faithHighway’s overall cost for designing a site. For a simple design with a fairly static homepage, the total development costs were nearly $3,000. Everything they do is “extra” or at additional cost. We had a flash homepage image rotator and it cost $650 just for that! I don’t even think that the company themselves can tell me that it wasn’t a fixed module that they took 15 minutes to enable on our site.

Secondly, their hosting costs. They charge per page and for every other thing. We had static pages that we were being charged per page for that weren’t updated by the company. So, what WERE we paying for exactly…? I don’t know of any modern web company that charges this way. Our hosting cost per year was upwards of $1,000. This included our static website and their SermonConnect manager.

Third, Laura of fH says above “Our process requires a client to approve the graphics on their site before we let the site go live, so that we can rest knowing you are happy with your graphics.” faithHighway provides a graphics package for you with individual JPEG images that show the layout. While the layout may look modern from a simple image, my guess is that’s not the complaint. The complaint is that there is NO modern content management system for updating the site. Each page is static HTML using a WYSIWYG Editor that does a poor job of producing an accurate representation of the content. Rather than using a modern CMS like Drupal, Joomla!, or WordPress, fH uses their own proprietary system that is not easy to use nor as robust as modern CMS’s.

In short, I would not recommend fH to others. We absorbed the cost of our site with them and have moved on. We now host our own website using WordPress and are much happier. I hope that this site can be used as a resource. I encourage all to do their research and shop around. Pick a company based on knowledge not a flashy site or reviews you read here or elsewhere. Only YOU know what is right for your specific church.

I just want to point out a few inconsistencies with some of your statements and how we do business.

1. We do not charge late fees and have never charged late fees in the 11 years we’ve been in business. To say this, is completely inaccurate.

2. The real issue was that your account had been delinquent for over 120 days and was sent to a collections agency. Because of this, we had to deactivate your site because we were not being paid for the services you were receiving. You canceled your services with us in October and were sent a prorated invoice for the time your site was live on our servers up to the point of cancellation. This is a normal business practice for any organization.
3. The graphics that you mention being “behind the times” were approved by you before the site ever went live. Our process requires a client to approve the graphics on their site before we let the site go live, so that we can rest knowing you are happy with your graphics.

If you have other issues you would like to discuss, we are more than happy to discuss them with you. However, please email us at feedback@faithhighway.com, so that we can respond appropriately.

Our very expensive “custom” website looked horrible and was a decade “behind the times”. Just to change or upgrade our site it would have cost us well over $1,000. Our fees were almost $200/month.

We now have a trendy and excellent website thanks to cloversites.com. It is everything we need and after an initial set-up fee only costs $20/month.

I would strongly suggest churches use a different road than the one offered by faithHighway.

Justin, I know someone who works there and told me about you…saw that you apologized for your remarks to them and now this. Discredits you bud.