FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Answers on the FirmWebStudio offer: what is included, revisions, articles, the AI Engine, hosting, domains, moving your current site and billing.
The offer
What exactly do we get for the monthly fee?
A custom-coded website built for the firm's practice areas, partners and offices, managed by us for as long as the plan is active. That includes hosting, a domain, weekly updates, the revisions included in the plan, and researched articles published on a fixed schedule. Nothing is itemised separately; the monthly figure is the whole running cost of the site.
How long until the site is live?
7 days on Practice, 10 on Partnership while the AI Engine is trained on the firm's own content, and 15 on Multi-Partner with the Content Engine set up alongside it. The clock starts at the onboarding call, not at purchase, so the sooner the onboarding form is in, the sooner the site is live.
Is this an accounting service or a website service?
A website service only. We build and manage the firm's website; we are not a CPA firm, accounting firm, or provider of accounting, tax, audit or assurance services, and nothing on the site or written by us is professional advice. The firm's practice stays entirely with the firm.
What happens to the three plans as the firm grows?
Moving from Practice to Partnership or Multi-Partner is a plan change, not a rebuild. The site, pages and history carry over; the new tier's features (the AI Engine, or the AI Engine plus the Content Engine) are added on top of what already exists.
Getting started
What happens right after we sign up?
The onboarding form is filled in and submitted. It asks for the firm's practice areas, partners, offices, brand and where inquiries should land, and takes about 15 minutes. If something is missing, submit anyway: the rest can follow by email or as a ticket in the client portal, and it will not hold up the build. One onboarding call then fills any gaps and confirms the launch date.
What is the client portal?
It is the firm's account with us, created the day the site goes live. Revisions, support tickets, files the firm still owes us, and messages to our team all go through it, so nothing runs through a scattered email thread. Nobody at the firm logs in to the website itself; we handle that side entirely.
Who at the firm should fill in the onboarding form?
Whoever knows the firm's practice areas, partner list and current inquiry process best, often an office manager or a managing partner. One person can complete it alone; the follow-up onboarding call is where any partner-specific detail can be added by whoever is available.
Revisions and the client portal
What counts as a revision?
Any change request submitted through the client portal, with no limit on how much goes into one. A new partner bio, an updated practice area description, a new office page, a colour change: each is one revision. So is something larger. "Add pages for two new partners, here is their information" is one revision, not two. 5 are included every month.
What happens after the included revisions are used?
Each additional revision is a flat $20, with no cap on how many can be purchased and no hourly billing anywhere. Every revision, whatever its size, is completed within 2 to 5 working days. Unused revisions do not roll over to the next month.
How does a firm actually request a change?
Through the client portal: describe the change, attach anything needed, and it lands with the team as a tracked request. A firm can also email us or reply to any thread with our team, and we log it as a revision for tracking.
Articles
What do the researched articles actually cover?
Topics relevant to the firm's practice areas, written to answer questions a prospective client would search, at 2,500 to 3,200 words. Tiers Practice and Partnership include 2 a week; Multi-Partner includes 3 a week.
Are the articles attributed to a specific partner?
Only if the firm wants that. By default articles publish under the site's own editorial byline. If a firm wants an article attributed to a named partner, the firm reviews and approves the piece first, since we are not accountants and will not publish content as professional advice attributed to a named individual without their review.
Can the firm request specific article topics?
Yes. Topic requests are handled the same way as any other revision request, submitted through the client portal, and worked into the publishing schedule.
The AI Engine
What does the AI Engine actually do?
It adds an AI receptionist and site chat that answer routine questions (office hours, what a service covers, how to book a call) at any hour, along with SMS, Messenger and Instagram AI, a call-analysis PDF after each answered call, and A2P 10DLC registration filed on the firm's behalf so text messaging is compliant from day one. It is included from Partnership up.
Can the AI Engine answer accounting or tax questions?
No. It is built to answer routine questions about the firm and the site, and to route anything that reads as a request for accounting, tax or audit advice to a person at the firm. It never gives professional advice on the firm's behalf.
What is the "plus AI usage" line on the middle tier?
Partnership is $297 a month plus the actual usage cost of running the AI systems, billed at what our providers charge, with no markup added on top. It is not a flat add-on fee.
Hosting and management
Is hosting billed separately from the monthly fee?
No. Hosting runs on Cloudflare's global network with SSL, a content delivery network, DDoS protection and unmetered bandwidth, all included in the monthly fee with nothing itemised. There is no hosting invoice, no SSL renewal charge and no bandwidth overage.
What PageSpeed do you guarantee?
90+ PageSpeed on every plan, checked at launch and rechecked with every weekly update, since a slow page loses a referral before it finishes loading.
Who fixes the site if something goes wrong?
We do, as part of the managed plan. Server issues, security patches and uptime monitoring are handled on our side; the firm reports anything unusual through the client portal and it is treated as a priority ticket.
Domains
Do we need to buy a domain separately?
No. One domain is included free for as long as the plan is active, registered in the firm's name, so the firm owns it outright. If the firm already has a domain, we point it at the new site instead and nothing changes for anyone who already knows the current address.
What happens to the domain if the firm ever leaves?
The firm tells us where to send it and we transfer the domain at no charge, since it is registered in the firm's name and belongs to the firm regardless of the hosting arrangement.
Moving from your current site
What happens to our current website when we switch?
We review the current site during onboarding, migrate what is worth keeping (practice area content, partner bios, published articles), and set up redirects from the old URLs to the new ones so search rankings built up over time are not lost when the site changes.
Will our current Google ranking be affected?
Redirects and a faster, better-structured site are built specifically to protect and improve search visibility, not disrupt it. We never claim a specific ranking outcome or timeline; ranking movement depends on many factors outside a website alone.
Billing and cancellation
What do we pay and when?
The monthly fee for the chosen plan is paid up front: $137, $297 plus AI usage, or $747 a month. The $797 one-time build fee is invoiced only after the site is live and the firm has approved it. Domain and hosting are already inside the monthly figure.
How do we cancel, and how much notice is required?
Email us to cancel. The message must reach us at least 2 business days before the next invoice date, during business hours, 9:00 to 17:00 Central Time, Monday to Friday. A message sent outside those hours counts from the start of the next business day, so a weekend email does not give 2 business days of notice for an invoice due Monday or Tuesday. With valid notice, no further invoice is raised and the site runs to the end of the paid month. With late notice, the next invoice is charged as normal and cancellation takes effect at the end of that month.
Are fees refundable?
No. All sales are final, including monthly fees, the build fee, extra revisions and any pass-through cost billed at what our providers charge us. The one exception is a duplicate or incorrect charge caused by our billing: report it within 30 days and it is corrected within 10 working days. The build fee is only charged after the firm has approved the site, which is why it is not refundable afterward.