Have Questions?
We have answers. If these FAQs did not cover your questions, feel free to call us with any additional questions at 310.456.1784.
What do your services cost?
See our “Agency Pricing” page for price ranges on our most typical projects.
How long does a website take to build?
Most website projects are completed in 1-3 months. However, projects with more advanced programming or of a larger size can take 4-6+ months. Due to the custom nature of our work and to maintain our standard of top quality assurance, we can’t guarantee hard deadlines unless a rush surcharge is paid and a client agreement is made to ensure prompt replies with their feedback along the way.
What CMS (content management systems) do you work with for website development?
We have experience working with almost all major CMS systems, including Wordpress (a CMS that we love and highly recommend!), Drupal, Joomla, Magento, Expression Engine, PDG Cart, CMS Builder, and many others. If by chance we don’t know the one your site will require, we’re extremely fast learners and can almost always figure it out.
Are you any good at SEO (search engine optimization) or do you only specialize in website development?
Our agency has been built on SEO and we are experts at optimizing content, meta tags and more to work best with the current search algorithms.
Do you offer printing services for design projects?
Yes, we can help you with any printing need that you have. Not to mention, at the same price or better than most local printers, without sacrificing an amazing print quality.
Are your services done in-house or are they outsourced?
We’re proud to say we have an amazing team of in-house designers for all design projects. Come in and meet them all yourself at our beautiful headquarters in sunny Malibu, California!
Do you have flat rate pricing?
Yes, we do have flat rate pricing that includes a max cap of X amount of hours for a website project. Hours exceeding that are billed at a reduced rate, with ample forewarning given to our clients in the rare case that their project will exceed max cap hours. See our instant quotes for more details on this.
Do you have hourly pricing?
Yes, we charge $135/hr for normal turnarounds for unique projects and requests. If you need something done faster, a rush rate will apply.
Do you offer a warranty and/or customer support with any website you build?
Yes, all websites developed by Vivid Candi include a 30 day warranty starting from the day the website launches live after the client’s approval. This warranty includes additional customer support, minor QA changes (not additional revisions), and support for emergencies (i.e., if your website displays broken code on a major page, a form stops working, etc.). As rare as these things are, we understand it’s in everyone’s best interest to offer some peace of mind with a website investment. After the 30 day warranty has expired, services will be billed at an hourly rate. We also offer monthly webmaster maintenance plans to ensure that your site is always running smoothly.
Do you optimize each website you develop to work on 100% of all browsers?
The truth is, it’s impossible for any website developer to guarantee that a website will be 100% compatible with all web browsers due to the overwhelming number of browser types, computer types, device types, etc. The best practice in the industry, which Vivid Candi uses with good reason, is to ensure that each website is compatible with the majority of modern browsers and devices. We will optimize your site for the latest modern browsers, which currently include Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer 8, Internet Explorer 9, etc. For example, we no longer optimize for Internet Explorer 7 unless the client specifically requested and was additionally billed for this service, since this version is now considered “dead” by industry standards. To put this into perspective, Internet Explorer had 3.6% of the global market share as of November 2011.
Do you offer phased website launches and soft launches?
Yes, we offer phased website launches, also known as soft launches, for clients who would rather not wait until their site is 100% complete to launch. In this scenario, we will launch your site with a limited beta version, then a 1.0 version, 2.0 version, and so on and so forth. This will all be up to the client’s discretion as they approve sections of their website to be launched. This is ideal for projects with a large scope of work that may take an overall 6-12 months to complete.
Are there any hosting companies you do or don’t highly recommend?
Yes and yes! We highly recommend that clients host with our own hosting service or Rackspace, also a topnotch solution. With better hosting service, our team will have greater control and be able to expedite the launch of your website. Not to mention, it’s likely that your site will run 5-10x faster than monster hosting companies. These are services that we highly don’t recommend. In fact, we specifically recommend against GoDaddy, Network Solutions, Yahoo, and Media Temple. All of these may sound like major national companies that should be a reliable service — we agree that they are large and well-marketed companies, but know from our expertise that that means that your server will be shared with up to 500 other websites vs. sharing with 50 other sites maximum on one of our host servers. Sharing a server with too many sites bogs your site down and slows page loads drastically, which increases your bounce rate, or the rate at which people leave your site. They are intended to host amateur static html sites and are not equipped to properly host power dynamic Wordpress or other CMS driven websites. To boot, these big hosting companies are notoriously known to make global changes that could possibly even break the programming of your website. We’ve seen this happen many times, where a site that ran perfectly six months ago and has not been touched suddenly displays php render errors, memory allocation errors, etc. Then to make matters worse, clients must call their hosting support, which is typically a team of off-shored representatives who do not greatly understand the technicalities of web hosting. The majority of times, they will reply to their clients and place responsibility on them due to a change that they made to their site. If you want reliable service, hosting support, and a smooth launch for your website, we highly advise against big hosting companies.
