App vs Website (for a club)
Discussion
A club I'm involved with runs a website, but it only has an active website community of about 50 or 60 users. The website - with hosting and support - costs us over £3k annually. It's primarily for club announcements and a forum (not unlike PH) but also for storing admin documentation.
Could an App be a more cost-effective alternative, given development and ongoing maintenance costs etc?
Could an App be a more cost-effective alternative, given development and ongoing maintenance costs etc?
Pitre said:
A club I'm involved with runs a website, but it only has an active website community of about 50 or 60 users. The website - with hosting and support - costs us over £3k annually. It's primarily for club announcements and a forum (not unlike PH) but also for storing admin documentation.
Could an App be a more cost-effective alternative, given development and ongoing maintenance costs etc?
Quick answer - no. Apps are expensive to develop and maintain.Could an App be a more cost-effective alternative, given development and ongoing maintenance costs etc?
Your hosting and support sounds ridiculously expensive, although what you have might be fantastic. I would look at ways of reducing your costs that way.
Pitre said:
A club I'm involved with runs a website, but it only has an active website community of about 50 or 60 users. The website - with hosting and support - costs us over £3k annually. It's primarily for club announcements and a forum (not unlike PH) but also for storing admin documentation.
Could an App be a more cost-effective alternative, given development and ongoing maintenance costs etc?
Shop around, you can do better than that. I pay £680 a year and that's for hosting, support and forum licence renewal. Could an App be a more cost-effective alternative, given development and ongoing maintenance costs etc?
The clubs I'm involved with mostly have a website for stuff that doesn't change.
Or stuff that's valid for months, like say rotas and programmes of events.
It's common to have FaceBook pages, one public, one private to the group, although this seems to be in decline.
Most announcements and short term organisational stuff happens by mass email and/or Whatsapp.
Clubs vary a lot in terms of what people need from websites and social media.
Sometimes people need information, sometimes they want to chat via messages and stuff.
If you're looking for new members, most punters probably want to be able find out about the club, the website is still important for that, and you need people to find the website.
Most club forums seem to be dead now?
I think it's OK for a small club to have a small basic website, but it looks bad when there's lots of grossly out of date stuff.
Or stuff that's valid for months, like say rotas and programmes of events.
It's common to have FaceBook pages, one public, one private to the group, although this seems to be in decline.
Most announcements and short term organisational stuff happens by mass email and/or Whatsapp.
Clubs vary a lot in terms of what people need from websites and social media.
Sometimes people need information, sometimes they want to chat via messages and stuff.
If you're looking for new members, most punters probably want to be able find out about the club, the website is still important for that, and you need people to find the website.
Most club forums seem to be dead now?
I think it's OK for a small club to have a small basic website, but it looks bad when there's lots of grossly out of date stuff.
HantsRat said:
That seems very expensive. For example out hosting costs from £5.99 a month and for website support, this starts from £27 a month. Is your website bespoke or could anyone take this on?
The website is not bespoke, it's a package called Xenforo. Problem is that we need it supported so we pay commercially to have hosting and maintenance reliably managed. But it does feel expensive...My forum is xenforo, the guy who does my hosting is fantastic. Check him out, this is his website.
https://mattwservices.co.uk/
https://mattwservices.co.uk/
Pitre said:
But it does feel expensive...
You're overpaying by a factor of 10. £50+ per year per member for hosting and maintenance is absolute madness. Xenforo is an odd choice for a small club to start with, when even self-hosted licencing costs nearly $200, plus $70 for a resource manager, another $70 for a media gallery. Plus VAT.
Or... you're using one of their cloud plans. I can see the appeal for a non-developer that doesn't want to have to deal with any technical aspects, but like all these cloud options, you're always overpaying for what you get.
It's a PHP forum with file uploads and a gallery. It's not that special. Your 50 members aren't going to be generating PH levels of database entries.
£3000 a year - I have clients paying that who get a custom website, custom software, hosting, maintenance, advice and search engine optimisation for the price. But they're paying that to double / triple their revenue year on year, not just to keep 50 club members updated on events.
An alternative view. I play in a competitive pipe band. We have a website for no real reason other than to say to the world we exist. All of our announcements, chats, calendar engagements and availability, merch sales etc are done through TeamApp.
https://www.teamapp.com/
I think it’s free but I’m not on the committee any more so can’t confirm. Works well for us.
https://www.teamapp.com/
I think it’s free but I’m not on the committee any more so can’t confirm. Works well for us.
Pitre said:
A club I'm involved with runs a website, but it only has an active website community of about 50 or 60 users. The website - with hosting and support - costs us over £3k annually. It's primarily for club announcements and a forum (not unlike PH) but also for storing admin documentation.
Could an App be a more cost-effective alternative, given development and ongoing maintenance costs etc?
To clarify, our club has around 1,000 members of whom maybe half are registered users of the website, but under 100 are actually active.Could an App be a more cost-effective alternative, given development and ongoing maintenance costs etc?
Pitre said:
The website is not bespoke, it's a package called Xenforo. Problem is that we need it supported so we pay commercially to have hosting and maintenance reliably managed. But it does feel expensive...
Happy to have a chat re specs and costs if you like. I won't PM without you asking but you're welcome to reach out. I run a website design company and hosting service. Pitre said:
Pitre said:
A club I'm involved with runs a website, but it only has an active website community of about 50 or 60 users. The website - with hosting and support - costs us over £3k annually. It's primarily for club announcements and a forum (not unlike PH) but also for storing admin documentation.
Could an App be a more cost-effective alternative, given development and ongoing maintenance costs etc?
To clarify, our club has around 1,000 members of whom maybe half are registered users of the website, but under 100 are actually active.Could an App be a more cost-effective alternative, given development and ongoing maintenance costs etc?
Maybe check out Circle also?https://circle.so/
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