Genius Stack: WP as a Service

We take credit cards. This is a “productized service”, and we feel it’s important that we know each other so we’ll take your credit card over the phone and not make you fill out a faceless form. We will enter your information directly into our processor (currently Authorize.net) and not store your credit card information anywhere else.

You can cancel any time you like. We simply ask that you send an email or open a support ticket with the request. If you have been with us for less than 12 months you may pay the difference between the paid for monthly fees and the $3000 product fee for a copy of your files and database. If you have been with us for 12 months or longer, you can cancel any time and we will provide a copy of your site files and database at no additional charge.

You sure can. Most major hosts will have no trouble hosting your site since it is built on popular, standard, and open-source technologies. Finding a developer or firm to take it over should be no trouble either. The only requirement is that you meet the financial part of the service.

You do. We will never make any claim to your content or data. As long as you have met the financial minimums of the service, we will release your files and data upon request. If you leave, we will remove all files and data from our servers.

They do and you can. Set up your account, choose what software you would like to install, hit a button… That’s it. Now you have to learn how to use that software, choose a theme, customize that theme, dare to use FTP to alter files, install additional software that could crash the site, keep that software updated, evaluate if their provided security is good enough, turn on backups, call overseas support that reads from transcripts and then finally hope that all the decisions you made are right and your site is well optimized for SEO and performance. There is a reason you can get that service as low as $5/month.

We are offering you all enterprise level services. Every aspect of our service is what we would recommend to the largest organizations with the biggest budgets. However, if you are interested in learning, already have the skills and/or want to save a buck then those services might actually be better for you. We are not saying they’re “bad” we are just saying our solution is for those that don’t want to deal with all that.

We’ve packaged some of the same services a freelancer will provide in an all-inclusive service. With our service you know exactly what you are getting.

Using the same service providers we have partnered with to provide this service the costs would be as follows:

Hosting: $30/month
Website Monitoring: $25/mo
Web Application Firewall w/ Malware Scanning and Cleanup: $25/mo
30 Days of Redundant Backups: $10/month (seriously, this is not included in the $30/month plan)
Using the enterprise level service providers we have partnered with; the individual services would total about $90/month. Of course, there are hosting plans out there for as little as $1/month and if you are not worried about security and up/down time, then you could potentially reduce these costs by 99%! However, we are not done yet. These are just the technology providers. You still have to get your website designed, built, maintained and deal with any security issues that might arise:

Web site design and development services: $0 (DIY with free themes and plugins) – $15,000+ (agency/studio services)
On-Call Support: $5-225/hr
Single time malware or hack cleanup: $100-$350
Now notice we have said nothing about your time. Your time is priceless, unless of course you bill by the hour and if you bill by the hour, you will get where we are going with this. So, unless you value your time at $0/hour then you must also account for the time it will take to set this all up, monitor it and maintain it.

We will send you an MS Word document or Google Doc that outlines all the content you will need to provide. You can simply fill this out and send it to us and we’ll do all the hard work. Or, if you prefer, we can get your website setup and you can login and enter content directly. We provide full documentation on how to manage content within your site.

This is a service not a cold product. We’ll talk to you on the phone and/or do a video conference and get all the details of your business. As cheesy as it sounds we like to know our clients (not ”customers”).

We’ll take payment info from you after you agree to our terms and conditions. After that we’ll talk about what domain you would like your site to run on. If you don’t already own a domain, we can consult with you on how to buy one (we never own your domain).

We’ll then work with you to get your domain pointed at our firewall service. We are happy to do this for you as part of our service so no need to read up on DNS. After that, your site is online. We’ll load up with content if you provide that.

One important note. Your site will match your branding color palette so we will need as high of a quality file as possible of your logo. We’ll set up the branding, initially but we can always change that later.

In the very unlikely event we close our doors we will give you plenty of notice and provide you all your files and data at no charge. However, this is no fly-by-night operation. FatLab, LLC has been in business for 10 years and under our FatLab Web Support business we currently manage around 100 websites, host about 60 websites and have partnerships with some major communications agencies. We should be around for a while.

The concept of this service is that we have put together a site structure that meets about 90% of the websites we build for our clients. You can highlight products, services, people and create unlimited pages. However, the service is restricted to the features we have provided. Meaning, until we offer an e-commerce solution, we can’t setup a store for you. Custom templates, designs and modifications to the provided template (which is very flexible) are not possible.

As a user of this service, you will be provided editorial (not full administrative) access to the website. This will give you the ability to control all content and features of the site, but you will not be able to load in new plugins, themes or other enhancements. Remember, we built this, so you didn’t have to pay for a custom solution. Direct file and database access is not provided under this service.

If you decide that the service is too restrictive, and you need to customize your site outside what is allowed and/or would like full administrative access you can move your site to a new host, developer, or firm (we recommend FatLab Web Support) to help you do that. This will be a great base to start from and you should not have to start over if you go down this path. Be sure to see our terms and conditions as this relates too pricing.

All limitations are designed to keep the integrity of what we consider a best-in-class / best practice website where we can easily ensure your site meets our high standards for display, security, and performance. We get it though, one day you may decide this is not enough. You are never locked in and we can help you make the transition from this defined service to a new more custom service.

No. You are the expert of your business, we’ll never pretend to know your business as well as you do so we strictly focus on the technical side of things. However, we have excellent partners that are graphic designers and writers that can assist with those needs! (Those costs are separate from the Genius Stack fee.)

C’mon we’re a bunch of nerd coders, you don’t want us to edit your content – believe me. With that said, we make no judgments on content. Unless you are doing something illegal, we really don’t care what is on your website. In fact, you can assume we have never read it.

Your website will be built using WordPress, the world’s most popular CMS. WordPress currently runs over 30% of all the world’s websites. We may use best-in-class plugins to enhance the site and the theme is custom built by us and is a child theme of the popular open-source starter theme Understrap. If you want to get really nerdy please see “What are the technical specs of the site?”

Nope. Squarespace and services like them provide incredibly powerful tools to build relatively sophisticated websites, however, it is up to you what the site looks like, how it is laid out and you have very little control over various performance factors. For some this is great solution, for others… well let’s just say we have seen people spend entire weekends or even weeks that they could’ve spent on their businesses learning these platforms, designing, redesigning and starting over and over just to end up with a less than professional result. It’s not like the Super Bowl commercials where a complete newbie builds an amazing website with musical montage lasting only seconds. However, with that said, we do recommend such services to some people and believe they have their place, so please check them out.

• WordPress 5.x
• The Genius Stack custom theme
• BootStrap 4
• HTML 5
• SASS
• Font Awesome 5.x

• Hosting Provider
  • Cloudways. We maintain an agency partnership with cloudways and currently have dedicated cloud servers in 5 geographically diverse data centers.
• Environment
  • PHP 7.4+
  • Nginx
  • Apache
  • HTTP/2
  • MariaDB
  • SFTP (no FTP)
• Firewall
  • StackPath
• CDN
  • Bunny CDN
  • 54 Global POPs
  • Orgin Shield

We utilize a 3rd party service with over 200 global geographically diverse monitoring centers (we typically use only US based nodes unless your business is specifically internationally based or targeted). Every 15 minutes your site will be checked by one of these nodes, if a problem is found then a second node somewhere else in the world will verify the issue. If the issue is verified, then and alert is sent to our team for investigation.

Content Delivery Network (CDN):

A CDN keeps copies of your static files (images, pdfs, style sheets, etc.) on servers all over the world. When someone visits your site, they will be served assets from the server geographically closest to them. This greatly speeds up the delivery of your website making both your clients, customers, and Google happy.