The Cost
The all-inclusive Gumbo service is available on an annual lease, which can be paid quarterly. The exact licensing fee is tailored to the size of your host institution, and works out at around 50p per student, per year. There is also an initial one-time set-up fee, again dependent on the size of your institution. We can provide you with a quote on request. Upgrades and extensions to the service are included in your license fee. If you have additional requirements which for some reason cannot be provided by the system, but need additional tools to be designed specifically for your association, our designers can help. In most cases we will be happy to simply develop an extension to the service to cope with your requirements, that won't cost you any extra.
The licensing costs of Gumbo can be offset by a range of advertising tools built into Gumbo: Paid entertainment listings, an integrated Amazon® shop, and traditional banner advertising are all available to you. The service includes a powerful automated system for managing advertising, tracking pageviews and clickthroughs, targeting students in particular years and so on, all implemented with subtlety and taste. Whilst we provide the technical tools, backed up with advice and support, all local advertising is entirely under your control as an Association, and you will keep 100% of the profits from such advertising.
We are currently working towards offering additional advertising deals negotiated centrally through Actinity, and more information on this will be provided when it becomes available.
How does the contract work?
There is no formal contract for Gumbo. We realise that student associations are in a unique position of constant upheaval. Every year sabbatical teams and priorities change, so keeping things flexible is hugely important. As a result, instead of a lengthy fixed-term contract, we just require you to sign a rolling 6-month service agreement. You can decide not to renew at any point, and we'll just give you back your data and wave goodbye. The reason we're happy to do this is that we're confident you'll want to stay with us, as we genuinely believe that we offer the best web service for Student Associations available anywhere.
Why do you charge for Gumbo at all?
We're aware that there are many free website solutions available on the Internet. These range from the DIY method of simply cobbling together various standalone free tools (Messageboards, Polls, etc) to make a larger site, to more integrated solutions which are entirely funded by Advertising.
In the case of in-house work, where students themselves design your site - you may well have already encountered the problems that you face when those students leave. In fact you may even be trapped in the endless circle of constantly redesigning websites that never seem to get quite finished. Gumbo was developed to beat this trap, and give you the professional service that your members deserve, at an affordable price.
As for the 'free' services, well, we thought about it... But the problem is that many service operators who have chosen to go down the route of 100% advertising have been stung by the fluctuating nature of advertising revenues. In some cases they've been forced to start charging for previously free services, whilst in others companies have simply gone to the wall leaving those who had come to rely on them in serious trouble. A recent example would be the case of the Student Broadcast Network, the sudden collapse of which in 2004 left many student radio stations with major budget shortfalls, a lack of sustainer services, and a desperate scramble to pick up the pieces.
We're passionately committed to offering the best student-focused services we can, and that's why we've chosen to build a stable business from day one, using advertising to offset the costs, without needing to totally rely on it. We want to help your union in the long-term, and we believe that you'd rather build a stable relationship with a committed partner - so that you can genuinely take your union forward, and embrace the potential of the Internet to revolutionise the way Student Associations work without having to constantly worry about where the next banner campaign is coming from.
In short, we believe that YOU should be our clients, not advertisers who are simply seeking to extract cash from your members. We don't believe students want their union websites groaning under the weight of flashing banner ads that are just there to pay the bills, and we ultimately believe that we should be answerable to you.
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