TLDR;
There are many ways to build an online presence but most of them require an ongoing subscription, especially for specific functionality. This post elaborates on the advantages of a self-hosted website in the sense that there are things you simply can’t do when you host your website with a 3rd-party provider, and for much less expense.
Website vs McLaren
I can’t help it. It seems like the perfect segue for a supercar analogy.
You can think of your website as either a McLaren or a budget supercar. Both will get you to where you want to go but only one will turn heads.
They’re both designed for optimal performance (handling, acceleration, speed) and the ease-of-use factor. And let’s face it, a healthy element of satisfaction!
While a typical website will do what you want it to do, it requires a lot of manual intervention to represent your business as an influential brand. There’s no getting around that.
But build it as a self-hosted website with some serious automation under the hood and you’ve got a dynamic marketing tool, designed for intuitive segmentation, hands-free engagement, frictionless content delivery and fulfillment, and the general thrill of knowing that it produces results 24×7, with or without you.
The Umbrella Benefits of a Self-Hosted Website
People have their reasons for using website builders but you simply can’t achieve this kind of functionality going that route…
Exclusivity and Brand Identity
It goes without saying that running a business under your business name is a given so why you would jeopardize that with website builder that creates a URL like accountname.some-domain.com/your-business-name/ is beyond me. Sure, you can pay to change the URL to your-business-name.com but if you’re going to do that, why aren’t you self-hosting your business to begin with? Seems like a silly expense to me.
Customization and Flexibility
The beauty of a self-hosted website lies in its limitless customization options. Having the freedom to develop your brand-centric website on your own terms is the very thing that creates the kind of user experience that intuitively guides visitors through the customer journey.
Plugin Autonomy
When you’ve used WordPress for long enough, you get to know developers, their plugins (or themes), and which ones play nice with others. You learn which APIs, hooks, and integrations deliver the results you want, and when it pays to use headless technology. These choices are rarely on the table for website builders, unless of course, you want to pay more.
(Many WordPress developers are moving toward headless plugins that their own utilize off-site servers, lightening the load on your server (at less expense), keeping your website fast and optimized. This isn’t something you’ll see on a 3rd-party website builder!)
SEO and Performance Optimization
Direct control over SEO and performance provides a smoother, faster browsing experience, which significantly improves customer satisfaction and retention (an actual Google ranking factor, btw). It also helps ensure that your site adheres to the best practices for search visibility, driving more organic traffic to your business.
Cost-Effectiveness and Scalability
The ability to optimize performance directly impacts your website’s ability to scale without the financial and proprietary constraints often imposed by platform-hosted solutions. Not having to worry about what you can/can’t do means one less thing to worry about in the course of growing a business.
Preferred Hosting
Not all hosting providers are created equal! And until you read the fine print or find yourself needing support for something that you’re not covered for (malware attacks, server overload, storage overages, backup recovery, etc.), you may not appreciate this option to its fullest.
You also have the freedom to choose a CDN to control the delivery of media content, event attendance, and other scenarios that benefit from local content delivery. I don’t know any website builder that will let you choose your own host or CDN.
Enhanced Security and Data Ownership
When you host your own website, you have access to resources that simply aren’t available to a website builder.
The right hosting solution also has built-in security redundancies and elaborate firewalls that make it unnecessary to install code-heavy security plugins that do the same thing. Fewer plugins mean fewer scripts to bog down your website which results in a lighter load on your server and faster load time of your website (and better SERP rankings). A good hosting provider also allows you to scale resources up or down based on real-time demands, ensuring that you only pay for what you use.
Security also applies to the 1st-party data that your website collects. You have zero control over the date that your website collects on a 3rd-party platform yet you’re still responsible for how it’s used, stored, and secured. And you definitely don’t own it. This is a devastating realization in the event that you leave the platform for any reason and you find that you can’t take that data with you (vendor lock-in is real)! With a self-hosted website, you aren’t living under the threat of ever losing your customer data.
Leveraged Innovation
The strength of a self-hosted WordPress website is in the global network of developers that make themselves available to assist with troubleshooting specific issues. Access to these resources also means that you benefit from continuous improvements and updates, ensuring that your website remains compatible with the latest web standards and technologies.
Freedom From Subscription Payments
I feel like this is a given but I would be remiss to not emphasize that a self-hosted website eliminates the need for paying ongoing subscription fees to host your site on a domain that isn’t yours.
If your intention is to run a serious business long-term, it doesn’t make sense to run it from a 3rd-party platform whose revenue model is to impose tier-based restrictions for specific features once your website has been created and you realize too late that it can’t do everything you want it to.
Conversely, a single investment in a taxable business asset to host your business yourself, and a small learning curve, is all it costs to own EVERYTHING about your online business.
(And not for nothin’ but, if you’re going to suffer through a earning curve anyway, why not put that effort into learning how to do things yourself? Just saying’.)
The Business Benefits of a Self-Hosted Website
Getting a grasp on the umbrella advantages of using a self-hosted website is one thing but understanding how that translates into actual business benefits is the magnum opus of automating daily operational business tasks.
Show me a website builder that can accommodate this incomplete list of automated tasks and I’ll eat my hat!
- Leadgen
- Contact segmentation
- Targeted engagement
- Personalized onboarding
- Shopping cart (with multiple pmt options)
- Online booking
- Registrations, including donation forms
- Document sharing, including signatures
- 24×7 digital content delivery
And the intangibles…
- Unrestricted services
- Considerably less expense
- Taxable capital business investment
- More free time to work on areas of the business that demand your attention (usually spending time with other people)
The Last Word on the Benefits of Self-Hosting
From unparalleled customization and direct performance optimization to enhanced security and an active community of developers, the business benefits of building your online presence with a self-hosted website are undeniable.
Your ability to craft a unique and dynamic brand, automatically scale your operations, and maintain full control over your digital footprint (and data) without the hobbles of tier-based pricing for essential functionality, is a basic right of doing business online that should never be compromised by someone else’s rules. Ever.
If you’re remotely interested in learning what it really takes to self-host your business website, book a 15-minute phone call. It’s free, painless, and can put your mind to rest about any misconceptions you may have about the process.
