Frequently Asked Questions

A Website Maintenance Plan is pretty much like it sounds: we’ve bundled a suite of premium services that, put together, ensure your WordPress website is kept relevant, fresh, beautiful, safe and secure, month after month.

Our signature Website Maintenance Package is $321 a month.

If you need a new website, or need your current site overhauled, we can provide a quote for the work.

With every quote, we bundle in a subscription for the Website Maintenance Plan to help keep your website in great shape after it launches.

SO much good stuff!

For starters, our package includes hosting on our WordPress-optimized, managed Canadian web host. If you already have a website, we handle the big move to our hosting, give your site a thorough tune-up, and make any design & content changes you want to make it perfect for your business.

On top of that, there’s access to our tech support portal, uptime monitoring, daily backups, quick website recovery in case of problems, free SSL implementation, ongoing software & security updates, malware scanning and removal, search engine optimization, Google Analytics & Google Page Speed setup and reporting… and our favourite feature: UNLIMITED content updates!

That’s not even the full list – click here to see it all.

While we believe that our signature Web321 Maintenance Plan will be the right choice for most small-to-medium businesses, we do also offer quotes for custom packages.

This sounds great, but be mindful: there are some limitations that come with using a DIY website builder. They are able to offer you such a low monthly price by keeping features to a minimum, offering limited design choices, and leaving all the labour up to you. 

Basically, all that is included in these packages is your website template and instructions on how to use it. Many of the tools you need to keep your website safe and well-maintained, and to grow your business, are missing when you opt-in for a DIY website building platform.

Design Consistency

Web321’s designers know that a consistent “look” throughout your marketing material is key to a professional appearance, which is why we pay attention to detail on every page of your site. 

When you customize your theme yourself with a DIY builder, there is room for inconsistencies in your font style, colour and sizing. This can have a negative effect on customers’ impression of your business.

Customization Options

Web321’s design team can customize every pixel of your site to make sure it matches the look and character of your brand. Tell us what you have in your brain, and we’ll make it happen. 

DIY sites limit the regions you can customize and will provide you with a preset list of fonts, colours or images. If you want something outside those options, you’re out of luck!

Functionality
WordPress, the open-source technology behind all Web321’s websites, has thousands of available plugins for added functions with more being added every day. 

DIY website builders give you a limited suite of functions you can choose from for your site. If you run up against a gap that leaves your site without a needed function, you can either petition your provider to add the function, or you can leave and build your site again on a different platform. 

Design Change Options
If you want a whole new look for your Web321 website, we can make that happen for you while keeping all your existing content in place. 

Some DIY sites such as Wix don’t allow you to change your site template (basic look and feel) without rebuilding your whole site and re-adding all the content.

Site Ownership
With Web321, once you have paid for your site, it’s 100% your property.

With a DIY website builder, you are at the mercy of your provider’s arbitrary and changing Terms of Service. If you don’t agree with the limitations placed on your website by these Terms of Service, you’re out of luck. Either change your site, rebuild it elsewhere, or you could find your site deleted for not following the rules.

Site Portability
Once you have paid off your Web321 website, you can do as you please with it. We hope you will love our maintenance service enough to stay (and take advantage of our free site design refreshes) but if you do decide to leave to a different web host or maintenance provider, your site can go with you exactly as it is. That’s because we use WordPress, the web’s most popular website software – and it’s supported everywhere.

A website from Wix or Weebly is built on proprietary software. If you ever decide you want to move your website to a different platform, you’ll discover there is no option to just pick up your site and plunk it down somewhere else. This lack of site portability is designed to keep you from going anywhere – and it means if you do leave, you’ll find yourself building the whole site again from scratch.

Delegation
Web321 is here for business folks who need to improve their web presence but just can’t find the time. With our “done-for-you” approach, we take care of everything from domain registration & hosting setup, to web design and content writing, to maintenance and unlimited content updates. That task you’ve been putting off will finally be in good hands, and you’ll be free to grow your business and serve your customers with your full attention.

Web321 isn’t for everyone. We know that some people love to do everything they can themselves – and more power to them! A DIY platform will save you some money and can give you the opportunity to learn a new skill and express your creativity. You’ll just need to assess that value against the time it will take you and the hourly rate you’d be charging for paying work and decide if that’s a trade-off your business can afford to make.

You bet! You can check out our portfolio page to see some of our website builds. We’ll be adding more as we go.

Our Website Maintenance Plan is bundled in to every site we built – and that’s what sets us apart. Since most web developers generate much of their income on a per-project basis, they may not always have time to drop what they are doing and help you with your problem in a timely fashion. And you may not have the technical know-how or proper digital credentials to access and manage your website.  Under these conditions, it can be tough to keep a website up-to-date with current content, product changes and software patches.

With our Website Maintenance Plan included in every build, we generate recurring revenue that allows us to rely less on big contracts and focus more on the day-to-day maintenance needs of our clients. It also allows us to keep our design prices reasonable.

With Web321’s bundled suite of design and maintenance services, we make custom-built, performance-optimized websites – and the ongoing services needed to care for them – accessible to more small businesses than ever before.

It’s highly individualized. Our existing workload, plus the size, design and complexity of the business functions needed for your website will determine the length of the build. Before you sign your contract, and before we begin your build, we’ll give you an estimate on how long your site will take to launch. We know that time is of the essence so we’ll do our best to get it online as fast as possible!

Visit the get started page to tell us a little bit of information about yourself, your business, and what you need.

Once you’ve provided your information to us via the sign-up form, we’ll reach out to you in a few days to follow up. We may ask you some additional questions to better understand your website goals and requirements, so we can put together an accurate quote, timeline and assess the build scope needed in our contract

We are happy to build you the eCommerce website of your dreams! We’ll set you up with a store & shopping cart with payment gateway, plus tax and shipping calculation as needed. We use WooCommerce – a popular, powerful and extensible eCommerce platform for WordPress – which allows us to add various modules for any additional functionality your store might require.

Yes! We use WooCommerce – a popular and powerful WordPress eCommerce system with booking functionality – for many of our booking sites, but we are also happy to integrate your site with third party booking systems. Some integrations we have done include Checkfront, JaneApp and OpenTable. We are integration experts and we can make your website work with just about any existing booking system. Just tell us your idea!

Absolutely. We have used Memberpress ( WordPress’s premier membership plugin) on many of our sites to provide members-only access to all types of content and products. You can have a single membership type, or as many tiers of access as you’d like. We’ll set up your subscription/membership plan and payment gateway for you, and help you import of your existing membership list, if you have one.

Yes, social media integration comes standard with every website we build. We can add your social media feeds to your site as well as enable social sharing for all your key content.

Yes, this is a very popular function and very easy to include and maintain using one of WordPress’s many calendar plugins, such as the creatively-named “The Events Calendar”.

In an age where 50% of your website traffic will arrive from a mobile device, a responsive site should no longer be considered a “feature”, but a standard and essential part of every website build. That’s how we do it at Web321.

Providing content can be one of the most challenging and intimidating steps for a business during a website build. That said, you know your business better than anybody, so your input on content is crucial. 

We can help you make this step simpler by working with you to build your content, rather than just sending you reminder email after reminder email – “do you have that sales copy ready yet?”

If you tell us the general outline of the information you want on your website, we can start with that to build out a skeleton which contains and showcases the information in a sensible and easy-to-navigate structure, highlighting the most important concepts.

We can populate the site with as little or as much content as you have available, and use filler text and images to round out the rest so you can have an idea of how the design and structure of your site will look and work.

As we work on your site design, we’ll send you some prompts for creative copy and images to flesh out the site. Just do your best! If you don’t feel confident writing your own content, send us some bullet points and our writers will turn it into web-ready copy for you. If you don’t have a lot of high-quality images to use, we can source stock photos for you to round out the design.

Filling out your website content can be an ongoing project. If you need to get online ASAP, it’s ok to launch with the minimum in place, and upgrade your copy and images as you have time. Don’t forget, Web321’s Website Maintenance Plan includes unlimited content updates, so you can do this at any time for no extra charge.

While every site we build is optimized to make it Google-friendly, sometimes you need more to stand out from the crowd. We are experienced in a wide array of marketing tactics to help get your site some extra Google love and drive more traffic your way. Ask us for a quote for:

• blog ghostwriting
• custom graphic design
• infographic design
• social media marketing
• reputation management
• email marketing
• press releases
• Google Ad campaigns
• backlink building
• marketing coaching

Our design and content-generation process is iterative, so we’ll be seeking and incorporating your feedback at every step along the way. In keeping with that, we offer a generous number of revisions and opportunities for course correction. Our process looks like this:

1. We consult with you to get the basic information we need to get started. During this consultation, we will gather the credentials and other technical information we need to get started on your build. We’ll also ask you some questions to understand your business better: what your business does, your goals for the site, your required functionality, your brand “personality”, etc. We’ll also ask you for some examples of sites you like to get a practical understanding of your desired site structure & esthetic in action.
2. We will return to you with a quote outlining the scope and cost of your build (everything that will be included, and the estimated launch date) for you to read.
3. Once you have accepted our quote, we write up a contract with all the details for you to review and sign.
4. We take your initial information and use it to build a working prototype which shows off the design of your landing page and the menu structure of your site. If you haven’t sent us any content yet, we can populate this prototype with dummy content and you’ll still get an idea of how the design and structure of your site will look and work. You ask for any changes you want (colours, fonts, graphics, arrangement of page elements, etc.) and we come back with another draft for you to assess. We can do up to three rounds of design revisions on this step.
5. Once you’re happy with the design of the landing page, we get to work on your remaining pages. We’ll send you links to check those as we build them, and you can send us feedback on any changes you need to the page design. We can do up to three rounds of design revisions per page on this step.
   
   While we are working on the pages, we will advise you what content we need to fill out the text and image areas:
   1. You can write the copy yourself and send it to us, and we will populate the pages with your content. You can also send your own images. If you are supplying content yourself, we will replace each block of content with your new content until you are satisfied.
   2. If you want our help writing copy, send us your notes and our writers will generate professionally-written copy for you, up to 1500 words per page. We can also source stock images for you if desired (up to 50). If we are supplying content for you, we can do up to three rounds of revisions/replacements per block of copy or per image.
      
      Please note: while we are good at what we do, we are not magicians (unfortunately)! If you don’t provide us with a clear description of the content you need, as well as all critical points of information that must be covered, we won’t be able to create or source content for you.
6. In this step, we install and test all the functionality of your site, and once we are satisfied, we encourage you to test it as well. If something is not working to the agreed specs of our contract, we will fix it until it does.
7. At this point, the site is nearly ready to launch. We will send the site to you for final sign-off. Before launch, we can do three final revisions of the site from our end. If you are supplying your own content, you can request content updates until you are satisfied.

BUT: if you are providing your own content, we advise not to make perfection the enemy of completion! Sometimes it’s best just to launch with a “good enough” site, and then perfect your content later when you have time. Don’t forget, Web321’s Website Maintenance Plan includes unlimited content update requests, so you can do this at any time for no extra charge.

Web321 uses secure, managed hosting from our partners. For Canadian clients, we use JohnOverall.com hosting. Their servers are located in Eastern Canada and are specially optimized for WordPress, the powerful CMS (content management system) behind all our sites. John Overall’s exclusive hosting limits the number of websites per server to obtain maximum performance for everyone they host.

We value your feedback immensely and we want you to be over-the-moon happy with your website, so we give you lots of opportunities to let us know if we’re going off course. We rely on you, our client, to let us know if you’re unhappy with anything so that we can make it right for you. 

Please read through the section above to get a full understanding of our process and your chances to provide feedback, request revisions and ask for course corrections during the build.

If you decide during the build that you need more functionality than had been agreed in the scope document, or you need more revisions than provided for above, that’s ok! We are happy to give you a competitive quote for the work.

That said, we know that sometimes things just don’t work out. If you decide that Web321 will not be able to build the site of your dreams, you can leave by paying out the balance of the work we’ve done for you so far (we’ll provide an itemized invoice.) Once paid, we will terminate the contract and provide you with all your credentials, web code, content and other assets we have generated for you until that point.

While Web321 offers a great service, we recognize that it’s not going to be right for everybody. The technology we use or the niches we serve may be a limiting factor for some businesses that want to work with us.

Technology

Web321 works exclusively with WordPress, the powerful and extensible open-sourced Content Management System that powers 40% of the Web. We can help you bring your site from another system into WordPress. If you are looking for someone to build you a site (or to fix or upgrade your existing site) on another platform such as Drupal, Joomla, Wix, Squarespace, etc. we are unfortunately not able to assist. However, we do have a network of partners we can recommend to you – just ask us!

Market Niches

Web321 works with almost every industry imaginable, but there are some niches which are better served by specialists. For this reason, we do not work with the following:

• Sites which deal with highly confidential and sensitive client information. We are happy to build your informational website and link that to the third party service holding your sensitive data.
• Defense contractors, weapons manufacturers & retailers
• Gambling sites
• Adult entertainment sites

Web321 has researched, tested and built a relationship with our hosting provider in order to ensure the highest level of service, speed and reliability for our clients. Since hosting with us is included in the Web321 Website Maintenance Plan, it makes financial sense for most clients to host with us. Just provide your credentials and we’ll do the rest.

However, if you are happy with your current hosting and would like your site to remain there, we can accomodate that as well. Just be aware that since we don’t have control over third party hosting, it may take us longer to resolve hosting-related website issues, and there may be performance issues that we have no control over.

Although we can’t assist everyone, we don’t want to turn away organizations which need help and leave them empty handed. Our Web321 Partner Network is there to pick up the projects that fall outside of our core offerings. If you’re interested in becoming one of our recommended partners, you can apply here.

At Web321, we want you to be happy – but you’re not tied down. If for any reason you’re not satisfied with our product or service, let us know and we’ll do our best to make it right!

If you still want to leave

If we have not started your build yet, and you have changed your mind about engaging our services, no problem – we will simply refund any deposit you have made on your site build.

If we have started or completed your build, we just ask you to pay off any remaining balance of the work we’ve done on your website. We can provide you with your balance and an itemized invoice whenever you like. Once the balance is paid, we will terminate the contract and provide you with all your credentials, web code, content and other assets we have generated for you until that point.

If you have been with Web321 a while, have paid off the balance on your website and are on a month-to-month maintenance plan, you may leave at any time. At your request, we will terminate the contract and provide you with all your credentials, web code, content and other assets we have generated for you.

Note: When you leave Web321, you will be responsible for finding your own hosting and maintenance provider for your site. We will hand you all the credentials you need so that your new service provider can facilitate your move. If you need help getting your site to its new home, we can assist at a rate of $200/hr (most moves take about three hours).

You’ll also be responsible for taking over payments for any premium plugins used on your site under Web321’s developer license (we will provide you with a list).

If there’s something we didn’t cover here, please feel free to reach out and ask!

Email us

[email protected] 

Call us toll free

1-844-4-WEB-321 (1-844-493-2321)

Reach out on social media

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/web321co

Twitter: https://twitter.com/web321co 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/web321co 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/web321co 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS1lSAvV32n7kiNYHJAu9sg 

You can find our Term of Service here.

Yes, we offer a generous affiliate plan through ShareASale. Sign up here if you are interested in becoming a Web321 affiliate and earning some extra cash.

We also have a Refer-A-Friend program for people who want to both get the best service for a friend and get a reward for helping us make a connection. 

You can find our Privacy Policy here.

Coffee. Obviously!

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

The simple answer is that we’ll work with you to fix it. We will find a way forward. That could be as simple as working with the plugin / theme developer; or involve us finding a patch, a workaround or an alternative that fulfills your role. Our best solution: we try to prevent problems before they happen. We will make a snapshot of your website and test before we deploy changes. If there is a failure, it happens before we go live. If a problem makes its way to production, we will use the snapshot to revert your site to its state from minutes before.

Our team will work to clean your website and close the source of the exploit. We will follow up with looking for related sources of exploit. Web321 clients are protected.

Web321 is happy to build new functionality into your site. We always look at the issue, the needs and the best way to satisfy it: an easy to use system that gives you what you need and doesn’t break the bank. For new features, we will generate a quote for the work before we proceed.

Yes, we offer improved pricing for clients with more than one site. We quote on a case by case basis.

We offer a full refund within the first 30 days of purchasing one of our plans. If you’re unsatisfied with our service for any reason during your trial period with us, we will give you a pro-rated refund for one of our support plans.

Yes. We partner with many agencies and other tech companies: marketers, designers who want to give clients long term support, and web hosts who want their clients managed. We have adopted the “collaborate and compete” mindset and we are happy to work with others to make sure the client wins in the end.

We include access to our enterprise-level licenses for some powerful plugins and themes. Our list of licenses is long and growing all the time. 

Licenses are revoked when a maintenance plan is canceled.

Yes, the Web321 support plan includes hosting as WPPro.ca and we can build a customized plan to cover hosting and hosting management through other service providers we work with.

If you choose to host elsewhere, you can still use Web321’s WordPress maintenance services.

Absolutely! We have an experienced people who do both on-page and off-page SEO to help your website stand tall. Let’s talk about what help you need. We have reciprocal agreements with the best SEO experts. If we can’t do it in-house, we have a specialist we can introduce you to.

Our focus is WordPress support, but many of our clients need an experienced digital marketer. We have people available to help engage in a great way. Let’s talk about your marketing needs

We accept payments by MasterCard, Visa, Cheque, e-Transfer, and Paypal. After signing up, we charge your bank account or card each month on a recurring basis.

Our support hours are 9am-5pm Pacific Time Zone in Canada. We have 24/7 monitoring of all our websites. If any site goes down, we will investigate, attempt repairs and inform our client if there is a significant issue.

If that schedule is at issue, check back later. As our team expands, so will our support hours.

We are a distributed team with staff in British Columbia, Canada. Our offices are in Central Saanich, just a little North of Victoria BC.

Web321 was co-founded in 2020 by Erin DeWolfe and her husband, Shawn DeWolfe. The team has since expanded to include brilliant programmers, marketers and WordPress experts. We have big plans to help small businesses with getting the WordPress support they need.