FAQ's

If you’ve ever had to rely on an outside programmer to get around to updating your site, you are a perfect candidate for a content management system (CMS). A CMS is web-based software that allows individuals to manage their web sites on their own without having to contact a webmaster. If you want to stay current in the search engines, a CMS is a must have by allowing you to show the search engines that your site is updated regularly with new content. A CMS that is intuitive and easy to use will save you valuable time and create a way for you to regularly engage your audience. Backstage provides content management, e-mail marketing, SEO, and e-commerce tools all in one, reducing your learning curve and making it easier to manage everything in one place.

Initially, you will be working with our Creative Director, Justin Murphy, and his assistant David Freeman, to scope out your project and establish your goals. Olaf Ebert, our Art Director, and seasoned designer will present your site’s design concepts to you and ensure your project looks its best. Andy Chandler, our Lead Developer will oversee your site’s programming and personally walk you through how to use it. He also oversees our in-house support team.

Every site is designed and carefully coded by hand. This process typically takes between 4-8 weeks to complete and to release your site to you. Because of Backstage, our process is completed usually between 2-6months sooner than any of our competitors, while providing a higher quality, custom-fit solution.

Each Backstage subscriptions comes with free 24-hr support. If you find a bug in Backstage, we’ll fix it for free. You can call us directly, request help directly from Backstage, or send our support team an e-mail. The team at Backstage is dedicated to answering your questions and providing you with personalized customer service. This is one thing our customers rave about.

If you need a specialized feature for managing your site that you don't see listed on the Backstage CMS features page, we will build it for you! If we think your idea is a good feature that benefits all of our clients, we’ll roll out that feature in a future upgrade, and give you credit for the great idea!

We’ve been in business since 1999, hosting and providing Backstage to hundreds of clients for the last 12 years. We’re not a group of freelance agents working together for the short term, and leaving you out in the cold when things get tough. We have a dedicated in-house design, programming, and support team. While no one can guarantee the future, we have experienced new Backstage subscriber growth year after year and we don’t see that slowing down any time soon. Clients all want the ease of use and integrated feature-set that they can’t find elsewhere. All of our sites are backed up regularly and are transferable in the event you choose to move on.

We often hear customers initially ask the question: “why should I pay for a CMS when there are so many "open source" systems like Wordpress that I can get for free?” While there are some good uses for those systems (ex. a personal site or basic blog), we find that our clients need a lot more built-in functionality, customization and control than what is available in open source systems. The design is often template-based and very limiting, doing little to make your brand visually distinctive from the rest. 
Most clients also don’t have the time, the money, or the technical know-how to have to keep up with the latest security patches, upgrades, and programming work on their own that is required to keep open-source based sites secure and safe from hackers. A live, on-call support team is main differentiator that an open-source product is not able to provide. 

Nope. We make sure that any costs are clearly itemized in our project scope, the document that details out what we are providing. If you add something new to that scope mid-way through the project, we will let you know the cost before we start any work. We always provide a quote that we require to be signed before starting any new work. This protects both you and us from what is often referred to as “hidden costs.”

Word on the street is that we’re pretty close to the prices of similar agencies that provide an “apples to apples” set of comparable features and quality of work. Look closely at each firm’s offerings, since most firms don’t provide the level of design and programming that we do, but offer simply to customize an existing design template and providing cheap programming. A single freelancer can always beat our prices, but you limit yourself to one person’s capabilities and run the risk that he might not be there when you need him. Our Backstage product offers you free support from our dedicated in-house team, free hosting, free automated upgrades, and the security of knowing your site is managed 24hrs a day.

We have one Backstage product, with 4 versions (Lite, Basic, Pro, and Enterprise) that are tiered to meet the needs of any website. We personally consult with each client to determine which Backstage version would be the best fit. We always custom-fit each client’s Backstage to the needs and desired features of your particular website. You can always upgrade or downgrade at any time.

You can always find cheap hosting elsewhere, but we offer a level of service that includes a lot more than just hosting. Free hosting, the CMS license, free live support, and free automated CMS feature upgrades is all factored into our pricing. Most company’s who opt for free or cheap hosting find themselves in a bind, not having a clear contact to call when they need help. With us you get a managed hosting account that is regularly backed up and serviced by two dedicated support teams.

No, there is not a contract and you can pay month to month if you prefer. Most of our clients opt to prepay for a year of service, which always gives them the discounted subscription rate. We cannot offer discounts on month to month subscriptions. If you prepay and decide to cancel later, we always offer refunds on any unused portion of service, minus the current month of service that we are already providing.

We accept cash, checks, Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express and bank debit cards. Putting a debit card or credit card on file with us allows us to start your project immediately without having to wait for your check in the mail.

No training is needed to be able to use Backstage for the first time. We often put new clients behind the wheel of Backstage and within a few seconds, they find the interface familiar (with tools very similar to Microsoft Word®), very intuitive and easy to navigate. We do provide free training when we release your site as well as “how to” training at any time when you call.Video tutorials and handy tips are also built into Backstage.

Yes, we believe that just like a tailored suit, the custom approach always makes you look your best. Unlike most of our competitors, we’ve been building Backstage from the ground up for the last 12 years to give website owners a simple, easy, and powerful way to maintain their websites long term. We personally support over 150 Backstage users including an international airport.

You don’t need to. Backstage is a web-based piece of software that you can access from anywhere and can be launched from your browser (ex. Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.). There is no need to install any special software on your computer, and we set everything up for you.

We offer secure, powerful, speedy, reliable, and personally supported hosting as part of each Backstage subscription. The best part? Our basic 1GB hosting package comes free for all Backstage clients. We host the Backstage application on our servers so that we can provide immediate customer support and give you new upgrades. Our servers are backed up daily and weekly and we have two dedicated support teams ready to respond in an emergency. We also stand by (and have demonstrated) our 99.9% up time guarantee. 


Can I host my website elsewhere? Yes, though doing so would add $20mo. to the cost of any Backstage subscription to cover additional time for setup, rolling out upgrades, and support. We encourage our clients to consider hosting with us to be able to take advantage of free setup, free upgrades, and free support.

Your Backstage dashboard actively monitors how much space you are utilizing for your site. Additional storage space is available for only a few dollars per gigabyte per month.

Yes, we can do all the initial setup and record configuration and then ongoing updates to your domain name. Let us know if you need help with this.

Yes, we can provide e-mail as well. That gives you the convenience of having one company for all your website related needs. Our e-mail services are separated out from the website hosting so that those who already have e-mail services can save that cost.

Yes, in most cases. We will take a look at your site and give you a quote for transferring and integrating your site with Backstage. In nearly every case, Backstage will be able to give you added features and functionality than were available for your former site.

No, we don't give out the source code for Backstage as we want to ensure the security and reliability of our software. The designers and programmers at Your Creative People are experts at marrying beautiful design with our powerful CMS and incorporating any new features that you might need. We offer a reseller program that enables other agencies to resell Backstage. If you are interested, please call us for details.