Glossary

The software a web shop builds and maintains client sites on, plus whatever it gives them for running the business around those sites.

How many paying clients leave in a period, which quietly decides whether your monthly income grows at all.

Giving a client their website in a form they can actually take to somebody else.

Downloading a site built on a hosted platform as files, which is rarely the same thing as a site that still works.

A content system that keeps pages in ordinary files on the server instead of in a database.

A content system that stores the words and hands them to anything that asks, without deciding how the page looks.

Paying somebody to run the server so updates, backups and security are their job rather than yours.

The money that arrives every month without you finishing a new project to earn it.

Looking after many client sites at once without the work growing in step with the client count.

Selling a fixed thing at a fixed price instead of quoting every job from scratch.

The gap between what a shop pays a platform wholesale and what it charges the client for the same thing.

A fixed monthly fee for ongoing attention to a website, rather than a price for one specific job.

A project quietly growing past what you agreed to, one small favour at a time.

A written promise about how fast you will respond and what you will fix, so neither side is guessing.

A private copy of a client website where you break things before the real one is involved.

A description of what a page is about, written into the page in a form search engines and AI can read directly.

The point where leaving a platform costs more than staying on one you have stopped liking.

Software built by one company and sold under another company name, so the client believes it belongs to the shop they hired.