Are Pay Monthly Recruitment Websites Worth It?

When it comes to buying a website for your recruitment agency you’ll typically have two options available. One is pay up front, which is normally 50% on signing the contract with the recruitment web design agency and 50% on final sign off of the website and the other option is the pay monthly model. Both have their advantages and disadvantages so best you know all about them before you make a decision. 

Pay Monthly Website Model

Pay monthly subscriptions have increased in popularity over the years as they tend to show a more stable recurring revenue stream for general and recruitment web design agencies and allow for an easier valuation if the owners are ever looking to sell.

Pay Monthly Recruitment Website Prices

Depending on the complexity of your website, the tech stack it's built with and the provider you choose, pay monthly models can be anything from £90-£550 / month. This price will typically include your annual hosting charges too. Most providers will have a minimum contract period of around 2 years, which is essentially the cost of your website for them, everything after this point is probably going to be pure profit. 

Advantages Of Pay Monthly Recruitment Agency Sites

A great advantage of the pay monthly model is that it’s low cost at the early stages of your recruitment business. If you’re just launching your recruitment agency then this could be a sensible option to keep costs down at the early stages. You could for example sign up with a WordPress website provider who charges you around £1,400 for the first 18 months. You should then be in a position to pay for an upgraded, proper website that really reflects your recruitment business moving into the next stage of your firm. One caveat though, there are a couple of pay monthly recruitment website providers who also, for some strange reason, also charge an upfront build cost of £1,000 - £4,000 too so keep an eye out!

This model typically includes everything you need too, which includes domain registration / renewal, hosting, email service and updates, which is convenient to have it all bundled together. However at Abstraction Labs we also offer to bundle everything together too for one annual fee, which is no more expensive and just as convenient. 

Disadvantages Of Pay Monthly Recruitment Agency Sites

One major disadvantage with pay monthly options is that typically the website isn’t yours at any point in the process. If you decide to move away from your provider then you can’t just migrate the website to another agency so you could spend 5 years paying towards something and have nothing to show for it. If the company decides to shut down, goes into administration or worse yet, goes bankrupt then you’ve just lost the website that you spent thousands on. 

You’ll also typically be locked into a minimum term contract, for around 2+ years which is essentially the cost of your recruitment website to the recruitment design agency. Contracts can be super frustrating if you’re not happy with the website or the service they provide. I think your recruitment CRM would be the only other piece of tech that would lock you into such a long contract. 

Another disadvantage is the amount of money the recruitment website will typically cost over the time you stay with your recruitment website provider. I tend to find that most recruitment agencies change their website once every 4-5 years. So if you’re paying a minimum of £100 per month for a WordPress recruitment site then you’ll end up paying around £6,000 over its lifetime! You could quite easily buy a bespoke recruitment site for the one off price of around £3,000 - £4,500. And if you’re looking at a more complex website such as the sites we make at Abstraction Labs at say £300 per month then that will come to around £18,000! We’d offer that same website at literally a third of that price, probably around £6,000! 

A fair number of pay monthly website providers will also sting you for an initial set up fee, which is typically around £1,000! This is to cover them in case you decide on leaving within 6-12 months. So not only do you pay more money for the site by the end of it's lifetime, you're also paying more in the beginning!

From an accounting perspective as you don’t own the website at any point then your website isn’t classed as an asset, it’s just a liability. Something you have to pay for every single month, like wasting money on rent instead of purchasing a house! 

Not always true but pay monthly recruitment website providers tend to offer template recruitment sites and the quality of their work just doesn’t compare to the bespoke recruitment website providers in the industry. From what I’ve seen the one off fee website developers seem to be putting out better quality work currently. On the note of template websites you need to remember that your website will not be unique and I’ve pitched dozens of recruitment agencies with the exact same website, just slightly different colours. If you do opt for a template website make sure none of your competitors are using the same template! 

I also often see that you're limited by the number of websites pages (20-30) and the number of jobs (50-100) you can post to the site at any one time at some of the subscription tiers, however most providers will also offer a premium tier where you can have unlimited websites pages and post unlimited jobs.

Pay Monthly Provider Options

I would like to add if you’re looking at a template builder website and pay monthly I'd recommend opting for a website from Wix, Squarespace or GoDaddy. You typically won’t have recruitment integrations with this option but that’s a small price to pay and you probably won’t need this if you’re just launching your recruitment business as your website won’t get the traffic levels to make parts of the integration worthwhile. There are a few providers in the recruitment sector who offer something similar but I’d say you’d get a better quality product at a lower price from Wix, Squarespace and GoDaddy. 

One off fee model

One off fee recruitment website providers, like us at Abstraction Labs are a great option if you have the money in your bank account already. From my experience - running my old recruitment agency I would assume that most firms would have a largish buffer available in their business bank accounts anyway for an expenditure like this. In this scenario you’ll typically pay 50% of the total on signing the contract and the remaining 50% when you’re fully happy with your final recruitment website.

We also charge a fee of £200 to cover the cost of hosting, cloud functions, updating your website so it’s fully secure and also a little bit of development work when you need it.

With the one off fee option you have full control over your website and you own the code so at any point, you can migrate your recruitment site to another hosting provider with total ease.

Your website is also classed as a depreciating asset, rather than a liability - which adds to the value of your recruitment business.

This option is always better value in the long term (3+ years). 

Conclusion

In conclusion pay monthly recruitment sites can be a great option if budgets are tight when you’re looking at a website for your agency or if you’re unsure if you’ll still have the business in 12 months' time as they typically require minimal upfront costs. However there are a couple of recruitment specific providers who still require a large lump sum up front. One off fee models are great if you have the money spare to pay for it as you’ll typically spend 50% less and you'll own your website so it’ll be an asset for your recruitment business. 

If you're interested in discussing rough prices for your recruitment website then just get in touch.