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Hello, and welcome to Counselor Weekly! Thanks again for being part of the community!

Here's the short and skinny of today's newsletter:

• Meme of the Day

• Weekly Practice Tip

• Interesting Articles

Meme of the Day

This Week’s Practice Management Tip

A Deep Dive Into Subscription Service Websites like Brighter Vision

If you notice the meme above, $350 per month was not a random number. It’s the current cost of top tier services offered by Brighter Vision. The cheapest version is $99 per month with a $100 set up fee. One year of the cheapest website option will cost you $1288 (not including any taxes)

What do you get for that price? Basically a cookie-cutter website template just like everyone else that uses Brighter Vision. The only thing different is you provide them with your info and picture to make the site your own. It’s basically paying $1288 per month for a simple website to market your practice. From there, it goes up to $350 per month (or $4200 per year!!) for the same website template with some additional marketing stuff that I could show you ways to spend much less and get better bang for your buck. It also offers a listing on Good Therapy, but I’ve never used that directory so not sure if it provides enough value to justify the cost.

Overall, the below reasons are why I don’t use a subscription website service such as Brighter Vision:

• Expensive

• Cookie-cutter website

• Still have to pay to add EHR and Google Workspace

• Questions over ownership of the site. Do you own the site if you leave and want to start your own site? Will you lose all the SEO you’ve created? Do you own your domain?

What can you do instead? Without making this too long, I prefer to use a site like Squarespace. A base website will cost you $192 for the whole year (if you pay for the year up front saving 36%). Squarespace offers you a truly customizable experience and you don’t have to be super tech savvy (I’m definitely not a techie, and I’ve created multiple sites using Squarespace).

In reality, you’re still going to pay for an EHR like Simple Practice, and I use Google Workspace for my HIPAA compliant phone number and email. This costs a bit extra each month to pay for the HIPAA compliant version, but it integrates easily into everything and I like having my email/phone through Google compared to the services offered through website subscription services like Brighter Vision. It’s still cheaper overall than what you’re paying each month for the base package at Brighter Vision (and they don’t even offer you HIPAA compliant phone/email at that price).

Then, I can use the additional money I’m saving for better marketing such as Google Ads. This is a topic for another time though.

This isn’t meant to pick on Brighter Vision, or any other subscription website service. If you use one (or are thinking about it) and like the end result, that’s great! But, if subscription services aren’t your thing due to the reasons mentioned above, you have other options.

If you’d like more info on this topic, click reply with your questions and I’m happy to offer feedback.

My Honest Thoughts On Brighter Vision

Not my thoughts, but this article offers a good picture of what you get (and don’t get) from Brighter Vision.

Brighter Vision Review: 2024

A helpful review that is current.

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