Folio Websites was a small WordPress theme and web hosting company in Grand Rapids, Michigan launched by local entrepreneur Ben Harrison in 2011 to help photographers build simple, clean websites. Ben was a professional wedding photographer himself alongside his wife Laura for many years and was frustrated with the lack of clean website theme options on the market at the time.
Over the next four years Ben successfully grew Folio to over 1,000 customers. Then their first son Jonas Paul was born nearly blind. After dozens of surgery’s Jonas was able to regain some of his vision but would require glasses his entire life. It was at this time Ben and Laura, frustrated with lack of stylish children glasses launched Jonas Paul, designer eyewear for kids, which they run to this day.
In 2015, Ben was connected to PhotoUp, a social enterprise with deep roots in Grand Rapid. PhotoUp had grown a sizable social impact photo editing business in the Philippines, USA and Canada focused on providing young professionals with technical training and leadership development and more recently leading efforts on trash and recycling best practices in the cities they operate.
PhotoUp, founded in 2012, always believed they were a software company which happened to get it’s start in photo editing. They contribute a large portion of their success of scaling a team of four people to over 200 associates in just five years to building innovative software empowering photographers to better manage their operations.
As PhotoUp continued to develop software a common theme came into focus: photographers wanted a better website solution and more integration between their operations software and their website.
“The fit seemed natural and the timing was a no brainer on both sides” says Kristian Pettyjohn, founder and CEO of PhotoUp. “We had a vision from the early days of PhotoUp to build more vertically integrated software for SMBs, with photographers being our first market. Ben Harrison had built this incredible base of photographer websites but was looking to grow his new eyewear business.”
In 2016, PhotoUp acquired Folio in a mixed cash and stock deal allowing Ben to retain some long-term upside in the business he founded while focusing on Jonas Paul.
Soon, however, PhotoUp had a hard decision to make. Should they continue to run Folio as a WordPress theme company or build an entirely new website platform? “This was a really hard choice and one we took a long time deliberating internally as a team” says Kristian. “We knew we’d be committing hundreds of thousands of dollars and likely two years of our team’s time if we went the custom platform route with Folio, that was pretty major for us as a fairly young company ourself.”
After carefully analyzing the market Kristian says the choice was clear. “Our development team had deep experience with WordPress so we already knew it’s limitations and wanted to provide our current and future customers a better experience. We didn’t want Folio to be chained to a third-party platform we had no control over and we had a pretty ambitious vision for the product, so we took the plunge. It was exciting and nerve racking taking on industry giants like WordPress and SquareSpace”, said Kristian.
“But it seemed to us there was this really huge gaping whole in the website market”, says Kristian. “On one hand you have WordPress claiming to be a CMS (content management system) and being sold to consumers as such when in reality it’s a developer platform that isn’t user friendly at all.”
“Then WordPress started having lots of security flaws and got too big to innovate fast we where like Phew! We made the right choice!”, said Kristian. “Furthermore, custom sites on WordPress often start at $5,000 and if you wanted to change a WordPress theme you had to pay a developer $50/hour more times than not.”
Said Kristian, “Then on the other hand we have the DYI builders like SquareSpace and Wix, who are trying to convince consumers and business owners that designing and managing their own websites is quick and simple. The reality it turns out is quite the opposite. Small business owners typically don’t have a solid design eye and oh, they’re already a busy running a company. But we also understood the price of say $50/month for a DYI builder website was attractive for the small business owner on a budget.”
In January of 2018 Folio relaunched it’s own website platform called Builder to fill this hole between the DYI website and the expensive developer website. Folio provides professionally designed websites which are clean, modern and 100% unique to each customer.
“Every Folio websites starts with a free websites design”, which is distributing to the old website model says Kristian. Once copy (web designer speak for the content on your website) and the design is approve by a would-be client, the Folio team builds the websites on Builder, which is a visual builder similar to SquareSpace with a very clean, sleek user interface. “Customers love it!” says Kristian, “We provide the custom web shop experience but at a fraction of the cost”.
Folio Websites charges customers $1,500 or $2,500 one-time for the design and build of the website, then $75 per month which includes managed website hosting (all the nerdy stuff like server management and security monitoring) and unlimited content updates and support.
“It’s really a game changer in the website industry to offer a custom product at this price point. Additionally, since we’re a fairly sizable team, businesses get websites built in weeks not months.”
Folio seeks to blend professional design and business services with SaaS software. “I like to say we are one part service, two parts SaaS” says Kristian. From it’s early days running a photo editing business Folio found small business owners needed software to help run their business but also wanted a human team to help them where they’re not as skilled or they don’t have time. This applies to areas such as website design, or design in general for that matter, marketing, photo editing or lead generation for example.”
Said Kristian “This really is the future of Folio. We believe SMBs want both software solutions and services under one roof. They want more integrated data. They want their website to work seamlessly with their scheduling software, their sales software and their HR software and they want someone local they can work with. Folio will be providing all that in time.”
Today, Folio is shaking up the website design model and has already built an impressive base of software tools for photographers. Now, they are expanding their web apps to solve more general business needs for all SMBs, particularly in various professional service industries like health care and construction.
“We couldn’t be more excited and grateful for the progress Folio has made in it’s early years. We know we have years of hard work ahead of us but the team’s pumped. When you are working to create a product which takes years, it means you’re solving a big and complex problem, one that helps people run better businesses and live better lives. That’s the reason we do this.”
If you or business owner you know has a website that needs an facelift, Folio offers a 100% free website design as a way to attract new customers with a ‘see before you buy’ sort of model. Use the link below to get started in 20 seconds.