In our daily travels across the web we've come across one of our competitors who are prepared to lease websites to their clients.

On the face of it the concept of ?website leasing? sounds a good idea.

From the client's point of view it means they get a large, complex and potentially costly website for their business for a small monthly fee without the outlay of a large amount of capital. This is great if your cash flow is tight or if you're a new start-up with a limited budget. As such we can understand why the idea might sound attractive to some companies.

However, we believe that whilst the ?leasing? concept works fine for commodity capital equipment such as company cars, IT equipment or office furniture; the ?leasing? idea has some inherent flaws as a method funding a web development project.

If you're a business contemplating leasing your next website, here's some food for thought.

The Pitfalls of Leasing

We don't think websites should be treated as commodity items like a car or piece of office furniture either of which you can buy like-for-like from alternative suppliers.

A decent website is a tool for your business that can perform a number of functions such as enhancing your brand, improving customer communications, generating leads or creating direct revenue through online sales.

The needs of each business are individual and as such we believe it's more or less impossible to offer a ?commodity? that fits a bespoke and creative business need.

So that's why websites shouldn't be treated as a commodity.

As for the flaws with website leasing, consider these factors before entering into a lease agreement:

1. Who owns the website either during or at the end of the lease agreement? If the arrangement is like leasing a company car, then the company never owns the car and it is taken back once the lease agreement ends. Would you want to lose your website once it's established?

2. What happens if the website developers leasing your site to you go out of business? Does you website simply die? Think of the added expense and inconvenience this would entail.

3. What happens if you default on your payments or if you ?fall out? with your developers? Would your website be ?withdrawn? costing you further inconvenience and downtime?

4. How flexible is the leasing agreement. If you own your website you are free to use alternative and developers who may be able to offer you additional or improved services that your ?leasing developers? cannot Under a lease agreement you're stuck.

5. How easy or difficult is it to get out of the lease agreement and if so can you take your website with you? The consequences of not being able to do so can be costly.

So in short, we would say; think hard before contemplating the leasing of your website.

If cash is tight, why not consider a small business loan through your bank or even ask your web developers, if like us; they offer some sort of professional fees financing plan. Such arrangements will help you with your cash-flow whilst still allowing you to retain ownership and control of your own website.