WebsiteBox: One year and 5,000 new customers later

York Region’s WebsiteBox  celebrated its one year birthday last month with an announcement that it has signed up more than 5,000 new customers during its first year in business.

Launched in January 2013 by entrepreneur and real estate marketing expert Peyman Aleagha, WebsiteBox is a Richmond Hill, Ont.-based startup that sells feature-rich, mobile-friendly real estate websites and tools to agents, teams and real estate offices at a one-time, $99 price – the lowest in the market.

WebsiteBox makes it looks so easy. That’s part of the secret sauce.

Before WebsiteBox.com, realtors were typically paying a big dollar upfront and high monthly fees for development and on-going hosting of their websites. Myriad website development opportunities are still there for those interested in searching and investing time in site development.

Bottom line, locating the resources to quickly create a customized website that works, with support and that is affordable can be quite a daunting task.

Aleagha’s business model focuses on the ‘ease’ factor for its users. WebsiteBox allows the subscriber to speedily create a fully supported low-cost, customizable website that really works. A quick look shows that these are sophisticated websites with integrated CRM.

WebsiteBox is a graduate of York Region’s ventureLAB where Aleagha works closely with the innovation centre’s mentoring team primarily on funding opportunities. It’s been a dizzying ride. WebsiteBox’s solutions have spread virally within the North American real estate market. Less than six months after launching as a real estate technology startup, WebsiteBox was named to HousingWire Magazine’s inaugural RETech:50 list of top real estate technology firms for 2013. WebsiteBox was also nominated for the prestigious 2013 Inman Innovator Award.

Aleagha anticipated early on that his initial hosting capabilities would be quickly outgrown by the planned volume of new customers. To keep his  customer experience positive he recently enlisted to Amazon.com’s powerful Amazon Web Services infrastructure, an expandable cloud platform to ensure 24/7 expandable, on-demand hosting.

Aleagha says that they have surpassed all initial estimates of WebsiteBox’s goals thus far- to provide large numbers of realtors with the web technology they need to grow their businesses. “Once they discover all that we give them for a one-time fee of only $99, they figure making the switch is a no-brainer. We stand by every WebsiteBox product with a 30-day money back guarantee, so there’s no reason for our customers to hesitate.”

To date it appears that the customers are indeed not hesitating.