What is website as a service (WaaS)?
We provide WaaS packages for small and medium sized businesses, built ontop of the powerful Drupal framework. No up front one-time cost. An annual (or monthly) fee is charged which includes hosting, support, maintenance and regular updates to your website.
- A single annual or monthly fee that doesn't require upfront capital.
- There is no obsolescence risk; your website, it's design, and the underlying technology supporting it will be updated periodically.
- You may cancel after 12 months with the option to purchase the website outright and manage and host it yourself.
So how does Website as a service (WaaS) work, and why is it a better option? It's similar to why Software as a service (SaaS) has become very popular.
Software as a service (SaaS) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. This can be anything from a desktop application that you would traditionally have purchased and installed on your PC (like Microsoft office) to full ERP systems that businesses use to run their factories. Instead of buying the software once and then potentially in a couple of years buying a new version, you pay a subscription fee and receive continuous updates to the software. This is now the primary licensing model for things like Microsoft Office as it is beneficial to both the software developer and the consumer.
Website as a service (WaaS) follows the same principles as SaaS, in that you pay a subscription fee to receive a continuously updated website instead of purchasing the website and then a few years later paying for a revamp or update. The traditional way of paying a one-time fee for a website is equivalent to purchasing Microsoft Office and installing on your PC, whereas paying for a WaaS subscription is equivalent to a subscription to Office 365 for example.
With a website the old-fashioned way, where you pay for the site as a product, what typically happens is the website goes live, and it is great and modern. The internet is fickle however, and there are 3 major issues.
- Design preference change. Designs that were in yesterday, are out tomorrow. This is happening on a monthly basis. A brand-new site can look dated in 6 months. If you paid 5k for your website, and 6 months later it makes your company look like it is outdated, then you look outdated.
- Things break. Browsers are constantly being updated, new protocols and integrations are being created and implemented. YouTube changes its method of embedding videos and all of a sudden, your new site has a big ugly grey box where your video preview used to be. A new update to your backend makes images disappear, or show an error. These things can make the best websites look unprofessional, and thus, the business unprofessional.
- New technology. New devices come out regularly. Tablets, cell phones, monitors, etc. What looks good on the newest screens today, could look like junk in a month. New font icons come out and support is dropped for the last version and now all the icons are just ugly little rectangles.
With these things in mind, it makes sense to many people to subscribe to a continuously updated service instead of paying a one-off fee for a website which is then out of date a couple of years later. At Problue Solutions we offer both the traditional and WaaS models and we are happy to discuss what option might be best for you, get in touch or check out our web development services for small and medium sized businesses.