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What do you pay for your website provider?

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AWW_Spencerport

Smashing Bugs
May 16, 2012
32
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First Name
Ryan
#1
A recent thread which posted the amount their dealership pays for Dealer.com got me thinking. What do YOU pay to your website provider? I was shocked to see that Dealer.com charges $3k a month and people actually pay it.

We use Dealer Car Search and pay $250 per month. Their service is pretty good except for the occasional lapses, but their design leaves a bit to be desired. Overall we are happy with them.
 
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#2
AWW_Spencerport said:
A recent thread which posted the amount their dealership pays for Dealer.com got me thinking. What do YOU pay to your website provider? I was shocked to see that Dealer.com charges $3k a month and people actually pay it.

We use Dealer Car Search and pay $250 per month. Their service is pretty good except for the occasional lapses, but their design leaves a bit to be desired. Overall we are happy with them.
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$250/mo is a deal. I haven't seen the site, but hosting, maintenance, email service, etc. all cost money! From my experience, the typical rate is $799 - $1699/mo depending on services added (live chat, email, managed seo, etc.). I'm sure if you're buying sites in bulk there's a bigger discount versus the one-off's. Most of the stuff I've seen have been 12 month contracts, no setup fees. If it was me offering the services, a site with managed live chat, email hosting, and inventory fees would run you ~ $1499/mo. no setup. 12 month contract. (The design services are subsidized monthly...)

There's quite a lot to some of the sites if you're doing a bit more of the custom work and maintenance.
 
#3
Chris Cachor said:
$250/mo is a deal. I haven't seen the site, but hosting, maintenance, email service, etc. all cost money! From my experience, the typical rate is $799 - $1699/mo depending on services added (live chat, email, managed seo, etc.). I'm sure if you're buying sites in bulk there's a bigger discount versus the one-off's. Most of the stuff I've seen have been 12 month contracts, no setup fees. If it was me offering the services, a site with managed live chat, email hosting, and inventory fees would run you ~ $1499/mo. no setup. 12 month contract. (The design services are subsidized monthly...)

There's quite a lot to some of the sites if you're doing a bit more of the custom work and maintenance.
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Yeah I would never pay that much ($799 or up). I've spoken with about 3 dealer website companies today and they ranged from $99 to $499 to $899. All of them included inventory management, chat, and website.
 
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#6
I think Dealers are grossly overpaying for website services.
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I disagree, but I guess it's just opinions. Let's look at some stats though, mind you these are "back of the envelope" calculations. Also note these are assumed prices, not actual.

Inventory Feed ~ $65
Incentive Data ~ $50
Email Hosting ~ $50
Website Hosting ~ $25
Color Matching licensing ~ 50
Maintenance ~ $30/hr x 6hrs = $180

So, you're already at $400/mo. before even spending the time to create the site. I imagine this is somewhat of a cookie-cutter site where basically the homepage is different and the rest of the shared elements (search, forms, specials, rebates) are styled to match the color scheme from the homepage. Add in operating costs, profit margins, and initial development costs of the shared system, and you're not really looking at much of a profit margin. The sales person hasn't even gotten paid yet. Granted, I think Dealer Fire does great work - but I don't agree that $699 is grossly overpaying one bit. I think it's the opposite. Weak margins if my assumptions are correct.

There's a lot of maintenance that these vendors take care of for their clients, not because the client can't but because they just assume you'll take care of it. It's a very service based business, and regrettably this isn't included in the quoted prices as often as it should. Things like post my weekly ad, add this javascript, add a button, add our radio ad, the list goes on. Time = money. Now, if they said $1799, I'd say yea - you're definitely overpaying. But @ $699, that's kind of a wash to me. Maybe if it was purely DIY.
 
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#7
Chris Cachor said:
I disagree, but I guess it's just opinions. Let's look at some stats though, mind you these are "back of the envelope" calculations. Also note these are assumed prices, not actual.

Inventory Feed ~ $65
Incentive Data ~ $50
Email Hosting ~ $50
Website Hosting ~ $25
Color Matching licensing ~ 50
Maintenance ~ $30/hr x 6hrs = $180

So, you're already at $400/mo. before even spending the time to create the site. I imagine this is somewhat of a cookie-cutter site where basically the homepage is different and the rest of the shared elements (search, forms, specials, rebates) are styled to match the color scheme from the homepage. Add in operating costs, profit margins, and initial development costs of the shared system, and you're not really looking at much of a profit margin. The sales person hasn't even gotten paid yet. Granted, I think Dealer Fire does great work - but I don't agree that $699 is grossly overpaying one bit. I think it's the opposite. Weak margins if my assumptions are correct.

There's a lot of maintenance that these vendors take care of for their clients, not because the client can't but because they just assume you'll take care of it. It's a very service based business, and regrettably this isn't included in the quoted prices as often as it should. Things like post my weekly ad, add this javascript, add a button, add our radio ad, the list goes on. Time = money. Now, if they said $1799, I'd say yea - you're definitely overpaying. But @ $699, that's kind of a wash to me. Maybe if it was purely DIY.
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No, no. I never said $699 is grossly overpaying. I meant Dealer.com customers and others who pay more than $1,200 per month.

Also, I disagree with your figures. Having owned my own web design firm, I don't know where you got your figures from but maybe you need to shop around a bit more. Any web designer worth their salt can script your DMS inventory. No need for the feed. Email hosting should be no more than $10 per month unless you need tons of GB's of space. I'm not sure why you would need 6 hours of maintenance every month unless the designers are either 1) slow, 2) didnt create it well enough in the first place, or 3) are having infrastructure issues.

I would say $149 is probably their base monthly rate. Advertising, employees, and overhead is the rest.
 
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#8
Mine are around $299/month. Covers only the inventory portion of the sites, however all of my sites run on Wordpress, all custom. I have the Wordpress inventory script/design ready just need to configure/code it in at some point, then it will be $20/month for hosting (if I can workout the API part). The only website that is not custom is set/forced by the factory (Dealer.com) and it's $1,600/month for a BASIC website. The brand is getting huge kickbacks from that, last year it was $1200, and before it was $800. And what have I seen in return for the price increase? Nothing, all they added was a fancy DDC control panel with stats that are useless, I have a $5/month 3rd party service that trumps that. Not to mention, you can't even customize your site yourself, and if you want changes you pay $100/hr easily..

Dealers ARE overpaying a TON, but let's consider this.. They just "manage", there are no "creative" next level dealership guys out there who are willing to take a risk with a custom site, or ones who have the experience or know how to get the job done. And I'll get a ton of people mad over this, but let's face it, if there was then where are they now? I can only find maybe a very small handful 4-5 that have accomplished that. In the end, $2000/month or even $1000/month for live chat, website, etc is insane when you're coming from an IM background. But for dealerships it's just a drop in the bucket, nothing to get concerned about, because they can get ROI from it. I'm all about saving money, cutting costs, and using my creatively to innovate, most dealers are the exact opposite. They spend money fast, and follow the crowd.
 
#9
kcar said:
Mine are around $299/month. Covers only the inventory portion of the sites, however all of my sites run on Wordpress, all custom. I have the Wordpress inventory script/design ready just need to configure/code it in at some point, then it will be $20/month for hosting (if I can workout the API part). The only website that is not custom is set/forced by the factory (Dealer.com) and it's $1,600/month for a BASIC website. The brand is getting huge kickbacks from that, last year it was $1200, and before it was $800. And what have I seen in return for the price increase? Nothing, all they added was a fancy DDC control panel with stats that are useless, I have a $5/month 3rd party service that trumps that. Not to mention, you can't even customize your site yourself, and if you want changes you pay $100/hr easily..

Dealers ARE overpaying a TON, but let's consider this.. They just "manage", there are no "creative" next level dealership guys out there who are willing to take a risk with a custom site, or ones who have the experience or know how to get the job done. And I'll get a ton of people mad over this, but let's face it, if there was then where are they now? I can only find maybe a very small handful 4-5 that have accomplished that. In the end, $2000/month or even $1000/month for live chat, website, etc is insane when you're coming from an IM background. But for dealerships it's just a drop in the bucket, nothing to get concerned about, because they can get ROI from it. I'm all about saving money, cutting costs, and using my creatively to innovate, most dealers are the exact opposite. They spend money fast, and follow the crowd.
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Bingo.

Dealerships don't know they're getting butt-hurt because they don't have the IT background to know that its ridiculous to pay that much per month.
 
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#10
Any web designer worth their salt can script your DMS inventory. No need for the feed.
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Judging from that last comment, I don't think you've ever done this before. There's really a lot more to it than that.

Having owned my own web design firm, I don't know where you got your figures from but maybe you need to shop around a bit more.
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Yea, the hourly rate is kind of low in this market. I think the typical mid-level web developers are pulling about 60-80k these days. Unless you'd rather try off-shoring it.

No, no. I never said $699 is grossly overpaying.
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My bad, I thought you were. Never mind that!

Mine are around $299/month. Covers only the inventory portion of the sites, however all of my sites run on Wordpress, all custom. I have the Wordpress inventory script/design ready just need to configure/code it in at some point, then it will be $20/month for hosting
Click to expand...

How much time to build the site out? Care to share some URLs? It will help give everyone a sense of what level you're playing at.
 
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