An honest comparison — credit to the templates included

The Real Math on Storage Websites: Rented Template vs. Owned

I own seven storage facilities in Minnesota and Wisconsin. I've paid for the rented website. I've paid the marketing guy. Then I learned to build it myself — and this is the comparison I wish someone had shown me first.

A software-company website is a rented apartment: decent walls, you can't renovate, and the rent never ends. An owned website is a house — built once, keys handed to you, and your only bill forever is about $12 a year for the address.

What the rented website does well — credit where due

The template sites from the big storage-software companies (StorEdge, Storable, SiteLink and similar) get three real things right:

It exists by Friday. Fill out a form, get a website. No decisions, no builder to find.
Rentals are wired in. Unit inventory, online move-ins, and payments connect natively, because the website and the management software are the same company.
Someone else worries about it. Hosting, security, and updates are handled, and there's a support line to call.

If those three things were the whole story, I'd tell you to keep the template. They're not.

What it actually costs you

	Rented (template) website	Owned website
What you pay	$100–$300 every month, forever	Built once; then ~$12/yr for your domain
10-year total	$12,000 – $36,000	Build cost + about $120
Who owns it	The software company. Stop paying and the site vanishes the same day.	You. The code, the domain, the hosting account — all in your name.
Google ceiling	Low and locked: no schema code, no pages for the towns around you, no size guide with your real measurements. You can edit words — never structure.	None. Structured data, town pages, real specs, honest content Google hasn't already read 10,000 times.
Sameness	Thousands of facilities run your identical template with near-identical text.	One of one — built around YOUR units, YOUR town, YOUR story.
Online rentals	Native	Same rentals — your site links straight into the rental portal you already use. Nothing about how tenants pay changes.
Upkeep	Vendor-handled — but nobody checks that your phone, hours, and prices are right. Misconfigured template sites rot quietly for years.	A static site: nothing to hack, no plugins to break, nearly nothing to maintain.
If you sell	The website isn't yours to sell.	The website transfers with the business — it's an asset.

The honest caveat about custom websites

A custom website is only better if it's built and maintained by someone competent. A bad custom build — the web guy who disappears, the site you don't control — is the worst option of all. I know because I lived it: one of my facilities had the wrong phone number on a national directory for years and the guy I was paying never noticed.

That's exactly why my builds work the way they do: you get the code, the accounts are opened in your name, hosting is free, and the site is static — nothing to break, nothing held hostage, no bill that can lapse. You keep your management software (StorEdge, CC Storage, SiteLink — whatever you run) exactly as it is. The site just plugs into it.

Three questions to ask any website provider

If I stop paying you, does my website still exist tomorrow?
Can you show me the code that tells Google my prices, hours, and location — and can I take it with me?
When someone searches for storage in my town and the towns around me, which page of yours ranks — and can we build a page for each?

A rented-template provider answers no, no, and no. That's the whole conversation.

Want this as a PDF to share with a partner or your accountant? Download it here.

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