I've come across a few companies that create and host sites and charge a monthly fee that is suppossed to include the design and hosting, instead of paying seperately for having the site designed. What's everyone's opinion on this, as opposed to charging separately for designing the site? I guess if there's a one, two or three year contract and the customer pays the monthly fee up front it could be beneficial... kind of defeats the whole idea though

I don't know, what's everyone think?

Personally I wouldn't do it. Say you build out a web site valued at $1000 or so, then set a monthly price for design/hosting of $40 a month. Custmer accepts the deal, and hosts with you to 2 months, before downloading the site and saying goodbye. $80 for all that work is going to be a little hard to swallow.

We've always kept hosting and development seperate and have never had an issue with it.

It could be done with a cookie cutter design I suppose with little real work involved getting it online (or just use Kemford or a similar service).

Greg Moore

I have thought about doing this myself. I would charge annually though. That charge would include the complete site development, monthly hosting, and a certain number of updates per week/month.