Frequently Asked Questions

There honestly isn't one, but there is a real trade. We front the entire build cost (genuine designer and engineer hours, not a template flip) and recover it across your term instead of handing you a $2,500 to $8,000 invoice on day one. Most agencies charge that upfront PLUS a monthly maintenance fee on top. We charge $0 upfront plus a monthly fee, and our monthly is usually lower than their monthly alone. The trade is that you commit to a term (12, 18, or 24 months depending on plan) so we can recoup the labor we already spent on your behalf. Stay the full term and you pay less total than a traditional build. Leave early and you cover the portion of labor we haven't yet recovered, plus a small margin. The math is all in Section 10 of your contract, plain and symmetric on both sides.

Buyout is the early-termination number if you decide to leave before your initial term ends. It is not a gotcha, it is a transparent formula: the unrecovered portion of the build labor we already delivered, plus a fixed 30% margin on the remainder. Every month you stay, that number drops. At month one it sits at its highest (because we just spent the labor the day before). By the final month of your term it is $0. We publish the month-by-month dollar examples right in Section 10.2 of your contract so there is never a surprise. You can ask us for your current buyout figure any day and we will send it.

Full refund, no questions, no friction. Every monthly fee you have paid between signing and Go-Live is refundable if you cancel before your site goes live. That is Section 8.7 in your contract. We eat the sunk build cost because we genuinely believe nobody should pay for a site they never got to use. If the build isn't landing the way you hoped, you have the door.

You own your content (your copy, your photos, your brand story) from day one. Those are yours, always. You own the design treatment once your initial term completes or you buy out early, and we hand you a Dockerized export of the full site so you can host it anywhere you want. The only things you do not own are the AI service licenses: DraftDash for blogs, Ethel for the voice widget, Vigil for compliance monitoring. Those are tools we operate on our infrastructure, and they stop when your subscription ends (same as any SaaS product). The key distinction: the site itself and all your brand content walk out the door with you. You are never trapped with us.

Yes, DraftDash writes the first draft, and no, it won't hurt your SEO. Every post runs through a 360-point quality gate including fact-checking, source citation verification, and editorial review by an actual human on our team before it goes live. Google's own published guidance says clearly that they penalize low-quality content, not AI-assisted content. Our blogs rank because they are accurate, cited, and structured as real journalism. If you want fully-human-written posts instead, that is available as an upgrade. The default is AI-drafted plus human-reviewed at 5 posts per month, because that combination is what delivers consistent ranking growth at a price that works for small businesses.

This is where our Forged Shield product comes in. Every Forge plan (even base) includes the technical accessibility work: we build every site to WCAG 2.2 AA, and our Vigil compliance engine scans every single deploy and refuses to ship anything that falls below passing. That technical groundwork is included in your monthly fee at no extra charge. What the base plan does not include is legal indemnification. Forged Shield adds a $25,000 minimum defense fund on Core plans and $50,000 on Pro plans, plus full indemnity coverage. Shield comes with two reasonable conditions: first, all site updates must route through our team (we will not indemnify changes made by other hands) and we commit to completing your update requests within 48 business hours of receipt. Second, your Shield rate scales with your update volume so a small business running 2 changes a month and a mid-sized enterprise running 30 are priced fairly against their actual usage.

We target a Google PageSpeed score of 90 or higher on mobile, with specific technical procedures for hitting it every time: optimized image pipelines, deferred script loading, critical CSS inlining, CDN edge caching. If you want raw speed over visual polish, request a Flat-Build and we target 100. Both options are baked into your base plan at no extra cost. Speed directly moves your Google ranking and your conversion rate, which is why we treat it as table stakes.

A genuinely long list. Your monthly covers hosting, SSL certificates, daily backups, uptime monitoring, security patches, plugin updates, SEO auditing through our Catori agent, compliance scanning through Vigil, 5 blog posts per month through DraftDash, the Ethel voice widget for customer inquiries, and direct human support from our team. Assembled piecemeal from a traditional agency, those same services run $1,000 to $2,000 per month depending on your market. Our Core plan is $199.99. The math works because our AI systems compound the reach of what a small human team can cover, and we pass the savings to you instead of pocketing them.

Yes, both directions are open. Upgrades take effect immediately, and your initial term resets to the new plan's term length (Section 2.5 in the contract). Downgrades take effect at your next renewal. If you downgrade, your buyout number recalculates to the new plan's remaining labor. No penalties, no friction, just clean math in either direction.

Reject it, tell us what direction to take instead, and we regenerate. Up to five regenerations per post are yours, included. You can also edit any post directly in our portal before it publishes. Nothing goes live without your approval, which is why our 5 posts per month number is actual published posts, not just generation attempts. You are always the final editor.

Your site survives. The Dockerized export clause is written to survive termination (Section 8.3 in your contract). If we ever had to cease operations, we are contractually bound to deliver a working export of your full site within 30 days. Content, design, databases, everything you need to run it anywhere. You will not be stranded. We built the clause because we would want the same protection in your shoes.

You have real flexibility. You can disable DraftDash and write your own blogs. You can swap Ethel for a different voice widget if your monthly plan includes the widget slot. What you cannot do while on a Forged plan is strip out the compliance and SEO scanning systems (Vigil and Catori), because they are what let us guarantee the performance and accessibility targets we promise. If you want those removed entirely, that is a custom engagement conversation rather than a Forged plan, and we're happy to have it with you.

Because we think it is wrong to sell a public-facing business website without it in 2026. The Americans with Disabilities Act applies to every public-facing business, period, and pretending otherwise creates unnecessary legal exposure for our clients. A standalone WCAG 2.2 AA audit runs $1,500 to $5,000 at most firms. We include it because we built Vigil, our in-house AI compliance agent, to run the audit automatically on every single deploy. The automation is why we can bundle it at no extra charge. Your site literally cannot ship non-compliant on our infrastructure, because Vigil won't let it through.

Four numbers side by side: (1) total spend over 24 months including all maintenance, (2) whether blog content and SEO work are included or separate line items on their invoice, (3) whether accessibility compliance is a one-time audit or ongoing on every update, (4) whether they offer legal indemnification if accessibility compliance fails. Run those four columns for us and any other vendor you're considering. We've run the comparison hundreds of times, and the math almost always favors us by more than 40% over a 24-month horizon, sometimes more than 60% once bundled services are counted. That is exactly why our model exists.

No. Every blog passes 360 quality checks, includes proper citations from sources you choose, and is structured like professional journalism, researched, cited, and organized for both readers and search engines. Google doesn't penalize AI content, it penalizes bad content. DraftDash produces the opposite.

The opposite. DraftDash builds on what you have. Consistent new content signals to Google that you're an active, engaged business. Your old content keeps its page rank while new content expands your keyword coverage.

Suggest a new direction and regenerate, up to 5 times per post. You can also edit posts directly before publishing. You're always in control.

No. If you have WordPress admin access, you can connect DraftDash in 5 minutes. We handle the REST API integration automatically.

Your blog publishing stops immediately after your billing period ends. We maintain all your data and vectorized content for 90 days after cancellation, giving you time to reactivate if you change your mind. If you want all your data removed, submit a written request and we'll purge everything within 2 business days.

Wherever you tell us. You configure which news outlets and publications DraftDash can cite. This means you control the editorial perspective of your content. If you don't specify sources, the AI has freedom to select appropriate citations, but you can always adjust this later.

DraftDash includes an AI-powered onboarding assistant. You can speak or type to describe how you want your content to work, target keywords, service areas, brand voice, publishing schedule, and the system will auto-configure your settings. If you'd prefer hands-on help, a dedicated account manager can walk you through the entire setup process. Always double-check what the onboarding assistant set up for you. The more completely you fill out your settings, the better your content will perform.

You choose. Default is 2,000+ words for maximum SEO impact, but you can configure shorter posts (1,000 words) if that fits your strategy better.

Yes! Each domain requires its own subscription. Multi-franchise companies with 50 locations can run 50 DraftDash plans, each with its own keyword strategy and location targeting.

Yes. All content generated by DraftDash is yours. Publish it, modify it, repurpose it however you want.

Every submission requires actual human speech, at least 2 seconds of recorded audio. Bots can't generate that. Unlike reCAPTCHA (which slows down real humans while determined spammers get through anyway), Ethel's voice requirement is a hard barrier that spam can't cross.

Ethel is customer-facing, your visitors interact with her directly on your website. But behind the scenes, you review every AI-drafted response before it's sent back. If a draft isn't right, edit it or request a new one. Your customers get a seamless experience; you keep full control.

No. Ethel listens and captures, she doesn't respond verbally. This is by design. You maintain complete control over what customers hear from your business.

We capture partial transcripts too. You'll know someone tried to reach you and what they were asking about, even if they didn't complete the submission.

Every submission also triggers a Slack notification (if configured). Even if email gets filtered, Slack catches it. Plus, all submissions are stored in your Ethel dashboard.

Two ways: (1) Live learning, every email you send through the \"Reply with AI Draft\" flow teaches Ethel how your team communicates. (2) Pre-training, connect your existing email account or Google Drive before launch. Ethel learns your communication style before the first customer speaks.

Yes. Each domain requires its own widget configuration. Contact us for multi-domain pricing.

Ethel transcribes and translates incoming messages from virtually any language. Your customers can speak in their native language; you'll receive an English translation.

5-10 minutes. Copy the embed code, paste it on your site, configure your departments, done. No developer required.

Submissions stop immediately. We retain your data for 90 days in case you want to reactivate. After that, data is purged. You can request immediate data deletion at any time, we'll complete it within 2 business days.

Not currently. MOG requires deep integration with your website, we need to build, host, and maintain it to train MOG effectively. This is what makes MOG powerful rather than generic.

We can migrate your existing website to IDFS AI hosting. Once it's on our platform, we'll set up your MOG with full access to your site content.

ChatGPT is generic AI. MOG is trained specifically on YOUR website, YOUR emails, YOUR customer data. It knows your business, not just the internet in general.

Currently, MOG captures change requests and submits them to our team. Automated change drafting (with your approval) is in development.

MOG is included with hosting for typical usage. For businesses that use MOG extensively (like a primary support channel), we offer usage-based plans. Contact us to discuss your needs.

Integration is in development. Soon, your MOG will be able to see customer inquiries (from Ethel) and content performance (from DraftDash) for complete business context.

When we update your website, MOG's knowledge is refreshed automatically. New pages, updated content, and structural changes are ingested within 24 hours.

Upload your first documents and start asking questions in under 5 minutes. Full Google Drive integration (coming soon) syncs overnight, but you can use Thea immediately with manual uploads.

PDF, Word (.doc, .docx), Excel (.xls, .xlsx), PowerPoint (.ppt, .pptx), plain text (.txt, .md), and more. If it's text-based, Thea can read it.

No. If you can ask a question in plain English, you can use Thea. Setup requires no coding, no prompt engineering, no AI expertise.

Technical: Thea converts text into mathematical representations (vectors) that capture meaning, then searches based on conceptual similarity rather than keyword matching. Experiential: Imagine a librarian who understands what you mean, not just what you say. Ask for \"budget overruns\" and she'll find documents about \"cost overages\" automatically.

Thea only answers based on YOUR documents, she doesn't make things up. Every response includes source citations so you can verify. If the answer isn't in your knowledge base, she'll tell you honestly.

Currently English-optimized. Multilingual support is on our roadmap for Q3 2026.

Thea will tell you she couldn't find relevant information in your knowledge base, and suggest refining your question or uploading additional documents.

We're targeting Q2 2026 for full Drive sync. You can manually upload documents today.

Clients on our Enterprise plan can request custom integrations. We're building native Slack/Teams connectors for Q3 2026.

AI search optimization (also called GEO or Generative Engine Optimization) is the practice of making your business visible to AI-powered search tools like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Gemini. These tools don't just list websites, they recommend specific businesses. If your business isn't optimized for AI search, you're invisible to a rapidly growing segment of potential customers.

Traditional Google search shows a list of 10 blue links and lets you choose. AI search tools read the entire internet, then give a single recommendation or a short list of 1-2 businesses. If you're not one of those 1-2, you get nothing. There's no page two, there's only recommended or invisible.

Absolutely. Traditional SEO is still the foundation. Google still drives the majority of search traffic, and a well-optimized website helps with AI search too. The best strategy combines traditional SEO with AI-specific optimization. We handle both.

Try asking ChatGPT or Perplexity to recommend a business like yours in your area. If you don't show up, you're part of the 98.8% that are currently invisible. Our free AI visibility audit will show you exactly where you stand across all major AI search platforms.

GEO is the discipline of optimizing your online presence so AI systems recommend your business. This includes structured data markup, entity clarity, citation consistency, review strategy, and content formatting that AI systems can easily parse and trust. It's the SEO of the AI era.

Some changes show results within weeks, particularly citation corrections and schema markup improvements. Broader AI visibility improvements typically take 4-8 weeks as AI systems re-crawl and re-index your content. Traditional SEO improvements generally take 3-6 months for competitive terms.

Yes. While IDFS AI is based in the Carolinas, search optimization is location-independent. We work with businesses across the United States. Our AI-powered tools and processes work the same whether you're in Charlotte, Chicago, or California.