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The Windsor Town Council voted unanimously Tuesday, June 10, to pay the Michigan-based firm Revize LLC a sum of $5,276 to establish a new Windsor town website based on a standard template.

There was no discussion during the council meeting indicating that the town’s website address (www.windsor-va.gov) will change but rather that its builder and host will be replaced.

Windsor Town Manager William Saunders noted during the meeting that the town’s current website was built and has been hosted for years by Tim Bradshaw, of the Franklin, Virginia-based firm Insercorp LTD. 

“Following several bouts of unsatisfactory response to service requests from Insercorp, it was determined that Mr. Bradshaw has decided to let the website hosting element of his business go,” Saunders said. “Unfortunately, the town was not notified of this plan and does not know how long support will be available. Subsequently, town staff has reached out to several vendors regarding the immediate replacement of the town website.”

Saunders listed three vendors:

• The Addison Group is a local, Suffolk-based firm primarily servicing private clients but also serving a number of local government entities as well.

“They would be building a custom website for the town,” Saunders added.

• CivicPlus is a large Manhattan, Kansas-based firm primarily servicing local government clients. It bought out MuniCode, with which Windsor currently contracts for the hosting of its municipal code online. 

“They would be using one of their standard templates for the town’s website,” Saunders added.

• Revize is a large Troy, Michigan-based firm that serves only government entities. 

“They would be using a standard template for the town website as it relates to what the proposals are,” Saunders added.

He noted that the urgency of Windsor’s need for a new website is part of what is driving the vendor-search process and the results of the search. 

“The Addison Group scored very well with us, and they would be building a custom site, and they are local, so we put great stock into that group and their proposal,” he said. “And I will say that these three firms, it’s not exactly apples to apples, because The Addison Group is the only one here that’s proposing a custom website as opposed to the other two larger firms (with which) we would be able to use templates that they offer that would make a suitable website for the town in a short period of time and at a reasonable cost. 

“But I will say all three of these firms do custom sites, and had we looked at custom sites from all three, The Addison Group would have been much more competitively priced than they seem to be up against the other two firms that would just be using a standard template that’s already created,” he added.

He noted that Revize currently powers the websites for Isle of Wight County, the city of Franklin and Southampton County, with at least Isle of Wight featuring a custom design.

The June 10 Windsor Town Council meeting packet included a website replacement cost breakdown featuring each vendors’ implementation fees and then their annual subscription fees over a four-year period:

• The Addison Group: $12,700 for implementation and $2,400 per annual subscription fee for a total of $22,300;
• CivicPlus: $850 for implementation and annual subscription fees of $4,664 for Year 1; $4,897.20 for Year 2; $5,142.06 for Year 3; and $5,399.16 for Year 4 for a total of $20,952.42; and 
• Revize: $3,776 for implementation and $1,500 per annual subscription fee for a total of $9,776.

“Revize has the lowest implementation, again it is a template, and then the lowest subscription rate,” Saunders said. “They also have an option whereby they’ll roll all those costs together and just make it a flat payment for the four years of subscription.”

“It’s council’s call,” he continued. “We made the call ourselves on Revize because of the lowest upfront costs, the reasonable carrying costs and the standard templates to save some time. However, if council is more interested in a custom site, wants to invest more in that and have a local firm that we know we’d be able to call on locally to support that, then (The Addison Group) certainly scored well.”

In response to a question from Councilman David Adams about potential website maintenance costs versus town staff being trained to update the site, Saunders noted that town staff will be the ones posting agendas and making periodic updates to the new website.

“But there are certain things — if there’s an issue or certain heavy lifting on editing the site — that we would call on the company for,” Saunders said. 

At the conclusion of council questions on the website replacement matter, Adams said, “I make a motion that we adopt the resolution to amend the town of Windsor FY25 budget by the expenditure of an additional $5,276 from the Contingency Expense line time (of) the General Fund to Revize for the revamp of the town (of) Windsor, Virginia, website.”

The council’s 6-0 vote followed promptly thereafter.