Pay As You Go Website Productions (or PAYGWP for short) appears to be a startup design company based in Great Britain. The domain name was registered only a few short months ago and little information is available through a WHOIS lookup (most of the entries are "n/a"). No information is available through the website to tell a potential customer what this company is about.

There are numerous problems with PAYGWP's website from both technical and usability perspectives. First, they make one of the worst mistakes of web design: upon visiting the website, a javascript browser detector rears its ugly head as a popup box saying "IE5 or IE6 detected. This site is functional in IE5 and IE6 however certain design features might not function as intended. PAYGWP recommends using the most recent version of Mozilla Firefox." IMO, any website should function properly regardless of whether I'm using Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Netscape, Opera, or any other browser.

Next, the site has numerous validation errors and is also built using FRAMES. Frames have not been used as a standard in web design for years, and for good reason. I won't go into the technical details. Trust me on this one.

Moving beyond the design itself, the website states the basics: what services are available, how much does it cost, etc. Once you pay your deposit, your identity is verified and you use your ID code to register on the PAYGWP forum. It's through this forum that you tell the designer what you want on your website. It seems odd to me that this overly complicated method of communication is used and there is no phone number or email address anywhere on the PAYGWP site to contact them. Also, the whole "ID Code" seems strange especially since Pay As You Go Website Productions doesn't seem to have many customers... there is only one entry on the Portfolio page.

If you can get past all that and are thinking, "I can live with that as long as it's really cheap," then this may be the company for you. Services are provided at a flat rate of £7.95/hour. That's about $11.25/hour USD.


Update March 9, 2009
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Shortly after posting this review, I received an email from PAYGWP stating that he was disappointed in the review. Obviously we disagree on a number of things. I've offered to post his response here if he would like, which can be found below. If you have any doubts as to my opinions, I encourage you to contact PAYGWP yourself so that you may make your own judgment.


PAYGWP's e-mail response to my review
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Hi Dorinda,

I'm a little disappointed by my review, some things are correct and others I disagree with. I am a freelance designer, PAYGWP is not a company i.e. no employees however I'm glad the site gave you that impression. The javascript, well you said it yourself at the end of the paragraph, "any website should function properly" and the javascript actually says "this site is functional in IE6" or something to that affect. The alert is simply there to inform users that layout and design might not appear as intended, IE5 and IE6 are useless browsers, hardly anyone uses them anymore and I certainly won't let my designs be affected by them. I'd prefer it if you completely remove the paragraph relating to IE5 and IE6, I am contributing towards people using a better browser I would have thought that was obvious.

Validation errors don't mean much but it is something I need to work on, it doesn't mean the code is invalid only that there's a fractionally higher load on the server and we're talking less than 1% for my code, is it really worth mentioning? Frames, please elaborate explain to me your technical reasons? I think you'll find that it's a stereotype, when enough people say something is bad it gathers momentum of it's own accord and becomes stereotype, often without thought or reason. The only problem with frames is search engines, if they don't have links to follow the site cannot get indexed. If links are placed in the body of the frameset the bots can crawl the site and it makes no difference whatsoever. Then there is the problem of having pages indexed which are supposed to appear within a frameset, well javascript handles it. Go here http://www.paygwp.com/Services.htm that page is in my root folder but it cannot be accessed. I bet it took you a while to figure out frames were being used, my design is seamless. Please remove everything related to frames.

"It seems odd to me that this overly complicated method of communication is used and there is no phone number or email address anywhere on the PAYGWP site to contact them. Also, the whole "ID Code" seems strange especially since Pay As You Go Website Productions doesn't seem to have many customers... there is only one entry on the Portfolio page."

Overly complicated? How else can I acquire private information such as FTP, cPanel, passwords etc etc from clients? Email is not secure, at least not as secure as my forum and especially with password protected boards. No email or phone, well the contact form sends an email to me, my reply includes my email address. Phone, no one uses phones for business these days.. too expensive. I have several projects on the go at the moment however you won't be able to see that because the boards aren't available to you and password protected. Yes my site is new and yes I don't have many completed projects but I do have 6 to 10 years experience in web design. Previously completed projects were created as part of a team working for an employer so I cannot claim them as my own. Didn't you find anything you liked?

Your site doesn't have a very high page rank PR2 and your review is damaging to my business and in fact not true at all. Please either make it sound more positive or remove it!


My response to PAYGWP's e-mail
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Hello PAYGWP,
Thank you for your response. It seems we disagree on a number of things. Since you requested the review of your website from the email address marketing@paygwp.com, I'd rather hoped you would be prepared to take my opinion as constructive criticism to help you improve your site and services. That being said, the review *is my opinion* and I stand by every word. You wouldn't expect a software reviewer, secret shopper, or any other type of consumer to rescind their opinion of the value of a product or service just because the company providing it disagrees? Of course, I would be happy to post your response as part of your review so that all visitors can form their own opinions based on your input in addition to my own.

Sincerely,
Dorinda Bohnsack
Dirt Cheap Web Designs
http://www.dirtcheap4u.com


PAYGWP's e-mail reply to my reply
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Even after everything I've said you do not have an answer. You are entitled to an opinion like anyone else. If being rude and ignorant is part of your business I want no part of it, if you won't remove my link yes include my reply.