If you decide to use one of our free design skins, your site is ready as soon as the account is created. It can be accessed through the temporary url assigned, or through your domain name, as soon as you point that to our servers. Then it's your responsibility (with our help if you like) to add the content you want to your site, e.g. articles, blog, news, resources, profiles, products, video, etc. 

If you decide you want a custom designed skin, all the above applies, but you'll fill out a design questionnaire and we'll begin working immediately. Generally it takes about a month, from start to finish, depending on how quick you are to respond during the project. But if you've added the content already, then as soon as the new design is installed, you can go live.

Real, live, knowledgeable humans available via phone or email, whichever you prefer. Our regular support is limited to normal business hours (8am - 5pm, Monday through Friday), but we are also available on off hours for legitimate emergencies via our emergency email to SMS alert system. Our free support is available for training you how to use the CMS Back Office, answering general questions as they arise, troubleshooting problems, responding to and fixing errors or bugs on your site, helping with email issues, and most anything else you need, as it relates to the server, email, CMS or your site in general. We aren't your secretaries, so we won't do your work for you (unless you make arrangements to pay us for that service), but we can show you everything you need to know. In addition to the human support, we provide a slew of online tools for you to use, which include our User Guide, searchable Knowledge Base, FAQ's, Tutorials and Demos. These should help for all the basics if you are the type that likes to figure things out on your own.

If you are using our "Free Lite Version", we're sorry but we don't provide free customer support at this point. But you will have access to all the online support tools mentioned above. 

The subscription fees cover the server and email hosting costs, licensing fees for the CMS and third party software (which power your site), and real human customer service. Really this ends up costing less than your cellphone plan, and it's worth a whole lot more.

Comparatively, independent website hosting would cost about $20/mo for a similar plan. Having someone develop a site with all the functionality we make available to you, would be tens of thousands of dollars, and then you would have to pay thousands of dollars a year ($100+/mo) to maintain it, add functionality, make changes, etc (all of which is easy to do yourself for free using our CMS). Plus if you ever ran into a problem, you would have to hire a developer for about $100/hr to troubleshoot and help you. Whereas by being part of our community, you have free support all the time, and we do the upgrades on your site and make sure things just work. One hour a month of customer support alone, makes the subscription fees worth it. You do get what you pay for, but also by being part of our community the costs of maintaining a highly functional website are shared among all our clients, so that's why it's so cheap.

Even before your custom design is installed (and even before you point a domain to your site) your site is accessible online with one of our free design skins. In order to speed up the process, we do lots of work simultaneously. That means that we need your site active on the server so that we can help you setup the pages you need, and add the content, images and resources to your site, and program any custom functionality you desire, in anticipation of the launch. So after our designers have created a custom design and our installers have built it out on your site, you can go live right away, instead of waiting another month to add the content. Plus our installers can't install the site if there is no account. And they need the menus and pages setup so that they know where to link things. So your subscription fee pays for the server and email hosting, the CMS and third party licensing fees that power your site, as well as the customer support which is available to train you and help you use your CMS, setup email addresses, and all the other administrative interaction you do with us.

It's just like leasing office space. As soon as you sign the contract  you have to start paying rent, utilities, insurance and taxes, even though you may take a month or more, renovating and building out the space to meet your needs, before you open up for business.

You may either burn your images to a CD and mail that to our office, or you may upload the images to a folder on our server, via FTP. Ask us and we'll give you the address and username/password for the FTP server. If these images are for our use in designing, we'll do what we need done. Otherwise, if you just have a lot of images that you want to batch import into your image library, you may do so from the CMS Admin under the Tools section.

The contract is a broad agreement between us, it lays out the details of our working relationship, and describes what is expected of both parties. Then once a relationship is defined, we create individual work statements for each project. The work statement, describes the scope of the project, the specific work to be done, the materials required, as well as the costs and time frame. We like our work statements to be detailed, so that both parties know exactly what they are paying for, and what work will be performed, without confusion. Clear communication is the most important part of any relationship, and we are committed to ensuring that all parties communicate well.

The CMS allows you to easily add content to your website, whether it is just general pages of information, articles, blogs, team profiles, resource files, slideshows, media, etc. It's easy and fast. But there is no automated way to put your old content on your new site. Like anything of quality it takes old fashioned work. But generally you can copy and paste and recreate the content in a few hours. We'll recommend that you try one page, after we've shown you how to use the CMS, so you can see how easy it is. Generally speaking the content of the site, is your responsibility, to add and update as you see fit. We provide a great design and all the tools you need to add and update content, and then you are empowered to populate the site on your own. Of course if you are busy and want us to add the content for you, we'll do that, assuming you provide us with the content you want added. We can write content as well, but in most scenarios the client knows best what to say. There are no shortcuts.

If you have a lot of images or documents or multimedia on your old site, we can discuss ways to batch import all this into your library. That can save a lot of time and give you a head start.

Users of our "Free Lite Version" do not qualify for email hosting. But all other regular members of the CMS community have normal email hosting at their domain. You can have unlimited mailboxes, with unlimited aliases, e.g. mailbox name joesmith@domain.com with aliases for contact@, sales@, etc. All mailboxes come standard with SPAM and Virus Filtering. Email may be accessed through the webmail interface or by downloading mail via POP or IMAP (recommended). And if you wish to manage your own mailboxes we can give you access to the server control panel for that.

Crate Media is first and foremost a design firm, so yes, of course. We are happy to take on any projects you have, be they print, web, or other multimedia. We regularly provide complete branding for our clients, including logos, business cards, letterheads, envelopes, postcards, brochures, annual reports, packaging, etc.

This is the benefit you get by being part of our community, you have preferred access to our team of designers and creative thinkers.

Domain management is actually quite simple in theory, but can turn into a hassle over the long haul. For those clients that want to just forget about the details, we offer domain management services (see pricing chart for latest costs). Essentially we transfer control of the domain into our account, and we make sure that it gets renewed every year, and stays pointing to your website. We also list our contact information for the domain, so you don't get spammed. If you decide to do this yourself, you need to make sure you keep your credit card and contact information updated in your registrar account, year after year, so that they can automatically renew your domain when it expires. Otherwise, you risk losing your domain, which is easy to happen after 5 or more years after you have forgotten about this little detail.