If you are am attorney and you "just want your website hosted somewhere safe and reliable" then you've come to the right place. In addition to providing a rock-solid platform for our clients, our hosting services are designed for the lawyer who wants to have a reputable web hosting provider, but doesn't want to be locked into paying for long-term marketing contracts loaded with services they just don't need.
Unlike many other lawyer web hosting providers, we allow our clients to have full administrator access to their websites. In fact, many of our hosting clients are professional service businesses who don't want to pay exorbitant monthly package fees for services they don't use, and come to us for a la carte enterprise-level WordPress website hosting at an affordable fee.
Your website is yours. And when you work with Short Hills Design, your website and all associated accounts (Godaddy.com, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google Search Console, etc.) remain 100% yours.
One of the big problems with many attorney marketing companies is that they won't allow other companies to work with their clients.
We take the 180 degree opposite view - we are here to help you in any way that we can, with any or all services that we offer. If you want to use another service for SEO, for maintenance, or for PPC -- then no problem. Just tell us what you need and how we can help.
We offer two website hosting options, billed yearly. Both options include free migration from your current host.
$99/month
Our standard lawyer website hosting fee is $99/mo. You get:
$160/month
Our Marketer Plan lawyer website hosting fee is $160/mo. and it includes everything in our Essentials plan plus:
Our fees are low because we don't bundle services that our clients don't want or need. Other companies charge a much higher monthly fee because they include services that may not be necessary -- especially for "website maintenance" which the client may never use (see the next section below).
The next big question is how hosting an attorney's website differs from maintaining or managing a website, so let's review that now.
At Short Hills Design, hosting includes everything you need to keep your website up and running on the Internet, securely with rock-solid performance. We update the core WordPress software as needed as well as WordPress plugins, and we provide rapid security updates if critical patches are released.
Website maintenance is the term we use for making website updates such as adding or changing content, images, layouts, and the like. The reason we separate out our hosting services from our maintenance services is because our clients -- with full website access - are able to and are encouraged to make any website updates that they would like on their own. Thus, it's not fair to charge clients for a bundled service that they simply will never use. Remember, one of the beauties of using WordPress is that as a website owner you are not tied into one particular host or locked into having only one company being able to provide website maintenance.
We have servers across the United States and Canada, and we will match up your practice's location with a datacenter that is close to you. If you are on the East coast, for example, you will be hosted on an East Coast Server.
Website hosting is the process of storing your legal website's files on the internet so that people can access your site online. Every website that wants to be found online needs to have a web host.
A web server is a computer that is connected to the internet which "knows" how to display your website when someone asks for it (e.g. visits your site online).
The website registrar (such as GoDaddy.com) is the service you use to register (rent) your domain name. You can think of the registrar as the post office - the registrar stores information about your domain so it can be found on the internet (like driving directions).
The SSL certificate is the padlock icon you see at the top left of a search bar that shows people that your site is secure. We could debate about why a dental website needs to be SSL secured (you're not taking credit cards or SSN#''s directly), but it's been a ranking factor for years so it's critical to have a valid SSL. Plus, if you don't have an SSL certificate, people will see a "not secure" warning when they visit your site which can scare many people - especially those that aren't tech savvy.
No. Google Workspace and Office 365 are affordable, reliable email providers and we recommend that our clients use one of these services for their practice's email. One of the reason you want to have your email separate from your website is that email services can e difficult to move from one provider to another, so having your email services independent of the website gives you significant flexibility.
Not really.
Here's how the domain/hosting concept works: if want to start a new website for my dental practice, I'd head to GoDaddy.com and purchase a new domain. I would then build a website, and find a web host to put the website live on the internet.
You can think of the domain/hosting relationship as a Post Office to street address relationship. The Post Office (registrar) knows your practice's street address so people can send you mail, and your practice and equipment is all stored at your physical building location (hosting).
At GoDaddy there is a setting you update so that GoDaddy knows where the website is hosted (see the diagram below):
Domains do not need management other than that they need to be renewed when they expire. And make sure that you own your domain name and not your marketing company or web hosting company.
In summary:
Contact us to learn how we can free you from paying monthly fees for add-on services you just don't need.
