For freelancers and small studios

Win more client sites with a CMS your clients can run.

Free resources for people who build sites for other people: what to say, how to demo, how to price, and how to hand off a site your client can actually run. No sales experience required.

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Most people who build with Total CMS aren’t salespeople. They’re designers and developers who’d rather be building. Fair enough.

The good news: you don’t need to pitch. Clients don’t buy a CMS. They buy three things, and you can show them all three in a five-minute demo.

Everything on this page is free to use, copy, and put your own name on. When you land more clients, we both win.

The pitch

What your client actually wants.

“I can update it myself.”

Text, photos, blog posts, events, menus. They sign in, edit, save. No emailing you about a typo.

“I can’t break it.”

You decide which collections they can edit. The layout, fonts, and design live in the Site Builder, which their login never reaches.

“It’s mine.”

Their site and everything on it live on their own hosting, not inside someone else’s platform. If they change hosts or developers, everything goes with them.

Say those three things in your own words and you’ve made the pitch. After the call, the proposal below says the same three things in your client’s terms, ready to paste into the follow-up.

Total CMS has become an indispensable tool for us as an advertising agency. It allows us to develop individual, sophisticated websites without compromising on design. We particularly value its flexibility and the ability to offer our clients simple, intuitive management of their website content.

The demo

Show it, don’t pitch it.

The most convincing moment in any client meeting is when they change their own headline and watch it go live. Set that up once and reuse it for every prospect.

  1. Build a demo for free. Total CMS runs free, with every Pro feature, on development domains like demo.test or localhost. No trial, no key, no expiry.
  2. Fill it with their kind of content. A menu for a restaurant, listings for a realtor, a portfolio for a photographer. Content that looks like theirs is what makes it click.
  3. Show them the edition they’d get. Turn on Simulate Edition in the License settings and your demo runs as Standard, so the client sees exactly what they’ll have.
  4. Hand them the keyboard. Let them sign in, change a heading, swap a photo, and hit save. Then stop talking.

Tip Brand the login page with your studio’s logo first (white label, Standard and up). In the client’s eyes, it’s your product.

Start from their industry

Each comes with a sample site to import into your demo, so you begin with content that already looks like theirs.

Every use case →

I can prototype large, complex client sites in hours instead of weeks. … I’m more productive than I’ve ever been, and I can respond to my clients’ needs faster.

The scripts

Answers to the questions clients ask.

Short, honest answers you can say out loud or paste into an email. Edit them freely.

Draft · reply to a client Example

Subject

Can I update the site myself?

Yes. You’ll have your own login where you can edit text, photos, and any other content we set up together. I set it up so you can change the content without accidentally breaking the design.

What does it cost every month?

There’s no subscription for the content system. It’s a one-time license for your domain that includes two years of updates. After that it keeps working, and renewing updates is optional. Ongoing, you’ll pay for web hosting, plus my care plan if you’d like me to look after the site.

What happens if you disappear?

Your site doesn’t depend on me or on any platform staying in business. Your content is stored as ordinary files on your own hosting, and the license is transferred into your name when we’re done. Any web developer can pick it up from there.

For you, not the client: Total CMS transfers a license to the site owner at no charge as long as the site stays on the same domain. Contact support at handoff.

Is it secure?

Your site has fewer moving parts than most: no database and no pile of plugins to keep patched, so there are fewer things for hackers to target. Rich text and uploaded files are checked and cleaned before they’re saved, and only the people I set up can make changes. Security fixes for your version stay available even after the update period ends.

Why not just use a hosted website builder?

Those work well for some people. The tradeoff is that you’re renting: the monthly fee never ends, your content lives on their servers, and moving away usually means rebuilding. With this, you pay once, the site lives on your own hosting, and your content goes wherever you go.

Can I move it later?

Yes. Your whole site is ordinary files, so it moves to almost any web host by copying it over. If you change your domain name, the license can be moved to the new one, sometimes for a small fee.

When a client asks about a specific platform by name, the guides compare the popular options honestly, including where each one is the better choice.

Pricing

Price it like a professional.

Freelancers who aren’t comfortable selling tend to undercharge. A few patterns that work.

Itemize the license, don’t hide it
A one-time line item, $195 for Standard or $395 for Pro, reads as “you own this.” Pass the cost through or mark it up. Your call.
Sell editing as a feature, not a given
“You can update this yourself” is worth money. Price it in.
Offer three packages
Most clients pick the middle one. For example:
  • Essentials The site, with content editing
  • Most pick this Plus Adds a blog and forms, with the monthly care plan
  • Complete Plus a premium care plan, with new content written for them monthly
Show the five-year math
Clients compare your one-time price against a small monthly fee. Put both on the same timeline. The calculator below does it for you.
Quote · Plus package Example
An example client quote with the content management license as its own line
Website design and build $4,500
Content editing, set up for your teamYour own login, and a walkthrough at launch $500
Content management (one-time)A license for your domain, transferred to you at launch $195
Total, one-time $5,195
Care planUpdates, backups and changes on request $150 a month

5-year cost, side by side

Totals need JavaScript. The arithmetic is simple either way: the hosted plan is its monthly price times the months; your own site is the one-time license plus hosting times the months.

Hosted website builder

Business plans on the popular hosted builders start around $39 a month and go up from there.

    Enter a plan price to see this total.

    Your own site

    What your client will pay their web host each month.

      Enter a hosting price to see this total.

      Same inputs on both sides. The numbers start as an example: type what the client would actually pay. Update renewals after year two are optional and not included.

      Turn updates into a website care plan

      Every license includes two years of updates, and renewing after that is optional. That’s a natural reason to offer a care plan that includes keeping the site current: recurring income for you, with no platform taking a cut.

      10 clients $150 a month $18,000 a year

      An example, every year, from sites you’ve already built. Start from your time: the hours each plan takes a month, times your rate.

      Licensing

      Licensing built for client work.

      Hand the license to your client
      Transfers to the site owner are free when the domain stays the same.
      Unlimited client subdomains
      Prefer to host clients as client.myagency.com? With a Pro license for your agency’s domain, we’ll open up as many subdomains as you need. Contact support and we set it up.
      Free on your own machine
      Every Pro feature on localhost, .localhost, 127.0.0.1, and .test domains. No key, no expiry. (.local doesn’t count.)
      45-day trial on a real domain
      Full Pro, no credit card. Can be extended once by 30 days.
      Build on a temporary domain
      Your first license move within 12 months of purchase is free, so you can build on one domain and launch on the real one.
      Two staging subdomains included
      staging.clientsite.com and dev.clientsite.com run on the same license.
      Updates end, the site doesn’t
      After two years, the license becomes perpetual for the latest version released in that period, and fixes for that version stay available.
      Your brand on the admin
      Standard: branded login page and welcome message. Pro: adds your logo in the admin, a custom dashboard home, and custom CSS.

      Full licensing details →

      The proposal

      Website proposal language you can paste.

      Four parts of one proposal or statement of work. Copy the whole thing, keep what fits, and fill in the brackets.

      Proposal · four parts Fill in the brackets

      Content management line item

      Content management (one-time): Your site includes a content editor so you can update text, images, and [blog posts / menus / listings] yourself. This is a one-time license for your domain, including two years of updates. No monthly platform fee. The license is transferred to you at launch.

      Ownership

      You own your site. Your content is stored as ordinary files on your own hosting, not inside a third-party platform. If you ever change hosts or developers, everything goes with you.

      Design protection

      I’ll set up your editor so you can change your content without affecting the layout, fonts, or design. If you need something structural changed, that’s what I’m here for.

      Care plan (optional add-on)

      Optional care plan, $[X]/month: I keep your site updated, backed up, and running, and I’m on call for changes you’d rather not make yourself.

      Launch day

      The website handoff checklist.

      • Activate the license close to launch, and before the trial ends: an expired trial still displays, but edits stop saving
      • Create the client’s login and give their access group (the permissions that login gets) only what they should edit
      • Leave the Site Builder and schemas out of their access group, so the layout stays yours
      • Brand the login page with your studio’s (or the client’s) logo
      • Walk them through one real edit while you watch
      • Transfer the license into the client’s name (contact support)
      • Write down where the site is hosted and who has access
      • Offer the care plan

      Your next client is already looking.

      Start with a free demo on your own machine, or a 45-day trial on a real domain. Full Pro, no credit card.

      Start a free trial Create a free account for the kit

      Read the docs