Ask the other guys

We believe in a fair fight, and we understand that you have to make the best decision in terms of cost and value for your site.

Making the right choice when it comes to your new website can be an anxious process. If you choose the wrong designer or agency, you might be stuck with them. You might waste your money. But many people simply don't know the right questions to ask the designers and developers they are considering for the job.

We like making things easy. So we've made it easy for you to quiz other web designers to see whether they can really compare to PagePlay. Whether you're a new customer considering signing up for PagePlay for the first time, or if you're an existing customer flirting with the possibility of a change - we don't mind. This list is here to help you.

So when you look at the other guys, why not take this list of questions and ask them...

When you ask for a price, do they um and arr or do they give you a link to a page which spells out their options and pricing very clearly?

PagePlay does:

How much notice of cancellation can you give? Do you have to pay for a year upfront for your hosting, domains etc? Do they lock you in financially?

PagePlay does not.

Your monthly subscription is exactly that. You can cancel whenever you like and your monthly subscription stops. We want you to be a subscriber because you want to be, not because you have to be. And because we know you can cancel at any time, we go to extra lengths to make sure you're always satisfied with our service.

Can they introduce you to a real customer or show you videos of them telling you how good their service is?

PagePlay can:

Many web designers simply use tools like Wordpress - whose code is available for free online - giving you the impression that they have created the technology.

PagePlay was created by the PagePlay team.

After years of experience designing websites for clients, we created PagePlay. Every aspect was subject to the Mum-test, in which their own mothers were used as guinea pigs to test its ease-of-use!

Many services charge extra for support, hide staff member's names or even force you to pay a premium for help.

For some web designers, after the job is finished, that's it. You're on your own. If you need any minor tweaks or changes they'll treat it as a new job and charge you their standard hourly rate - which is often much higher than you expect.

PagePlay is different:

Because we're keen to keep hold of our monthly subscribers, we do everything we can to keep them happy. We live in the real world, and we understand that occasionally minor design changes are needed for your site.

There are still some web designers out there selling sites that customers can't update themselves! There are so many reasons why you would want to be able to add a new page, tweak the wording of a sentence, add a new photo - and almost no reasons why you would want the site to always stay exactly the same.

PagePlay is easy to update - make as many changes as you like, whenever you like.

Any web designer worth their salt should know what it takes to make a site friendly to search engines. But time and again we see relatively new sites where outdated coding practices (usually invisible to the client) are hampering the site's progress in search.

Not with PagePlay:

We dedicate time and effort to ensuring that all of our sites perform as well as they can in search engines and are always happy to offer tips and advice by phone or email to subscribers.

Some web designers still charge extra for this! Some of the tools which are used are not great either.

PagePlay is different:

We know that the best freely available stats package out there - and the one preferred by most of the people we've worked with is Google Analytics. So we make it very easy for you to connect your Google Analytics account to your PagePlay site for free to access rich statistical information about your visitors, where they come from and what they do on your site.

You can integrate any of these services as feeds to your PagePlay site either right from the beginning or at any point after launch.

Ongoing support and hosting costs are not generally guaranteed beyond the first year, so you might suddenly find your website costs rocketing - without you being able to get out of them quickly.

PagePlay is different:

When you start your subscription, we promise never to increase the price we charge you. Never. It's that simple.

Of course, we'll try to tempt you with additional bolt-ons but it will always be your choice.

Do you need a 10 page website or a 5 page website? What a totally bizarre question to ask someone before you have even defined your content! And yet there are still lots of web designers selling affordable sites who think that they can structure their prices around the number of pages you have.

PagePlay always allows an unlimited number of pages on all sites.

We firmly believe that the amount of pages and content you have should be totally up to you and should naturally fluctuate and probably grow over time. There is no technical reason for stopping your site at 5 pages - the other guys just do this to fleece those who have more to say. We think this is wrong.

At PagePlay we care deeply about your experience of editing your site. After all, one of our mottos is: you look after your content and we look after you. So if you have worked with a graphic or web designer and want them to design the new site, then let's all work together so that you get the best of both worlds! Your favourite design, but with the convenience and service you can only get from PagePlay.

Do they care about good causes? How do they prove it?

At PagePlay we put our money where our mouse is.

Any charity with an annual revenue of less than £50k is entitled to a 50% discount on all of their subscription items. Easy. Helpful. Worthwhile.

Every now and then you just feel like a change. Your business has moved on and you need to express yourself better online. So you go for a design refresh. For many people, this means changing web designers and starting again from scratch.

PagePlay allows you to do something totally different.

For a fraction of the cost of creating a brand new site, and for a teeny tiny fraction of the time, once designed, we can apply a totally new design to your existing site in a matter of minutes. you don't need to change your domains over, enter your content again or learn a new system. It's the design you want to change, so it's only the design that you should change.

You might want to send formatted HTML emails to your contacts. Whether you do this already or not - you'll be reassured to hear that if you need to integrate with any of the leading players such as Constant Contact, Campaign Monitor, MailChimp and more - PagePlay makes it easy.

Some web agencies refuse to get involved with the sometimes complicated world of hosting and domain name management, leaving you picking up the pieces between several different suppliers - in a world of settings you'd rather not be troubled with.

PagePlay takes responsibility.

We manage your domain for you. We provide the hosting. We do these things at no extra cost, and you only have one phone number to call: ours.

So this isn't always that important. After all, when we first started we hadn't worked with many different sectors. Sometimes it can he helpful if your web designer knows where you are coming from because they have worked with others in your industry.

PagePlay has lots of experience with:

If you introduce a friend to PagePlay, you get 10% off your monthly subscription. If you introduce another, you get another 10% off - and so on. If you introduce enough friends you can end up getting your subscription totally paid for.

You can't say fairer than that!

OK - we're just showing off now, but can you blame us? PagePlay has won innovation awards for it's easy-to-use editing tools. Many content management systems claim to be easy - but we believe we really do stand out as different.