HTML VS CMS – What’s Right for My Site?
Now that you’ve decided to have a beautiful new site built, you may be asking yourself if you should have your website launched on our CMS (Content Management System) or if you should have a static site built.
Here’s how to evaluate which choice would be right for you.
What is Hosting?
Hosting is simply storage for your website on a server, (a special computer always hooked up to the internet) which allow the website to be displayed whenever someone types in your domain name. There are many companies on the web that offer hosting. With hosting as with other things, you get what you pay for… many of the hosts that are very cheap ($3-5/month), are extremely slow to deliver sites during peak times of traffic, or may fail to deliver the sites at all. Our hosting package is available only to our design clients, and includes emails on our enterprise level email system, PHP and a database for $14.95/month.
What is HTML?
Every website you see, is written in HTML.
It is the language that allows your browser (like IE or Firefox) to see the website and display the content of the website on your computer.
To show up on the web properly for your visitors, your website content has to be written in HTML format as well.
What is a CMS?
CMS stands for Content Management System. We use QuickEdit CMS, a proprietary system developed to meet the needs of 99.9% of our clients, while keeping it easy to use. There are many CMS software programs out there, (the most popular of these is WordPress) but they are way more complex than the average business user needs. We do offer WordPress installation if someone specifically asks for it, but the majority of our clients choose our QuickEdit CMS software instead
QuickEdit CMS is a software that is installed on your website, that allows you to do certain things to your website content, without needing to know how to write HTML. You can add, edit and delete pages, edit your drop down menu, add photo galleries and slideshow, password protect pages, have a blog, and control which banner shows up on which page.
Without having the CMS software installed on your website, you would need to either learn to write HTML in order to update your website, or you would need to hire someone that knows to write HTML, every time you want a change made to your website content.
What are the Differences?
Here is a breakdown of the costs, to help you evaluate which choice is right for you.
Static HTML Website
- You would need to pay us or someone else to have your website content inserted into your new design in HTML format, and pay each time you want to make a change. Aroma offers these HTML editing services @ $75/hour. It usually takes 10-20 minutes per page to insert average text content, photo galleries take longer.
- You can host with us for $14.95/month, or purchase hosting elsewhere.
- A Static HTML Website is the best choice IF:
- This is the best choice if you plan on putting your website up and rarely changing it.
CMS Website
- QuickEdit CMS is built and maintained by us. It is available for use on your website for a monthly lease rate. The rate varies how many pages your website has. The rate is $39.95/12 pages or $44.95/25 pages. Larger page packages are also available.
- The CMS software runs only on our servers, so you would need to host with us. Hosting is $14.95/month.
- An average site of 12 pages, will have a monthly fee of $54.90/month, which is BOTH hosting AND the use of the software.
- Launch of your new web design on our CMS, and a one hour training session, are included for free with the purchase of one of our web design packages.
- Once we install your design on the CMS, you can now insert your content independently. Should you want us to insert your initial content into the website, and you just do the ongoing editing later, this service is available @ $75/hour. Most of our clients though find they prefer to insert their own content after we’ve shown them what to do.
- A CMS Website is the best choice IF:
- you don’t want to wait for several days to a week to have website updates done, you want the updates to be instant whenever you think of them
- you plan on making more than 1/2 an hour of updates and additions to your website per month (in this case, paying for the CMS will cost less than paying for updates to be made)
- you plan on actively doing SEO (search engine optimization). For SEO purposes, making constant small changes to your website, is one of the most important things Google looks at in ranking how high to place your site. As paying someone to make constant small changes, would be very expensive over time, so paying for the CMS usage pays for itself.
If you have any questions, please ask, and we’ll be happy to go through this information with you!
