Our Offer
The reason we do this is simple: it’s a great way for us to build connections with entrepreneurs who might hire us for larger paid projects as their businesses grow. 90% of the people for whom we’ve built website for free have been happy with the results and 10-20% go on to hire us for other paid projects down the line. They might hire us to build more complicated websites, an app, or do ongoing development work for them
To put a website online – and to keep it online – you’ll need a domain name and web hosting, which costs a few dollars per month. We cover our website development costs by asking you to sign up for one of our affordable web hosting and maintenance plans. These plans cost an average of $65 per month and come with a 1 year commitment.
That’s it! We simply recoup some of our costs through hosting and maintaining your website.
Free Website Genius is a special program offered by Genius Digital Commerce, a reputable website development and eCommerce agency.
You’ll need to sign up for our in-house hosting & maintenance service with a year-long commitment in order to qualify for this service. Our hosting and maintenance plans begin at US $65 per month.
This means that you’ll be getting a full professional WordPress website for which other web agencies charge several thousand dollars just by purchasing hosting and maintenance, a service that you’ll need to launch your website anyway.
If you wish to cancel your hosting and maintenance service, you can do so at anytime. However, if you prefer to download a copy of the website or migrate it to another hosting company of your choice, you will be asked to fullfill your one year commitment before doing so.
To have a website online, you have to pay for web hosting. The only alternative to this is services like Wix. With Wix, however, your domain will look like yourdomain.wix.com (that is, it’ll have the word “wix” in it). If you want your own website (not a sub-domain of Wix), with an actual URL (yourdomain.com), web hosting is required.
You can learn more about how websites are set up here: https://websitesetup.org/ You’ll see that the first step is to get website hosting.
Nope. There are no hidden fees.
The only fees that you are expected to pay to access this service is purchase your domain, and our hosting & maintenance service which generally has a cost of about $65 per month.
If you don’t like any of the templates we provide, you can also choose to purchase your own template for us to use (but speak to us first, because many templates are poorly built and we will need to vet it first).
If you’ve already bought a domain name, that’s great. If you haven’t chosen one yet, that’s completely fine. We’ll show you how to do that.
What do you look for in an application?
We carefully review every application that comes our way. Our Applications Committee considers the following
Do we like the concept for the website?
Is it ethical?
Is this a highly complex website that’s outside the scope of our free-website program?
How long does it take for you to review an application?
We review most applications within 48-72 hours, and accept approximately 30% of those who apply.
Our process
We use WordPress, the most popular content management system for websites. In fact, about 30% of the internet runs on WordPress. In our opinion, it’s the best platform to use for the vast majority of websites (unless you’re looking to build something that’s super complex).
WordPress is free to use, and we’ll be able to load it onto your web hosting platform once you’ve signed up for web hosting.
We build people simple but professional websites as part of our free-website program. We don’t do highly complex websites with lots of bells and whistles.
Nope, definitely not. We walk you through everything you’ll need to do in a clear, step-by-step way. Plus, once we’re done working on your website, we’ll send you a detailed instruction video showing you how to make additional edits and changes to your website so that you won’t ever need to hire a website developer.
The best way to ensure that your website looks really good is to use a professionally designed template. These are website designs built by professional graphic designers and they will make your website look great.
We give you the option of choosing between one of our premium and professional WordPress website templates at no additional cost.
For the websites we build, we use either Elementor or Divi, two of the most popuplar drag and drop page builders.
Assuming you get back to our emails promptly and don’t request any complex additional features, we aim for a completion time of no more than 3 weeks. If you take longer to think about your content, design, logo, etc., that’s no problem for us and we can work at your pace.
Yes of course. Once we’re done working on your website, you’ll have access to go in and make any changes you require.
Absolutely. When we finish the website, we’ll send you a detailed video breaking down how to make additional edits yourself (so you don’t need to hire a web developer). You’ll be in full control, in other words, and you’ll have the training you need to continue to make refinements and updates yourself to whatever you wish: the buttons, text, content, photos, and every other element of the website.
We set up the website for you, including doing both backend and frontend work. At that point, all you have to do is to edit the text on your website, upload photos, etc. We send you a very detailed instructional video showing you how to do this, including some great resources for where to find high quality free photos you can use.
Nope, there’s no rush.
You’ll be able to update/change the content on your website whenever you like. We’ll show you how to upload and change content so that you can do it at at your own pace once your website is ready. It’s quite easy, and you’ll need no knowledge of coding.
We provide website support for the duration of period that you decide to host and maintain your website with us. This support includes helping you to ensure that your website is always functioning properly. However, it doesn’t include doing additional development or changes to your website after it is already launched. Usually most clients can make basic text or image changes, including even creating new pages on their own. However, if you wish to use our services to make additional changes or add new features to your website, you may contact us and we’ll give you a quote for what you require.