Website as a Service: What Is WaaS?

Websites are living, breathing things that need constant care and attention – like plants, but you don’t have to be green-fingered to take care of them. Let’s face it: your website will never be complete. It’s always changing, evolving, and adapting, so it’s not a static entity. Fortunately! That’s especially true when considering its efficiency. That’s where Website as a Service (WaaS) comes into the picture. The model is similar to Software as a Service (SaaS), in which a third-party provider hosts software applications and provides them to customers over the Internet.

In the same way, Website as a Service (WaaS) is a monthly fee that includes design, development, hosting, maintenance, and updates a website needs, for example, a website for a home health service. Here are several reasons why your website would benefit from WaaS if you are running a residential care facility.

All of the features you need to establish (and maintain) a professional web presence can be found in one package. Your only cost will be a small setup fee, whose amount will depend on the size and complexity of your website. Afterward, you simply have to pay a monthly fee for a specified period.

Let’s define the model

You may know about SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS, but what is WaaS? The acronym WaaS stands for Wide Area Augmentation System, which you can learn more about on Google. But that’s not what we’re talking about today.

We are discussing Website as a Service (WaaS). This is a relatively new concept that emerged out of necessity.

The term Website as a Service (WaaS) describes a way of managing a website, as part of a package deal, where technical updates are handled by someone else. They provide low setup and monthly fees, rather than a one-time fee, for website design, hosting, security, updates, and customer support.

What are the Benefits of WaaS?

There are several benefits of WaaS. Let us go through them one at a time.

1. Low Initial Setup Cost

In most cases, a medium or small website will cost you between $3,000 and $5,000 as a one-time development fee. Depending on the complexity and features of the website, the price could go up.

Typical WaaS setup costs are in the range of $600 to $1000, or a little more.

In the following month, there will be a fee ranging between $100 and $600. The monthly fee is determined by the number of requests that the client submits. Requests can include:

•     A new feature.
•     Integration of third-party services.
•     Addition of e-commerce.
•     Creating a custom image gallery, or just about anything that the client needs.

More requests, more price. The more complex the website and the more difficult the features and integrations, the more expensive it is!

2. Continuous Design Improvements

An attractive design today could be outdated and irrelevant six months from now. Those are not assumptions. That’s the trend. Things happen.

Every now and then, designers come up with elegant modern designs. Your business will look outdated if you fail to keep pace with those changes. That’s a risk you shouldn’t take.

It’s also vital that your website’s design evolves over time. You don’t need to, and you shouldn’t change your website design every now and then. It isn’t good for your business.

The good news is that you can always make subtle changes that have a big impact! You have that option with WAAS. When you ask for such changes, the team will make them for you. Even a modern design can be provided if you so request.

3. No Breaking

Backend technology is always evolving. The way you embed videos on YouTube, for example, may change. Your website’s images can disappear if an outdated feature of a browser is deprecated.

It is common to find new protocols and new integrations in the technology world. The introduction of anything new can easily clash with the current structure of your website. In that case, it might break.

Fortunately, WaaS can help. Count on your website’s team to make technical adjustments to prevent it from breaking down. It looks unprofessional if your website breaks down.

4. Optimization

Nerds can find it challenging to speed up a website and optimize it for user experience. That’s where WaaS comes in. Technical knowledge enables providers to implement such optimizations quickly.

5. Integration of New Technology

Let me illustrate this with an example or two. Let’s say you have Font Awesome icons on your website. It’s possible the company will stop supporting older versions of Font Awesome once the latest version of Font Awesome is released.

The browsers will automatically update, but unless you update your website, you will see nasty little boxes instead of beautiful icons. To avoid this, you should integrate the latest version from Adobe. You might need technical assistance if that is not your forte.

WaaS providers will handle these issues.

Similarly, if your website is built using PHP, you must update your website to support newer PHP versions. In the case of integrations with third parties that use the latest version of PHP, this is especially important. In the absence of updating your website and integrating the latest PHP version, these third-party integrations will not work.

A Web as a Service provider ensures that nothing like that happens and makes quick modifications to your website if new versions of technologies are needed to perform well.

6. Legal Compliance

Providers of WaaS also ensure that the websites they create comply with legal requirements. Especially with GDPR on the horizon, legal compliance is a concern. However, ignoring MAR is not an option.

Providers of Waas take care of cookie policies, collect general meeting archives, and make websites MAR and GDPR compliant.

7. Security

It would be foolish to assume that your website will not be hacked or infected with malware, among other things.

To thwart online threats, every website in this world needs security measures. By implementing various security measures like firewalls, bot protection, DDoS protection, etc. Security measures are extremely complicated but extremely important.

You don’t need to worry about those things since they are handled by cloud providers.

8. More Time for Content & Marketing

Utilizing a WaaS provider if you handle your own content and marketing can help you have more time to focus on it.

Additionally, because you will not have to spend a lot on development, you can devote more money to content creation and marketing, which will improve the performance of your website.

9. On-going Maintenance

Things can go wrong when it comes to technology. Things can escalate very quickly. There are times when certain problems are not even related to your website or server. The problems might be caused by third-party integrations such as CDNs, image processors, email marketing, and so on.

Conclusion

Despite being a relatively new concept, WaaS is gaining popularity slowly. The number of small and medium businesses using SaaS providers is increasing to minimize development costs.

Using a WaaS provider instead of paying a one-time price makes a lot more sense if you have a tight budget. Furthermore, you get to turn over the technical aspects of your business to experts who can handle them.