What is Good, Fast and Cheap?
Have you ever heard the saying about ‘Good, Fast and Cheap’? It seems to be one of those immutable laws of business that people tend to forget when dealing with online goods and services. The traditional version of the saying states that in business you can only ever have one or two of the three. In other words if it’s good it very likely won’t be cheap (and often won’t be fast in my experience). If it’s fast it can be cheap, but it is VERY unlikely to be good.
I hadn’t heard the phrase ‘Good, Fast and Cheap’ for a long time until recently when buying hosting services from a company (who shall remain nameless). They claimed to be all three and I had forgotten to follow my own advice. I was drawn into false promises and claims that seemed too good to be true. Guess what? They were. It cost me a fair bit of money and time to realise that I had forgotten one of my own laws.
Don’t get sucked in to false promises
It’s so easy to become drawn into the fast food nature of the internet. Forgetting that it cannot actually transcend normal boundaries and allow companies to defy the laws of gravity and business. If something seems too good to be true, it very often is!
The trouble is that when it comes to the internet and dealing with web companies, the truth behind the phrase ‘Good, Fast and Cheap’ is more relevant than ever. If you are looking to buy a service from a business or individual and you are looking to have a cheap quote, the service provided will most likely not be good or fast (no matter what you have been told). That is a rule that you simply have to accept. In other industries cheap is often synonymous with ‘rubbish’. So why should there be any difference with online services? Therefore, consistently looking for the cheapest quote will most often keep you in that bracket of poor quality. For more information about the true costs of buying online web services please refer to my previous article on how much does a website cost?.
Misinformation abounds
I find that not many companies are properly informed of the consequences behind a lot of decisions with their online presence (especially when it comes to price). Businesses looking for online web services are often suckered in to smaller sticker shock pricing without realising the long term factors of doing so. Part of the problem seems to be that there is a lot of misinformation out there. I am currently writing a series in the hope of revealing the real costs behind web services and web design. I hope that the series can help others plan more effectively before making purchasing decisions that affect their online presence. Hiring online web services can be costly and even crippling if very bad decisions are made.
Just remember you can only have one or two of ‘Good, Fast and Cheap’!
