To part ways with this company

[Superpanicky]

I’m really annoyed. I paid out more than £1k for a website to be designed for a business I wanted to start, then covid hit and I had to put it on the back burner. I’m trying to get going again and get it properly off the ground but get virtually no help from the company who built the site and host it for me. I pay £30 a month for them to host it and that doesn’t include any time spent on the website a month by them, which is fair enough, but when I need some information such as a login or there is a technical problem (like search facilities have a bug that I can’t fix for example) I get no response. I contacted them to try and arrange a meeting about getting my site actually visible on google via pay per click which would cost hundreds a month, and I get no response whatsoever. I want to get my site from their clutches and work with a fresh company, but the thing is I don’t actually know if they own my site or not, I went into this naively and I don’t think there’s a contract. I tried to change my email password and it told me I don’t have permission to do that and an email has been sent to the “administrator” I just want control of the site I paid for. AIBU to say to the company I’m not happy and want nothing to do with you- Should I ask to see the contract? If there isn’t a contract what’s to stop them making one up? Only leverage I have is that my husbands company spends a lot of money with this company on a separate project. This is just a little sideline for me, so not important to them at all.

If you are starting a small business you would be better off to be in control of your website yourself so you can update etc without having to pay every time. It does sound rather expensive. You can design your own simple site for nothing and then ay about £20 a month on squarespace.

What does the site do? Can people purchase from it? Or is it just information/marketing?

You can’t purchase from it no, it lists local activities, events, clubs and classes, places to go. Features, blogs and local news. Intention is to make money via advertising. It’s all set up with advertising space, having paid lots of money for the site to be built I am loathe to try and do it on my own, I have the access to add things myself to update the site so fine on a daily basis, but I when I come unstuck with something that only they can do I get no help whatsoever. I wouldn’t have the first clue which is why I paid this company all that money.

As fruitless said, use a site like square sspace or Wix to set the site up yourself. On Wix you can set up the site completely free, but with an none specified url something like wix.com4567842 then when you are happy, you then pay for your own url. Squarespace have a free offer through answermethispodcast.com/tag/squarespace

I wish I had gone down that route, but I’m not technical enough to know how to run ad space etc. My site is also a big online resource and I don’t think one of those sites would have the capacity to add in all the many categories etc on it.

Would you think they own the site I’ve paid £1k for them?

It's hard to know, they could do. They could 'own' your domain. Your site could be built in a way that makes it difficult to separate out and take away. One thing to note is that, while 1k is loads of money to a person, it's not a lot of money for a web design business and unless you have a level of support agreed as part of that service you buy into you are generally off on your own once the signed off on site is delivered to you. Especially if the money you spent was more than a year ago. So moving your site over to a different agency won't fix that unless you have a service agreement in place with them (and you should expect to pay a monthly rate for any technical support).

The best thing to do might be to link in with someone at a level above where you are contacting now and tell them that you don't understand what you do and don't get through your agreement with them and ask them to talk you through it all.

I would ask them if you own it. Hopefully you do.

First up check the domain name details using www.whois.com/whois/

If you aren’t the Admin contact then its a different path to travel

Thanks for that @ChorltonWheelie I’ve just checked and it’s neither myself or the website company- someone in Toronto? This stuff confuses me soooo much!

My partner is a web developer; he would often produce websites for friends at low cost, and continue the hosting for a monthly fee.

It sounds as though the £30 that you are paying them is just for them to host your website (essentially keeping it online for you, ensuring that it's backed up, and it's protected from attack). They aren't being paid to provide a maintenance/support service, which is probably why they don't respond to queries regarding issues with the site.

Your best bet is probably to arrange for someone else to host the site, but also have them on a maintenance contract so that they can be responsive and do the fixes that you require.

Yes that’s what the £30 is for, my point is that I’d like additional things out on my site and for it to be visible on google, so I’d like them to set up the pay per click stuff for me as I’ve no clue what I’m doing, I’m quite happy to pay for this additional work but they just don’t respond to me!

No response at all is a bit weird (although I have definitely come across people who avoid emails they don't want to answer rather than send difficult replies). If your husband does a lot of work with them does he have a contact you could reach out to to see what the blockage is?

It can also be useful to reach out to sales people in companies rather than technical folk, if that's not the way you are going. A sales person who thinks you may spend ad money with them can be an ally in the company itself.

Also, do they offer PPC? It's not a given. If it's adsense (hosting google ads on your website) stuff it makes sense that they would have to be the ones to do the implementation of the technical part of that but there's a lot of stuff that will be down to you to manage unless they are both a web design and digital marketing agency.

If it is just PPC then that is something you can do yourself, without them, or google for an agency that does it. You don't generally need the involvement of your website designer to do that.

Whois look up showing Toronto means they've used domain name identity protection. What this means is when you register the domain name, you can pay a little bit extra to hide your personal details from being made public in searches. The info still needs to be filled out though, hence the Toronto details.
Similar to using a PO Box or mail redirect, so nothing sinister.

Did you have a contract?
What I would recommend is creating a godaddy account for yourself, then ask for the company to transfer your domain to you. You will then give them your godaddy info and they can move the domain over, which you then accept, and have full control over. You will then need to find your own hosting.
Do you know which platform they created the website in?
If you're not too shy, posting the url on here would give us a better idea of this.
What login details did you have? If you can access the backend then you may be able to move it yourself.

If they have a public social media presence then ask on there. I. E. Comment on the Facebook page 'hi guys its Lisa from xyz cupcakes, I've been trying to contact you for months but I think there is a problem with the emails, maybe I keep going to spam or something? Could someone please get in touch ASAP, thanks', might gee them along a bit.

Like previous poster said £1k to a new business is a lot of money, but to a designer it's nothing and you would not get any further upkeep or help without paying for that. So when asking 'little' questions it can get quite annoying, especially if a package was offered to you initially. Imagine it's like paying for an ice cream, then asking for sprinkles even though they cost extra, then when the shop assistant gives you a few to be kind, you ask for a flake, and syrup, both costing more but expecting them free. (not saying you've been cheeky, they should have explained the process and what it entailed much better to you)

Just to add, I know you'd be happy to pay for services, but just asking the questions, especially for login details and error messages, would fall under a retainer package and would usually not be responded to by the designer unless they had time to fulfil a very small job worth not alot of money to them.

I can see what you’re saying, but if they haven’t given me the capability to reset my own password then what can I actually do other than ask them to reset it? It’s like they’re holding me to ransom without telling me!

No contract no, this is why I’m so confused, I don’t where I stand with them and they haven’t provided any info. I’m tempted to upgrade to some support in the next package up but this lack of response to me asking them to do some extra paid work is very worrying.

Imo you own the website and can ask for the code on a cd then take it elsewhere. Although tbh I’d cut my losses and make one on Wordpress.

Look back on emails from when your site went live. Sometimes you can have one account that allows you to update content and another that is an admin account (and this set up makes sense because you don't want everyone to have the same level of access to your website). You may not have a contract but you may have instructions that maybe didn't seem important back when you first read them. You could easily be the admin who needs to approve that password reset

There's nothing wrong with moving to a new provider, it likely won't be a problem, but you definitely need a service agreement with them (which is normally a fixed sum for hours per month or on a project basis) and you really should take a look at figuring out some of the underlying basics too so that you're in a strong position to talk to your provider no matter who they are. If you know what your content management system is (ie what your website is built using) you'll even find great tutorials on YouTube