Thanks for the feedback. Basically I have been running www.galleries-online.co.uk, which I built from scratch using Colfusion, for some years now. I'm not particularily advanced and do not have the time to learn the skills to take the website onto the next level.

My friend's company have been building coldfusion web applications for 10 years and have developed a comprehensive application framework over those years.

The idea will be that they redesign and redevelop the whole website using this application framework (I think that's the right term). I will pay an initial fee for the development and design and then a small subscription for hosting and maintainence.

The advantages are that the application can be built quickly using tried and tested components which are regularily updated in line with the latest upgrades. There is also the advantage of handing all aspects of the develoment and maintainence over to another company leaving me with the space to focus on marketing and business development.

The disadvantage of course is that I am tied to them. I'm not planning to sell the website in the near future but I would like to know whether the value of the website would be reduced significantly if the buyer is tied to the same arrangements.

cheers

Neil