Today I want to talk about whether it makes sense to buy a franchise for IT services, specifically a web design franchise system.
Right now there are a number of franchise brands showing up in the US, marketing themselves with very low prices. They say things like “for $250 we’ll set up a web design system for you, you don’t need to know anything, we have prospecting tools, we have everything.” But this isn’t a one time payment. You pay that $250 every single month.
What Web Design Actually Pays
Let me start by talking about real web design rates. The hourly rates we get for web design and web development work are usually around $7 to $10 per hour, and that’s if we’re lucky. This is for people without an agency. Corporate agencies charge much more, but as independent freelancers we’re often working at these rates, sometimes even $5 or $6. The $7 to $8 to $9 range applies more to first world countries, places like New Zealand, Australia, and the UK. Rates in the US can sometimes be a bit higher.
Building a six page website isn’t a huge job anymore. Some hosting plans now offer basically the same thing through vibe coding, building you a six page site directly. This work has gone from being an expensive service to something almost trivial. Even we struggle to find clients in this space as freelancers, so I genuinely wonder how someone new is going to manage it.
The Math Doesn’t Work
Say you buy a franchise for $250 a month. With that same $250, you could have six or seven sites built for you. If you’re going to spend that money on a franchise fee, I’d rather see it bring you actual customers. If I were putting $250 into something every month, I’d want it to bring me two or three customers on its own. That’s a reasonable budget range, $200 to $250, but it’s not enough to justify handing over every month unless it’s actually delivering leads.
Looking at this online, the franchise systems clearly haven’t kept pace, which is probably because so many people are searching for cheap franchise options to begin with. I understand wanting to work from home and avoid marketing or learning new technology, but at the end of the day, you’re still the one who has to do the marketing.
When Franchising Actually Makes Sense
If you’re going to pay for a brand, it should at least be a respected one. Think about real estate. You can’t become a realtor overnight, but if you join RE/MAX, clients start coming to you and you get a credible, established image. That’s a case where a franchise genuinely helps.
Web design is different. Locally, I get offers all the time from companies saying “we do software, can you become our franchisee?” I don’t accept these. Recently Automattic launched a similar agency franchise platform. They wanted me to host six client sites on their platform and pay monthly fees, on top of more fees, for unclear benefits. I haven’t seen anyone online say their experience as an Automattic franchise agency was great. I declined it. The hosting they offered cost around $25 per month and felt overpriced for what it delivered. I tried a trial, wasn’t impressed with the performance, and stayed with my own existing hosting, which I’m already happy with and already pay for annually.
I never partnered with Automattic, even though they’re essentially the company behind WordPress. I don’t feel like I’m missing anything by not having joined.
The Google Partner Problem
Google has something similar. To become a Google approved agency, you need to spend a large amount on ads, and your clients need to hit a certain campaign spend threshold too. People do this purely to display a badge that says “Google Partner.” It makes you wonder whether showing a badge to build trust is even worth it. If you can’t build trust through your own work and content as an individual, maybe the business itself isn’t the right fit yet.
Franchising can make sense for certain industries, opening a McDonald’s, a coffee chain, things tied to a physical location. For IT, and especially web design, I don’t see the logic. Maybe it works better in travel planning, but I don’t have direct knowledge of that industry.
Why I’d Rather You Keep the $250
The one franchise I looked closely at, called SiteSwan, cost $250. As someone in the industry, I want to explain why this doesn’t add up. Why would you pay $250 a month to someone else when you could hire a freelance student from a cheaper country to build multiple sites for that same amount? You’re already doing the marketing yourself, so when you get a client, pay for the build then. Paying $250 every month before you have clients just puts you in the red.
These cheap franchise brands are everywhere online right now. If you’re searching for a cheap IT franchise, at least make sure it’s a real, known brand. When I look these platforms up, all I see is heavy American marketing style: glossy front pages, but as soon as you dig a little deeper, you find dated looking websites and a strange variety of presenters who look like they’re straight out of a reality show. That seems to be a quirk of American marketing culture specifically.
You see the same pattern with tools like ClickFunnels or GoHighLevel, products that mid sized American companies seem to invent constantly, each with a very specific marketing tone aimed at small and mid sized businesses: dense, loud, packed with information. Personally I don’t think any of that is necessary.
What These Franchises Actually Offer
Be careful what you sign up for online. In the first month you might get one client, or you might get none. Whatever budget you’re spending on the franchise fee is essentially your marketing budget, and these companies aren’t going to hand you some magical automated marketing solution either. At most they’ll show you nearby businesses and expect you to email them yourself. Their “killer copy” is often something nobody actually reads. When I look at these companies’ own websites, the copy isn’t even convincing. People trust a person based on their track record, their reliability, their relationships, not a templated email script. And remember, email marketing typically converts at around 1 in 1000. Realistically, your first month nets you one client at best, often zero.
We work inside freelance platforms ourselves and even with that built in traffic, it’s hard to land clients from scratch, especially on platforms with no track record yet. So paying $250 a month to a brand that isn’t even a major name in web design, one nobody recognizes as an industry leader, doesn’t make sense. Why attach your name to that logo? Especially when It’s not a recognized industry standard. I don’t understand the appeal, especially when people report being repeatedly contacted and pressured by these companies.
If You’re Already a Marketer, You Don’t Need This
If you can already land two or three clients a month and price your services accordingly, you’re already a competent marketer. So why would you need a middleman at all? You could go straight to any agency and say “this is who I am,” and build from there. This might be a reasonable entry point for total beginners, and maybe their training program really is good, but from what I’ve seen, it’s largely material you could learn for free online. There are pitfalls to learn, certainly, but you can read your way through them. I’ll keep publishing guides to help with that.
What a Real Project Actually Costs
Think about what you’d actually charge a client after paying that fee. If you charge $500 for a basic six page site, that’s already a high price for that kind of work. I’ve never seen a basic six page site command $500. I’ve personally never landed a $250 budget for a six page site. Most of my projects landed closer to the $100 mark. And this was before dawn of the AI.
Our actual hourly rate is between $7 and $10. At that rate, in 25 hours of work I could build several six page sites, including content, especially now with AI tools. There are vibe coding tools where you just describe a six page site and it gets built for you. This kind of work has become trivial.
A Better Path Forward
If you’re specifically looking at work-from-home franchises, I’d suggest looking into travel instead, that industry might make more sense for this model. Outside of that, if you can already market yourself, the same logic applies to dropshipping. If you can build and market a business, go for it.
Digital marketing is genuinely difficult, and there’s no shortcut around learning it, even if it takes the long way. If you’re looking at a cheap web design franchise because of this, here’s my honest take: if you already know marketing, bring your clients to an agency directly and they’ll help you fulfill the work. That’s a far better use of $250 than handing it to a franchise whose prospecting tools you can’t even evaluate. They might genuinely help you get started, but whether that help is worth $250 a month is a separate question.
These brands aren’t on the level of RE/MAX or Viator. I don’t think attaching yourself to them builds credibility. If you have spare money you’re willing to risk, that’s your choice, but personally I wouldn’t do it. I turned down Automattic’s offer because I didn’t like their products or their sales approach, and I didn’t want my name next to that brand. I also don’t bother with Google Ads partner programs, the cost is too high, and plenty of agencies slap a Google Partner or Meta Partner badge on their site without anyone questioning whether it means anything. I never pursued Google’s “product expert” program either. I never believed a badge alone builds credibility.
My whole approach has been built around genuinely helping people, through useful content, not collecting badges. Putting someone else’s logo next to your name for an IT business doesn’t necessarily mean they deliver better service than you do. The brand you attach yourself to might not actually be better than you, and it could end up holding you back. Be careful.
My Recommendation
I don’t think you need an IT franchise, and I’m fairly confident about this because it’s the field I know. Specifically for web design, I think going this route is a mistake and not worth the effort.
Instead, you can realistically land your first client within one or two months on your own, without paying $250 to anyone. If you want to put that money somewhere, premium freelance platforms are a better investment than a franchise fee. They actually advertise for you and connect you with people actively looking to hire, which is what you actually need.
If you want, you can also work locally and convert local opportunities yourself; I’m not against that. I do not recommend platforms like SiteSwan for people starting out in web design.
Learn at your own pace. You don’t need to learn to code, not even a little. Learning a page builder is enough. Wix, for example, is genuinely simple to learn, the dashboard is straightforward and it now includes everything you’d need, including SEO and e-mail marketing. Learn it properly and in depth.
If you don’t want to learn it yourself and you have $250 to spend, hire someone instead. There are plenty of people online right now who can build you a site lower than that price, myself included. If you land a client, message them, You can get it done for less, and you keep the difference.
I’ll keep posting more guides on how to start and run an IT business affordably. Follow along on my main page, and there should be a subscription option there as well, subscribe and I’ll keep sending guides your way. Thanks for reading, and have a good day.
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