-of-charge. If you would like references from dental professionals who have joined us, please ask.