In the dynamic world of web creation, businesses are constantly needing to evolve, improve, and expand their areas of expertise. Harnessing the latest technological advancements can offer web creators newer revenue streams, higher-priced services, and more profitable business models. Elementor Cloud Website enables Web Creators to redefine all of the above.

In this edition of our Community Talks event, Elementor’s expert panel discussion focused on the value of Elementor Cloud Website for web creators (whether they are just starting out or running a high-level agency) and how the service can be utilized to add value to their businesses.

What Is Elementor Cloud Website?

A website is often a complex logistical process involving purchasing a domain name, finding an appropriate hosting provider, and connecting it to a powerful website builder. In today’s market, each of these parts is available on its own. Choosing the right service(s) for each of these elements can be a time-consuming and project-defining process.

Elementor Cloud Websites gives web creators the ability to start creating immediately as it comes pre-installed with WordPress CMS, all Elementor Pro features, Hello Theme, and built-in hosting. By taking care of the technical details, Elementor allows web creators to concentrate on adding their own personal touch and launch pixel-perfect websites.

The all-in-one solution was built to work at scale as it harnesses the power of Kubernetes. This enables every Elementor Cloud Website to scale quickly and reliably no matter how much traffic it receives. Due to the open-source technology that Kubernetes is known for, Elementor Cloud Website is able to scale hosting both fast and reliably regardless of how many visitors the website attracts, whether it draws 10, 100, 10,000, or 100,000.

In addition to being built-in with free SSL from Cloudflare, the service fulfills the highest security requirements and certifications in the industry. You can also use your own certificate if needed.

The Elementor Cloud Website is hosted on the Google Cloud Platform and includes many of its renowned features. Furthermore, every Elementor Cloud Website is backed up automatically every 24 hours.

Elementor Cloud Website is the ultimate WordPress end-to-end website solution, offering web creators Elementor’s multi-award-winning website builder and world-class built-in cloud hosting for an annual fixed price of $US99. The service also enables new and exciting revenue opportunities for web creation agencies and businesses.

So we got together four leading Web Creators from around the world to reveal practical tips, personal experiences, and top tips on how Elementor Cloud Website can help grow businesses in a special virtual discussion.

Meet the Panel

Jeffrey Dalrymple

Jeffrey is a web designer and the founder of Lytbox, a design studio that creates bespoke websites for lifestyle and health brands. The Lytbox team consists of both remote and in-house teams of front-end developers, back-end web app developers, designers, and project management. The core value and tagline for Lytbox are Design, Development, (and the most important) – Dedication. Lytbox likes to take its partners from the brand and strategy phase to the finish line of having a sustainable and profitable online shop.

“I run a design studio and am a huge fan of Elementor. This is a topic that I’m excited about that actually helped me build a company, and that is adding multiple revenues or extra revenue sources, multiple revenue streams versus just building websites for clients. How as web creators, we could add extra multiple streams of revenue, earn that extra income, the ways that we could do that, and how Elementor Cloud’s hosting could play a role in that.”

Imran Siddiq

After surviving a brain tumor in 1999, Imran started ticking off goals to achieve and being proud of his creativity. With vast experience, BATS Web Design Agency was set up as well as platforms to support anyone that wanted to learn. And from that moment he decided to use Elementor Pro. Sharing is his ethos, and he can be approached for guidance and support. Imran’s a UK-based geek, a nerd, an adoptive father, a tinkerer, and a promoter of anything that makes him smile.

“I’m like a virus that you’ll always see infecting your timelines with videos and helping people out on Elementor. I love Elementor, for those who don’t know, I run a web design agency. We focus on consultants and businesses with niches to get the best out of their websites, for their clients and their businesses of course. But we love Elementor. Great to be part of this group and I’m very happy with Elementor Cloud Website.”

Tony Baker

After training as an IT professional over 20 years ago in Northern Ireland, Tony worked in an operational management capacity before moving into the world of IT recruitment in 2009 and along that journey rekindled his love for software design and development by creating a business, Ava Design in 2017 which has now grown and rebranded into a full-service digital solutions provider, Tecology Consulting Group.

“My work with Tecology is very much my primary passion in life after my family. I genuinely love what I do. I have worked with international not-for-profits, charities, various universities, and select private sector enterprises developing software and digital solutions, many of these solutions are unique to their respective industries and markets. I am also one of the co-founders of a UK-based Charity, humans of code. Please feel free to visit, drop me a line, and say hi!”

Andrea Morgado

Andrea is a digital marketer, designer, and web designer who has worked in the industry for over 15 years. She absolutely loves connecting with and working with people all over the world. She is driven by her love of design and anything that pushes for creative inspiration. In short, her business is all about helping people bring their visions to life.

“My mission is to help clients generate leads, grow their brand online, and grow a following the right way by reaching a wider audience. My role is simple; I am here to solve any marketing challenges your business is currently facing and track all growth success. In short, my business is all about building yours.”

How Web Creators Can Earn More by Hosting for the Clients

“Well, one of the things we try to implement with our clients is getting them on board with maintenance programs,” reveals Imran. “Getting them to appreciate that just because the website is built, it’s out there, that’s not the end of the story. And this forms part of the education process right at the start with regards to how you are building it, what plugins are you using, and what licenses are there. All the things they need to enhance work on as time goes on.”

Although Web Creators don’t want to come across as tying clients into a maintenance program, you can always advise clients that it works out better this way. Explain that even if they don’t take this up now, they could come back next week or next month or whenever, you’ll be here for you. But there may be a different pricing model or strategy in place that they will have to pay, yet they can help themselves out by having you on a retainer for six months, one year, however, you want to do it.

“It’s educating them to understand that just because you’ve got your website built and it’s working, don’t assume that’s how it’s going to be going forwards,” insists Imran.

“We know what’s best for the client and how to really steer them in the right direction and save them a whole lot of money, time and stress in the long run because the reality is a client that goes with a bad hosting service or hosting that isn’t good for them or for their website is going to experience loss financially and timewise in some way,” adds Jeffrey.

How To Price for Hosting in Monthly Maintenance Plans

“For myself and probably a lot of other agency owners, your monthly recurring revenue (MRR) is the starting point every month so it’s very much the lifeblood of a business,” admits Tony. “Google Cloud has proven to work really, really good and I think it’s great that it’s been bundled in with Elementor now as well. It opens another gateway to recurrent revenue too, not just the agency providing the hosting.”

Web Creators can also turn around and offer a 12-month program where you’re providing the maintenance, while the client manages the hosting. You can then develop a parallel package for clients who do want the logistics of hosting. “Elementor Cloud Website fills this gap really, really well,” declares Tony.

“If you start to explain to clients about bandwidth and cloud space, they just look at you like you’re speaking Chinese,” quips Andrea. “There’s no point. So I instead say, ‘Well, if you walk into a mall and it’s Christmas and everybody’s got their blingy shop windows, your store is your shop window. So if you want the decorations to keep changing every time it’s going from Christmas to Valentine’s Day, you want it to be seamless and simple, and you always want it to be cutting-edge and people are walking into your store, then Elementor is something you need to make that happen.’”

Many times clients may even fail on their repayments or they’ll forget to update their payment details and then they’ll come to you one month later and ask why after they did an update that half the things on their website don’t work. Andrea shares, “With Elementor Cloud Website, it basically becomes a really, really easy presentation for clients because you come to them and you say, ‘You need hosting? I will sort everything out.’ I will offer you a maintenance plan. You don’t have to worry about a thing, leave it in my hands and it’s all systems go. So for me, it’s a no-brainer.”

Jeffrey confirms, “Having maintenance plans, running MRR means it’s important to have our own hosting. Host your own clients but then charge them on top of it and add that extra to us. So instead of charging 20 bucks for maintenance, charge 100, 150, and since we’re providing hosting, that’s a powerful tool right there. So maintenance is good.”

From a client’s perspective, they just want to know that it works. Most are not interested in the technicalities. “I think the onus is on us to turn around and decide which products we want to use, how we can monetize them well, and just make sure that we’re using the services to the best of their advantage,” states Tony.

“I feel like we’re often taking money off the plate,” reiterates Jeffrey. “We’re doing a lot of free work and have it, even if it’s for high volume sites, even if they’re the lower-paying sites there, but getting high volume clients, you’re in a really good space to earn a lot of these extra additional incomes because even if you’re earning 20, 50 or even $100 for each one extra, think about how that adds up.”

The Importance of Setting Up Future Business Costs Early

If you start by giving clients transparency of what the breakdown of the prices are, how much it’s going to cost, what you can do for them, or where you might need to outsource and get extra help, you can build up a trust model right then and there. “Clients often trust you a little bit more because you’re saying to them, ‘Hey, it’s going to cost more money. I can’t lie about that.’ emphasizes Imran. “But we’re not asking for that right now. And when your business grows, we are here to help you grow your business to get to that level.”

Although clients could easily search for Elementor Cloud and see that it’s $99 annually, they have to remember, it’s your time to set up. It’s your time to manage the plugins. It’s your time building it and maintaining all of these things and even research. Your client says might want a hotel booking website. You’ll have a few plugins in mind but they might want something completely different. “You might spend the next 12 hours of your life with a bag of fish and chips in one hand, your laptop in the other, looking through loads of plugins to work out what’s the best one to use,” comments Imran. “So they’ve got to pay and respect your time. So it’s okay to price it up. You don’t stick to just $99. It’s okay to add in the price and if the client goes, ‘Well, it’s only $99. What am I paying you for?’ They’re paying for your time. And if they don’t like it, they can go do it themselves.”

Remind clients they are getting a person. They aren’t investing in a messenger bot or someone halfway around the world who they’ll never physically hear or see. They are investing in you. As a result, you will be their point of contact including whatever help they need to make sure things are okay. Imran recounts, “Just going to say look, 10 years ago people would not pay twice the price of a cheeseburger if they had to get it delivered, but now you want to order if you don’t mind paying twice if it comes to your front door. That’s the gig economy. That’s the way the world is now.”

“It’s just putting everything in one place,” continues Andrea. “It’s making sure clients get Elementor, and it’s all in one place. It’s all in one price. It’s one package. Even if they’re paying pro, and you say, ‘Well, pro’s included in your monthly fee,’ then they don’t have that, ‘Oh, I’m just forking out money for…’ But then they think, ‘Okay. All right, I’ll try this for a few months.’ And then you say, ‘Look, you’re stuck. Whatever you do at six months minimum, your fees are paid and you’ve lost nothing.’ And clients have tried it out if they didn’t like it you can take their side down and you still have six months or not. So there’s nothing to stop even people who are new in the industry. And the idea is that people get excited.”

Price for Your Knowledge and Expertise

A lot of agency owners and developers tend to bundle hosting and maintenance plans together, but they don’t have to. “There’s no reason why you can’t turn around and promote Elementor Cloud, explain what it is and explain explicitly your function and about your knowledge and the support,” implores Tony. “But you’re helping reduce the barriers a bit because you’ve got that online support specific to Elementor and Google cloud, that is absolutely worth its weight in gold. You’re not going to get that anywhere else. That alone is worth 100 bucks a year if not more. And bearing in mind the amount of hosting providers, their biggest upsell is their customer service.”

The key is to package your service in the right way for the right customers which are determined on a volume basis with websites. Since the barrier to use is low, you can go on, to get a user to set up their Elementor Cloud Website by paying $99 a year. They’ve got their Elementor Pro, they’ve got their cloud hosting, and are ready to go. “All that rigmarole you go through with another hosting provider is gone,” assures Tony.

Many Web Creators provide managed services to clients for emails and productivity tools. They know what those things cost them, so it’s important to charge them a fee per user per month on top of that for the facility, IT support, backups, etc. Remember, clients are paying for your knowledge.

“People need to get past that barrier where they think, ‘Oh, it costs me $99 a year, I can’t charge more for it,’” insists Tony. “Look to increase it year on year. Your experience is increasing year on year. That’s worth the money. And if you want your business to be sustainable in the long term, you don’t really have any other choice. That’s just the way the market is going. We are in a subscription-based economy now. The same goes for the various cloud solutions you have, whether it’s iCloud or 365 or whatever. You pay them because it’s scalable, you can control it, you can cancel it if you’re feeling a bit short, and it works as a good model. This is exactly the same.”

“What I want to be able to offer my clients is you pay me this and you get everything you need,” relates Andrea. “So you’re buying it at X, you’re selling it at Y. But you’re telling them, ‘You can go in, here’s your password. Everything’s installed. Knock yourself out. You don’t have to worry about it. If you have any questions, there’s a chatbox. If you want me to serve you, I’m going to charge you extra on top of the fee to build the site. And if you want to go in and change things once I’m done, I’ll save the pages as templates or whatever it is. So if you completely break it or swap the page over and everything will be fine. So for me, it’s such a comfortable sell.”

Even in the event somebody goes online and searches for Elementor Cloud Website and sees its price, it’s irrelevant since you are still offering them your expertise that comes along with it. Clients should understand it’s not just about them purchasing hosting. They come to you because you are the professional, you know what you’re doing. And if there’s a problem, you’re the one who’s ultimately going to have to step in and try to help fix it. So they’re paying for you as well as the service. Even if it only takes half an hour of a month, it’s still your time. So you have to value yourself.

A Growing Platform Benefiting Each Participant

People want to join a platform where there are many others to transact with. As a platform grows, its value and “pull” increase. Metcalfe’s Law states that a good or service increases in value exponentially as more people use it. Once a platform hits a critical mass of users, the value offered outweighs the costs of joining, and a network effect is created. Unlike software, a platform is only limited by the resources, decisions, and imaginations of its contributors, which in a global economy, is endless. 

While the development of the web creation industry is still relatively young, this also makes one of the biggest benefits the lack of barriers to entry. It means an indirect saving for web creators is the fact more creatives have started investing time to learn tools such as Elementor. Many of these professionals will likely end up as colleagues. Businesses might hire them. Tony recalls, “One of the things that I’ve genuinely found over the years with creatives, infrastructure and servers and all that sort of stuff, that’s almost one specialism in itself, but it’s not really that much related to creatives.”

“I just hate to think of how many creatives out there have walked away from the industry because they’ve struggled with servers and those silly 2:00 AM calls to hosting providers and all this stuff then going, ‘Man, this isn’t worth it,’” laments Tony. “I hope those people if they’re out there will maybe reconsider using tools like Elementor and understand that a lot of those barriers are gone. Hopefully, they’ll come and work with guys like us and we’ll grow our businesses as their business grows even bigger.”

The Elementor Cloud Website is a part of this thriving product economy. The platform has revolutionized not only the WordPress ecosystem but also the internet. As Elementor approaches this critical mass, its long-term viability is evident. There are millions flocking to it, creating services that elevate it, and making a living off of it. It’s a collective brand, exemplified by all participants.

“There’s more than enough work for everybody out there,” concludes Andrea. No one is in direct competition as to how one person works is not necessarily the way other people will work, but working together brings much more value for people who do work with Elementor Cloud Website. “Elementor for now, I’m sold on it. I will never look back. For me, it’s all systems go.”

New Revenue Opportunities, Higher Income Streams

Elementor Cloud Website gives Web Creators a streamlined service including WordPress maintenance that has hosting built into the package. This provides a solid option for entry barriers and new creatives.

The service also offers opportunities to upsell clients with new package options. Covering costs for hosting on top of your service, increases your cash flow, making for easy resales and enabling Web Creators an extra revenue for each project.

Elementor Cloud Website’s fixed annual price of US$99 also means Web Creators have an all-inclusive price that’s far below the industry average giving them more pricing profitability due to the costs saved.