Rembrandt Designs Call (347) 650-0219
Questions

Frequently asked questions.

Web development can be a real mysterious craft for most people, so I have compiled the questions I get asked most below. As always, call or email if what you want to know is not here — or even if it is here and you would still rather talk it through.

One

Finances & payments.

What does it actually cost?

$297 a month, everything included — the site, your domain, hosting, the security certificate, SEO on every page, your Google Business Profile set up and kept accurate, unlimited edits, Review Engine and Call Recovery. No setup fee and no contract.

Your first payment is the day you approve the finished site — you see it on your phone before anything is charged. Full breakdown on the pricing page.

Is there a minimum subscription length?

No. It is month to month from the first payment. Cancel any time and the service stops at the end of the month you have paid for — no term, no buyout, no exit fee.

What happens if I cancel and later want to come back?

You are welcome back, and we will tell you honestly what it costs. If the old site is still on file we can usually put it back up rather than rebuild it, which is faster and cheaper for you. If enough has changed that it needs rebuilding, it starts as a fresh build — same $297 a month, nothing extra.

Can I buy out of the monthly?

No — the service is the monthly. There is no one-time payment that leaves you with a live site and no monthly, because the monthly is not profit on a finished build; it is the hosting, the domain renewal, the certificate, the edits and the ongoing work. Someone has to keep doing and paying for those every month, and it is us.

How do you handle late payments?

There is no late fee. If a card is declined, the card company retries it automatically over the following days and you get an email each time so you can fix it — usually it is an expired card and takes a minute.

If it still cannot be collected, we call you before anything stops. Nothing is taken down over a payment we have not spoken to you about first.

How do you take payment, and what do you accept?

Payment is by card, processed securely by Stripe on their own checkout page — we never see or hold your card number. All major credit and debit cards are accepted.

You get a receipt by email and a link to your own billing page where you can update the card, see every invoice, or cancel without going through us. We do not take checks or money orders.

$9.99 per additional page — is that one-time or monthly?

Monthly. An eleventh page is $9.99 a month on top of your $297, and two extra pages is $19.98 a month. Nothing is charged up front for them.

It is monthly because the work is monthly: an extra page is hosted, kept accurate and edited exactly like the other ten, for as long as you have it. Ten pages covers nearly any local business.

Are there refunds?

Monthly payments are non-refundable, including partial months. To avoid the next one, cancel before your renewal date.

Remember the order things happen in: the site is built and shown to you before your first payment, so nothing is ever bought sight unseen. If you think you have been charged in error, call us and we will make it right.

Do I pay for the domain separately?

No. We register it, pay for it and renew it every year, and that is inside the price rather than billed on top — so it never lapses and there is never a second bill for it.

Two

Package details.

Can I add unlimited edits and support?

They are already included — there is no add-on to buy and no per-change fee. Hours, prices, photographs, a seasonal offer: call or text during business hours — 9am to 5pm EST, Monday to Friday — and it is done the same business day. There is no cap.

Is SEO part of the packages?

Partly. SEO splits into on-page work — what is on your site — and off-page work, which is everything outside it. Every site we build includes the on-page fundamentals: clean semantic HTML, fast loading, a proper heading structure, meta information, an XML sitemap, local business schema, and a page for each town you serve.

Your Google Business Profile is set up, optimized and kept accurate inside the monthly, and Review Engine sends up to 150 review requests to your customers each month. Posting to the profile and replying to reviews stay with you — they are your voice, not ours. Ongoing off-page work — keyword campaigns, citations and content built outside your site — is a separate service, priced on its own; we do it ourselves rather than handing you to somebody else.

Can I have online ordering or bookings?

Not inside the plan. Those are real systems with real ongoing cost, not pages. If you want one, it is separate work and we will quote it before anything begins.

What we do not do is take over, rebuild or maintain a system somebody else set up. We build and run our own work, and that is the only way we can stand behind it.

Do you build online stores?

Not under the monthly plan. An online store is considerably more to build and to keep running than a business site, and it does not fit inside the monthly. If you need one, call and we will talk about what it would actually take.

How do I request a change?

Call or text (347) 650-0219, or email rembrandt@rembrandtdesigns.com. There is no ticketing system, no portal and no login — you are not opening a ticket or waiting on a queue. The person who answers is the person who makes the change, and it is done the same business day.

Will this get me to the top of Google?

No, and nobody can promise that honestly. What a fast, accurate, well-structured page does is make sure that when somebody searches your name, they find you instead of nothing. What that is worth depends on your business, not on us.

Three

Websites.

What is the typical timeline?

In as little as a day for a focused site — up to three weeks for the largest projects. The site is written, you look at it on your phone, and once you approve it we register the domain, connect it and put it live. The other thing that can slow it down is waiting on photographs or details from you.

Do I keep the website if I cancel?

No — the site comes down, the same as with anyone who hosts and maintains a site for you. We would rather say that plainly now than have you find out later.

Your domain and your own content go with you. Ask at any time, including after cancelling, and we will email your text and photographs across and transfer the domain wherever you want it.

Who owns the domain?

While your plan runs it is registered and renewed in our account, and that is deliberate — it is why it never lapses and why there is no second bill for it.

It goes with you when you leave. Tell us where to send it and we transfer it to you at no charge, once your account is settled. We will not keep it, sell it, or point it anywhere else.

Do you build with WordPress or page builders?

No. Every site is written by hand in plain code — no template, no theme, no page builder, no plugins. That is the whole difference, and it is why the pages behave the way they do after launch.

What does hand-coded give me over WordPress?

Speed, security and a site that does not rot. There is no database for anyone to break into, no plugins waiting on a patch, no login for anyone to guess, and nothing you have to keep updated. A WordPress site needs constant updating precisely to stop it being broken into; yours has none of that surface to begin with.

It is also why it loads in a fraction of a second and stays that way in three years, instead of getting slower every time something is added to it.

How fast is it, really?

About 40 kilobytes — less than one photo from your phone — and it loads nothing from anyone else’s servers. Measured on a throttled connection: 0.16s on 4G, 0.31s on Fast 3G, 1.51s at roughly one bar of signal. Reproduce it yourself with the developer tools already in your browser.

What happens to my site if something happens to you?

Your site is plain HTML files on a global host — there is no server for us to keep running, no database, and no software that stops working if nobody touches it. It keeps serving on its own.

The domain is registered in our account so that it is renewed and paid for without you ever seeing a notice, but it is yours to take at any time — ask and we move it wherever you want it, and we will email your text and photographs across so another developer can pick it up from there. That is a deliberate choice; nothing here is built to be hard to leave.

Is this a scam? I did not ask for a call.

A fair question and you should ask it more often than you do. Here is what to check: we asked for no card details, no login and no personal information, and you can open the site we are showing you yourself, at its own address, on your own phone.

Nothing is charged until you say yes, and you can call the number on this page back at any time and get the same person.

Do you only work in New York?

No. We are in Lynbrook and know Nassau County and the South Shore best, but the work goes out to businesses across the country — the phone number is the only thing that changes.

Still wondering

If your question is not here — or it is here and you would still rather talk it through — call or write. A person answers, and nothing is charged for asking.

Call (347) 650-0219