Maybe you’ve just started your firm and are looking to build your first website, or maybe you’re fed up with your old website provider and are researching better options. Whatever your situation may be, we get it: there are many options to choose from when deciding which platform to use.
Deciding which platform is right for you and your firm can be very overwhelming, especially when there are so many different factors to consider.
In the past, we’ve been asked to compare the Twenty Over Ten platform to WordPress, so we decided to do just that! The differences between Twenty Over Ten and WordPress are pretty significant so we’ve broken this article down into five different categories: budget, security, compliance, maintenance and availability.
1. Budget
Your budget is an important initial consideration when it comes to deciding which website platform to use. It can be an expensive endeavor to create a well-designed and accessible website for your financial planning firm. It’s important to find the right balance between creating a quality website that fits your needs while also sticking to a realistic budget.
When built on WordPress, a custom business website can cost on average between $5,000 – $15,000 for professional design and development. This doesn’t include hosting, which could cost an additional $10-$30 per month on average. Maintaining the site will also require you to have someone help keep it up to date. This is especially important with WordPress where security breaches can become a potential issue if the platform isn’t updated. Hiring a WordPress developer to help is a good solution, but it’s important to consider the time to find the right developer as well as the cost of hiring one.
Twenty Over Ten was created with a very specific client in mind – financial advisors
Digital marketing is continuously changing. Your website needs to continuously evolve as well in order to keep up with the quick pace of technology. Twenty Over Ten was created with a very specific client in mind – financial advisors. Our platform aims to give you tailored design, content and structure at an affordable up-front cost. Additionally, our costs include your hosting, premium support, website archiving for compliance, unlimited file storage and personal access to your dashboard.
With Twenty Over Ten’s Website Engine platform, it’s also easy to integrate any third-party services you may already be using, making it a more comprehensive cost. Twenty Over Ten offers annual and monthly pricing. And with our premium add-ons, you also have the opportunity to add on logo design, SEO and two copywriting options; one for new copy, and one to edit current copy.
Check out our onboarding package below, and visit our pricing page to learn more!
2. Security
Having a secure website is extremely important, especially in the financial services industry. Unfortunately, because WordPress is such a popular platform, security issues have become an increasing issue for its users. When using WordPress, in order for your website to remain completely secure, you have to make sure to constantly update the software to ward against things like cross-site scripting and malware. Not only can this cost you additional time and money, but it can also affect your visitors’ and clients’ experience, and can even affect your website’s SEO.
At Twenty Over Ten, we firmly believe that security and SEO are our responsibility to all of our clients. That’s why we provide all users with free SSL certificates. Additionally, all Twenty Over Ten clients receive unlimited industry-leading support at no extra cost. With WordPress on the other hand, you will be left to fend for yourself or pay out of pocket for additional support. Through our support channel, users can find articles, tutorials, and videos about common questions or concerns. Twenty Over Ten users have immediate access to our support team and designers for questions and emergencies. Learn more about the importance of SSL certificates for your financial advising website.
3. Compliance
When it comes to having an online presence as a financial advisor, compliance is an incredibly important factor when choosing a website provider. As a financial advisor, all of your website and marketing content must be archived and monitored and there are rules and regulations about what you can and cannot say on your site. If you work with a compliance officer, you will want to make sure your platform provides organized records and access to any changes you have made.
WordPress’ Security Archive Log is an add-on or plugin, meaning it requires additional training, costs and maintenance. Ranging from $59-$399, this feature is an additional cost to building your site. Other options include using outside sources to archive your site, but these can also be difficult to use and expensive.
Twenty Over Ten’s archiving feature is automatically included when you build your website with us. This feature records any website updates that go live, including multiple versions of your website archive. Simple screenshots are no longer enough, which is why we provide permanent, private versions of your website’s URLs. This ensures that, should you run into a problem, you will have any needed information readily available.
At Twenty Over Ten, security and regulatory compliance are of the highest priority for our clients. Our data center is managed and run by Amazon Web Services and we employ a number of safeguards and best practices to ensure the highest level of security and operational practices that go beyond the regulatory requirements. Learn more about our security and regulatory practices.
4. Maintenance
As a financial advisor, your schedule is hectic enough. You shouldn’t have to worry about maintaining your website. WordPress is constantly updating its platform to improve security and fix bugs. This is great but also means your site will need to be updated as well.
The issue arises when your site is using a custom WordPress theme and/or using plugins. If your themes and plugins are not updated by your developer you risk the performance of your site. It’s important on a platform like WordPress that you place a layer of importance on maintaining your website, which takes time.
Twenty Over Ten’s intuitive content management system (CMS) provides advisors with the tools necessary to update and manage content without having to learn a bit of code. With features such as our inline editor, unlimited landing pages, SEO tools, and expanded blogging capabilities, your website can be easily maintained by you or any member of your marketing team.
That’s not all – with Twenty Over Ten, all necessary maintenance updates are executed by our team of developers and are automatically deployed on users’ sites. With us, you’ll never have to lift a finger.
If you’re ready to establish yourself online or are simply looking for other options, let Twenty Over Ten be your guide. Whether your primary goal is generating new leads, nurturing existing clients, better establishing your firm’s digital footprint, or simply refreshing your website with a beautiful look-and-feel by award-winning designers, we have a platform and a team that’s ready to help you!
5. Availability
Hosting a WordPress site may sound simple, just get an inexpensive hosting provider and install WordPress, right? However, it’s important that you take into consideration the availability and scalability of your site.
Twenty Over Ten utilizes fully redundant web servers and a multi-zone environment to ensure that if any individual server becomes unavailable your website is still live. When hosting WordPress yourself, without significant infrastructure costs and technical know-how, there’s limited availability. In many cases a hard drive could die, a data center could go down, the operating system could become corrupt, these would all cause your website to become unavailable to clients and future prospects.
Additionally, as your business grows you’ll need to make a significant investment to ensure your website remains fast at all times, this is something Twenty Over Ten includes by default with a full CDN, enterprise-level DNS and constant monitoring. These are all important factors when establishing your business and it’s why Twenty Over Ten puts this as a top priority by providing it to all of our clients.
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