This is probably an obvious lesson learned, but, this is something I need to put out there:
DO NOT have the company that HOSTS your website be the same company that builds your website!
About 6 years ago, we were stuck….working hard at launching our food service business, we needed a very robust website built. The guy we contracted with eventually said “I can’t do it…it’s too big a project”….this was just a couple of months before our opening. We rushed to find a web company that was somewhat local so we could work closely with them for all the functionality we needed.
We got the site up with all the functionality we needed, but it cost us….not only did it cost us the $20K to build it, but they’re also hosting it, at a ridiculous price every month (Over $100 / month). They won’t reduce the price because they say I’m using too much disk space (even though I know it’s on a shared SQL db and isn’t taking up that much space). I really can’t move it because they know all off the stored procedures, which I’m not privy to, that make the site work and they won’t give me a reasonable price to migrate it off their hosting service to a cheaper option.
What I really need to do is hire another company, have the site rebuilt on a much cheaper host (like GoDaddy), and just move the domain name when it’s all ready. This won’t be anywhere near as much as I spent on the first site, but it is cash I didn’t want to spend because I already sunk $20K into the original build.
PLEASE LEARN FROM MY MISTAKE….keep your web site building team SEPARATE from your web site hosting company. You’ll be glad you did.