Practical Tech & Small Business Blogger
Ryan Cobbler
Former HVAC tech who learned to code at thirty-eight and now builds websites for a dentist, two plumbers and a bowling alley.
- Beat
- Web advice for small businesses, self-taught development, tools, local business
- From
- US Rust Belt
- On the list
- 47 items
The list, itemized
Job nos. 01-47
| Job type | Items | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| Website builders | 9 | 27 min |
| Hosting and upkeep | 7 | 22 min |
| Office and phones | 7 | 24 min |
| Marketing and design | 9 | 28 min |
| Office hardware | 6 | 20 min |
| Money and paperwork | 5 | 15 min |
| Jobs and scheduling | 4 | 14 min |
| Total | 47 | 2 h 30 min |
The checklist
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01
Squarespace
Squarespace is good. Here is what it costs you.
Dr. Okafor called me on a Tuesday in March. Her nephew built her dental practice's website on Squarespace in 2021, then left for college. No password, no notes, nothing. She asked...
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02
Wix
Wix is the most flexible builder. The bill creeps.
Wix is the most flexible website builder I've used. It's also the easiest one to wreck. I've built or fixed five of them, and I pay for one myself, so this comes from my own...
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03
Bluehost WordPress hosting
Bluehost burned me. Here's how to use it without getting burned.
I got burned on this one, so let me save you the same bruise. Sal runs a plumbing outfit on the east side, one of my two plumbers. His site has lived on Bluehost since 2020. In...
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04
SiteGround WordPress hosting
SiteGround is the host I actually pay for now
Two hundred sixteen dollars. That's the yearly hosting bill for Sal's plumbing site, and I paid it without blinking. Last winter his old host reset his DNS on a Sunday and killed...
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05
Cloudflare (websites and DNS)
Cloudflare is free and I still can't believe it
Listen. Diane runs the tax prep office I keep running, and in February her site got buried under junk traffic. Bots hammering the contact form all night. Her host wanted money for...
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06
Google Workspace
Your email address is costing you jobs
Nobody trusts a yahoo.com email address on a plumbing invoice. That's not me being a snob. That's Sal's son Nick, who sent quotes from nick.plumbing440 at yahoo for two years and...
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07
Microsoft 365 Business Standard
The spreadsheet that almost ate tax season
The file was named ClientList_2026_FINAL_final2.xlsx. That name is the whole story. Diane runs the tax prep office I keep running, and in February her second preparer, Marlene...
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08
Google Sites
The fish fry needed a website, not a project
The sign at St. Adalbert's fish fry is a piece of plywood with the phone numbers painted on. The menu is a PDF that Mike, who runs the Knights of Columbus kitchen, texts to whoever...
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09
Elementor
LuAnn's specials board finally went online
LuAnn keeps the daily specials on a whiteboard by the register at her diner. Customers photograph it. Then they text the photo to somebody asking what it says. Her Facebook page...
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10
WP Rocket
Six seconds is a lost phone call
Six seconds. That's how long Vince's photo gallery took to load on a phone in a work van. Vince is the other plumber I keep, and his gallery is his whole pitch: repipes, water...
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11
Yoast SEO
Somebody quoted my plumber $500 a month for SEO
Somebody cold-called Vince, the other plumber I keep, and quoted him five hundred a month for SEO. A year, that's a used work van. Vince asked me, "What's it actually cost to show...
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12
Canva Pro
The laminated price card finally retired
There's a laminated card taped to the cake fridge at my sister-in-law Deb's shop. Handwritten prices, laminated at the office supply store in 2022. When a customer asks about a...
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13
Adobe Creative Cloud
The sign shop wanted the logo in vector
The sign shop called Diane's tax office in September about the new window lettering. They needed the logo "in vector." Diane's logo lives as a screenshot inside a Word document and...
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14
Fiverr
Forty cake photos for twenty-seven fifty
Deb photographs every cake before it leaves the fridge. Her camera roll had forty good shots ruined by the same two problems: a yellow counter and a plastic bag in the corner of...
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15
GoDaddy Website Builder
GoDaddy builds fast. Read the second year first.
Duke runs four chairs in the storefront with the flag on Chardon Road. His old site was a Facebook page and a phone number on the window. In January I built him a test site on...
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16
Duda
Four tenants, four sites, one dashboard
The landlord who owns the strip mall where LuAnn's diner sits called me in April. Four of his tenants want websites, the nail place, the vape shop, the tailor, and a mattress...
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17
Budget Chromebook (Asus Chromebook CX15)
The front desk needed a machine, not a computer
Sal's office runs out of one front room. His wife Joan answers the phone, prints the invoices, and types the quotes from a paper pad. In March her 2015 laptop died mid-quote, and...
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18
Dell Latitude 5440
The laptop Ray's league runs on
Ray's bowling alley runs its league nights off one machine. The secretary keeps standings in a spreadsheet, prints award checks, and emails the banquet flyer from a tower older...
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19
Mac mini (M4)
My ThinkPad retired and a five-hundred-dollar box took the desk
The ThinkPad I learned to code on is a 2016 model with a battery that holds eleven minutes and a fan that sounds like a shop vac. It ran my invoices, my builds, and every client...
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20
HP LaserJet Pro M404dn
The printer ate a power board and it was still the right call
Two winters ago I put an HP LaserJet Pro M404dn on Sal's office desk, $279 out the door. Last month a lightning hit close enough to take out the power board on it, which is a $90...
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21
Netgear Orbi mesh system
Netgear Orbi: what fixed the dead zone at the bowling alley
The card reader at Rustic Lanes died every night around lane 19. Deb, who owns the place, thought she had a bad tablet. She bought a replacement. Same problem. So she called me...
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22
TP-Link Omada EAP653 access point
TP-Link Omada EAP653: the ceiling fix that saved a dental office
"Doc, your internet is fine," I told Ray on the phone. "Your ceilings are empty."
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23
Ooma Office VoIP
Ooma Office: I cut my phone bill to twenty dollars a month
Fifty-five dollars a month. That was my phone bill for a business landline that rang straight to voicemail half the time. The line existed so customers had a number to call. Then I...
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24
Square POS
Square POS: how the plumbers get paid in the driveway
Hafner Plumbing gets paid in driveways. Two guys, a van, and for years a paper invoice pad and a promise to mail a check. The checks showed up late and the pad got coffee on it. So...
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25
QuickBooks Online
QuickBooks Online: the $140 renewal that made a plumber call me
The renewal notice said $140 a month. Sue thought it was a scam email. She runs Steiner Plumbing, second plumber I work for, and her QuickBooks Online Plus plan was $99 last year...
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26
Wave Accounting
Wave Accounting: the free books my nephew runs from his truck
My nephew Danny runs a lawn crew, four guys and a trailer. He texted me a screenshot at 9pm on a Sunday: an invoice he had just sent from the driver's seat of his truck, and the...
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27
Gusto payroll
Gusto payroll: I run payroll for one employee, and he is me
My accountant told me to become an S-corp two years ago. She said it would save me on self-employment tax. She did not emphasize what came with it, which is that I had just hired...
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28
Vistaprint business cards
Vistaprint business cards: what they cost and what the checkout will try
Every December, Carol at Brubaker Tax Service orders new cards. Tax season starts in January, her cards run out in November, and the counter jar by the register goes empty about...
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29
MailerLite
MailerLite: what I pay to send one email a month to nine hundred people
I send one email a month to about nine hundred people. Homeowners, shop owners, a few accountants who forward it around. It is the same short email every time: one fix, what it...
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30
Mailchimp
Mailchimp: why I stopped paying and moved my clients off it
Carol's Mailchimp bill went from the twenties to the forties between February and March. Nobody touched her account. No new features, no new emails, no new subscribers. The list...
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31
Calendly
Calendly: the end of phone tag at the tax office
For two years my own booking process was a sticky note on my monitor. It said CALL ME BACK in three colors of ink. A client would email, I would email back, they would reply two...
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32
Housecall Pro (field service software)
Housecall Pro: how a one truck HVAC shop lost the paper tickets
Denny Kowalski's dispatch system was the dash of his van. Paper tickets, carbon copies, one for every job, stuck to the dash with a clip. Denny runs Kowalski Heating and Air, one...
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33
Jobber (field service software)
Jobber: what happened when Danny's lawn crew added a fifth guy
Danny, my nephew, runs a lawn crew. Last April he added a fifth guy and the whole system broke. The system was a group text. Jobs went out at 6am, answers trickled back all...
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34
Google Business Profile
Google Business Profile: the free listing that outranks every website I build
Ray's dental office outranks his own website. Not sometimes. Every day, for every search that matters, the Google listing sits above the site I built him, with the map, the star...
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35
Namecheap domains
Namecheap: the domain registrar I use for every client, and why
Rich's plumbing website died on a Monday in March because nobody in the building knew where the domain lived. His nephew registered hafnerplumbing.com in 2015, put it in an email...
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36
Hetzner Cloud VPS
Hetzner Cloud: I host nine small business sites on one seven dollar box
Two Januarys ago, Carol's tax office got a link in the local paper and the site fell over. Shared hosting, fifteen dollars a month, the kind where your site lives in an apartment...
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37
UptimeRobot
UptimeRobot: the free smoke alarm for your website
I found out Ray's website was down from UptimeRobot, at 6:40 in the morning, an hour and a half before Ray's first patient. A routine server update had gone sideways at 5am. I...
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38
Bitdefender endpoint protection for small business
Bitdefender for small business: what I pay to keep a client's office unransomed
Sue's invoice printer got hit by a fake invoice in 2023. The email said her domain renewal had failed, the attachment was a PDF, and the PDF asked to "install a printer driver." A...
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39
Google Voice for business
The ten dollar number that took the shop off Denny's personal cell
Two phone numbers come out of the Kowalski house. Denny's cell and the office landline. The landline is Dana's desk. Except Denny has been using it anyway, for anything with a...
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40
Zoho One
50 apps for $37, and the math that said no
Doc Wheeler bought the veterinary practice in June. Two exam rooms, a plan to open two more, night clinic on Thursdays. He asked me for software that would grow with him, client...
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41
Weebly
Weebly still works. I would not start a new site on it.
Ron at Cloverleaf Lanes called me on a Tuesday night. The men's league standings had not updated since Thursday, and forty guys with beer league opinions were asking him why. The...
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42
WordPress.com
The dentist's website bill went up thirty-six dollars a year. Here's why.
In March the front desk at Dr. Ostermann's office forwarded me an email. Her WordPress.com renewal had jumped from $25 a month to $28. That is thirty-six extra dollars a year for...
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43
Shopify
Shopify is a cash register that happens to have a website
The first order book at Kepner Sign Works was a spiral notebook. Kellie wrote the name, the decal, the check number, and prayed. When yard sign orders from three counties outgrew...
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44
PandaDoc
PandaDoc got my quotes signed in the driveway
I lost a website job in 2023 because of a printer. My proposal went out as a PDF, the homeowner opened it, and her only way to sign it was printing two pages she had no paper for...
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45
Basecamp
Basecamp got the work orders out of my text messages
For two years, my whole business lived in text messages. Carol at Brubaker Tax Service would text me at the grocery store about her homepage. One of my plumbers left me a voicemail...
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46
Nextiva
Nextiva gave the dental office its lunch hour back
The sign on Dr. Ostermann's front desk said "Back at 1:00." It said that from 11:45 to about 1:40 every day, because when Tina left for lunch the phone just rang. Patients heard...
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47
Yelp for Business
The free Yelp page earns its keep. The ads did not.
The Yelp salespeople found my number through my own website, which I thought was funny for about a week. The rep was friendly and fast, and he asked me one question that landed...