What the Hibu contract actually says
We've read three Hibu contracts in the last year (sent to us by prospects considering the switch). The structure is the same in each: 12-month initial term, auto-renewing for another 12 months unless you cancel in writing 30+ days before renewal. Cancellation during the term triggers a "termination fee" calculated as the remaining months × the monthly rate. So if you signed up for the $600/month tier and want to leave after month 4, you owe $4,800 to walk away.
The site they built you is on Hibu's proprietary CMS. There's no source code to hand over. When the contract ends, the URL stops serving — your customers see an error page. The domain registration is in your name (good) but pointed at Hibu's nameservers; you have to manually move the DNS to your own host once you have a new site to point at.
None of this is fraud — it's in the contract. But most Hibu customers don't read the contract carefully because the sales pitch focuses on the monthly fee and the "we'll handle everything" promise. The lock-in mechanics only become visible when you try to leave.
The 3-year math on Hibu vs ANTHONY.
Take Hibu's middle tier at $600/month. That's $7,200/year. Over a 3-year contract (one renewal): $21,600. ANTHONY.'s equivalent service over the same 3 years: $999 build + ($150/month × 36 months) Performance & SEO Retainer = $6,399. Same scope of work (website + SEO + GBP management + unlimited edits), same outcome (calls and quote requests generated), at less than a third the price.
And that's assuming you stay on the ANTHONY. retainer for the full 3 years. Most customers cancel the retainer after their site is stable in the local pack and just run on $39.99/year hosting — at which point the 3-year cost drops to $999 + $120 = $1,119 vs Hibu's $21,600. That's an 18× cost differential for the same end result.
Who actually builds Hibu sites
Hibu employs sales staff and account managers in the US. The actual website builds are done by offshore template shops in the Philippines and India through a network of contractors. We've confirmed this through three different ex-Hibu customers who got escalated to the build team for revisions and ended up on calls with offshore agents.
This isn't a knock on offshore developers — there are excellent ones — but the structure means Hibu sites are built fast, from templates, by people who have never spoken to you and won't after the launch. The aesthetic ceiling is the template ceiling. Customization beyond color and copy swap requires multiple change-request cycles through the account manager. We've seen revision tickets sit in queue for 3+ weeks.
ANTHONY. is one person. Anthony does the discovery call, the design, the code, the SEO setup, and the post-launch support. When you text him about a typo on the homepage, the typo gets fixed in 20 minutes — not three weeks.
What you actually own at the end
When the Hibu contract ends, here's what you have: a domain still registered in your name. A Google Business Profile that's yours (most agencies don't actually claim ownership of the GBP). A Facebook page that's yours. And... a defunct URL. The website itself goes offline. The content disappears. The SEO ranking you spent 12-24 months building decays as the URL starts returning 404s to Google's crawler.
When the ANTHONY. relationship ends — whether you cancel the retainer, switch to a different developer, or just stop paying for hosting — here's what you have: a fully-functional website on your domain. The source code in a Git repository you can hand to any developer. The GBP fully managed and transferred to your account. The local pack ranking and inbound link profile intact. You can take the site to literally any host on earth and have it running in 24 hours. That's the difference between renting and owning.