Blog
Straight talk
on the web.
Thinking on web hosting, performance, and why most small businesses are paying twice what they should.
A new account manager every six months is not a coincidence
You have explained your business to three different account managers in a year. None of them remember what the last one promised. Here is why agencies churn staff and what to do about it.
Four years with the same agency and not one suggestion
You have paid your agency every month for four years. They have never once emailed to suggest a change, an improvement, or a better way of doing something. There is a reason for that.
Your agency is charging you for automatic updates a robot does
Your agency invoice says maintenance. The work is a checkbox in WordPress that runs by itself at 3am. Here is how to spot it and what you should pay instead.
The developer who built your site has left the agency and nobody there knows how it works
The developer who built your site has moved on and the agency that remains shrugs at every request. You are paying monthly to be a stranger to your own website.
Your agency promised a Google Business profile and never delivered
The Google Business profile was in the package. The agency took the money. The profile was never set up. Here is what to do about it.
Your agency installed dozens of plugins and now your site keeps crashing
Your agency added a plugin for every small problem. Now your site falls over twice a week and they want extra money to fix it.
Your agency invoice just says 'web development - 8 hours' and nothing else
Your invoice says '8 hours - web development - £640'. That is not an invoice. That is a number with a word next to it. Here is how to get a real breakdown and what to do if they refuse.
When your agency hides behind jargon to justify the bill
Your agency invoiced you for cache configuration, CDN propagation and CMS hardening. You nodded along because asking felt embarrassing. It should not have.
The agency added a setup fee that was never in the quote
You signed off on a quote. The first invoice arrived with an extra setup fee nobody mentioned. Here is how to push back and what to do next.
You signed a web agency contract and never got a copy of it
You signed something in a meeting or a PDF, and the agency never sent you the final copy. Here is what you are entitled to and how to get it.