Poll: How much do websites costs

[carnavia]

How much do you charge for websites, or how much did you pay for yours? Take the poll here: How Much Websites Costs

[sectorxero]

I paid about 240.00 for two years of unlimited space and unlimited bandwidth. My website is in it's infancy and hold probably less than 100 megabytes.

I don't know if I should continue with this plan, or find a cheap skate route. Something that gives me only like 1 gigabyte of data for storage?

What do you guys think?

[wildreason]

Errr... really?

How about using the forum features and posting a poll and having a discussion here, as opposed to directing traffic away from this site and to your site.

[aeroweb99]

Yeah, agree. It always makes me wonder why web designers will relentlessly spam a web design forum(s). Do they actually get business off guys like us?

[wildreason]

Definitely not. Minimal traffic, next to nothing search engine ranking boost.

It's like one of the 1000 "What every designer must know about SEO!" threads. Same basically copy/pasted info. I have had a really hard time finding a web development forum that isn't littered with spam.

[carnavia]

If I post the poll on this site, then there would be a link from other websites to this page so that I can use more values for the results and a larger variety of people. And why would anyone want to spread the same poll on different sites? There should be one poll with all the results in one place.

As far as traffic. Yes, it does bring traffic. And since my site came up with the poll, then my site deserves the traffic.

I contribute to this site just as much as I do mine. I deliver opinions, answer questions and provide feedback to the community here. I am not a spammer. You're overusing the word "spam", so here it is: Spam is the use of electronic messaging systems (including most broadcast media, digital delivery systems) to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately. from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_%28electronic%29

Also, when there is one spam-like message, there is always a few messages that complain about the spam. So complaining about spam is a bigger problem than spam itself, let alone the fact that this is not even spam and there are complaints.

But why don't we leave the comments about the actual poll itself and contribute to high quality, related content, being about the cost of websites as this thread was intended for. Sorry, that I didn't use a poll made by this forum, but I would love to talk about it here with you, if you guys don't mind. Isn't that what a forum is all about? How about it?

[aeroweb99]

Ok, I looked at the poll, took the poll, and don't see any point whatsoever in the poll.

This poll is to measure how much websites costs. This will give web designers a good idea of what to charge and consumers how much to pay.

Websites range in cost anywhere from "free" to 1 million dollars. This is not going to give anybody an idea what to charge or what to pay. There are waaayyy too many variables. You seem knowledgeable enough to realize that. It means nothing.

[Corrosive]

Originally Posted by aeroweb99

Websites range in cost anywhere from "free" to 1 million dollars. This is not going to give anybody an idea what to charge or what to pay. There are waaayyy too many variables. You seem knowledgeable enough to realize that. It means nothing.

I'd have to agree with this. Although I do think that 'what should a website cost?' is a very interesting debate it is a 'how long is a piece of string' question. I am re-developing the web strategy for a large (and well known) organisation in the UK and am about to sign on the dotted line for phase one of a three phase website build and web marketing campaign which will eventually cost around £320,000. On the other hand if I create a static 5 page website for a friend or a local business, in my spare time, I will probably do it for £400 - 600.

Quite a difference huh?

[Bestdeveloper]

the websites and templates we produce are much cheaper
visit our site and we will be happy to help you

[aeroweb99]

Why don't you help by posting something relevant to the conversation...

[ernesto]

How are dancing bananas not relevant?

I think polls are a bit silly. Too many people lie, making the results not very useful.

[salright]

I think the question is too general needs to be qualified. There's a huge range of variables with many of the hosting providers. Beyond the basics, things like Cpanel/Plesk interfaces, advance mail filtering, SSH shell access, automated SAN-based backup/restores, additional IPs for SSL certs, custom/remote database access, SLA agreements and so on all will add to the cost.. but may be necessary depending on what you are doing.

[carnavia]

I agree that results for these types of polls are not completely accurate. But it definitely gives a good idea of what to estimate. Professional companies measure these results and take into consideration that people are not completely honest.

As far as the Bananas, I don't see how they are relevant either.

@salright - it's general for a reason. I want to know the price of what people pay/charge for websites. Or how about what they rather pay for or charge (if they lie). The poll may also cause the stronger results to mediate what the actual cost of websites are.

If a potential client sees that more people have chosen $1000+, chances are they will be more comfortable paying that price. So the poll serves a lot more than gathering inaccurate data.

[outsourcingrbts]

According to web site functionality and design has depend the cost.

[waizen]

Usually, the cost of a website is a 'it depends' kind of question, but as a ballpark figure, I start by figuring out what my estimated hours are going to be. I then multiply that by $75.00/hr US. I try to build in some more hours than that to cover unforeseen expenditures. I then add all the added costs of the project, such as extra apps, specialized talent, etc.

Everything is spelled out in writing in the bid so that everyone is on the same page. A signed contract follows.

Of course, nothing is set in stone. If a client provides, or has provided, a bunch of work in the past or the future, then you might want to go a bit easy with the hourly part.

Get at least half up front and the rest after the project has been completed and approved, but just before launch. Or at least get part up front and installments at certain milestones, each of which have been spelled out in writing before hand.

Try to get payment by credit card if possible...that way cash flow becomes someone else's problem.

Any further hourly work, such as updates or changes (after the initial project has been completed and launched, of course) is billed at $70 - $75 per hour, depending on the relationship with the client. A good, dependable client with a good history with me can get away with a freer payment schedule and terms.

Of course, that $75 per hour figure is for basic website type stuff. Any specialized work, such as animation (Flash, 3D) or anything beyond the usual thing that falls under website work is billed according to the specialty, usually somewhere above the $75 mark.

In other words, think of $75 as a starting point. Oh, and my minumum is $20 (if a project is quick enough and somewhat rounded up to the first 15 minutes. In other words, if something I do for a client runs me about five minutes, I make believe it took me 15 minutes, really about $18.75, but I round that up to $20...did that make sense?).

Come to think of it, I really haven't raised my prices in quite a while. Hmmm...maybe that $75 will be getting adjusted soon.

[arnoldap]

Are you talking about the cost of a website? I mean the cost of a web template and its contents. Whether you are talking web hosting cost of a site? From $50 onwards you can buy good blog and websites. But hosting expenses are not included here.

[carnavia]

Originally Posted by waizen

Usually, the cost of a website is a 'it depends' kind of question, but as a ballpark figure, I start by figuring out what my estimated hours are going to be. I then multiply that by $75.00/hr US. I try to build in some more hours than that to cover unforeseen expenditures. I then add all the added costs of the project, such as extra apps, specialized talent, etc.

Everything is spelled out in writing in the bid so that everyone is on the same page. A signed contract follows.

Of course, nothing is set in stone. If a client provides, or has provided, a bunch of work in the past or the future, then you might want to go a bit easy with the hourly part.

Get at least half up front and the rest after the project has been completed and approved, but just before launch. Or at least get part up front and installments at certain milestones, each of which have been spelled out in writing before hand.

Try to get payment by credit card if possible...that way cash flow becomes someone else's problem.

Any further hourly work, such as updates or changes (after the initial project has been completed and launched, of course) is billed at $70 - $75 per hour, depending on the relationship with the client. A good, dependable client with a good history with me can get away with a freer payment schedule and terms.

Of course, that $75 per hour figure is for basic website type stuff. Any specialized work, such as animation (Flash, 3D) or anything beyond the usual thing that falls under website work is billed according to the specialty, usually somewhere above the $75 mark.

In other words, think of $75 as a starting point. Oh, and my minumum is $20 (if a project is quick enough and somewhat rounded up to the first 15 minutes. In other words, if something I do for a client runs me about five minutes, I make believe it took me 15 minutes, really about $18.75, but I round that up to $20...did that make sense?).

Come to think of it, I really haven't raised my prices in quite a while. Hmmm...maybe that $75 will be getting adjusted soon.

Very-well stated. I think $75 is a decent price, but it is quite high. Going any higher and you'll be more involved with the higher paying clients. There are a lot of web designers, both companies and freelancers, who charge $75/hour.

[Bestdeveloper]

Carnavia, we do have lots of free website templates, so feel free to visit our site

http://www.websitetemplates.bz/

[waizen]

Hmm, I'm not sure if I've misunderstood the question. What I was referring to was the cost of building a website and how I come up with the figure on my bid. Also, I usually try to stay away from templates since they usually look like...well...templates.

Having said that, I do use templates depending on the application, for instance, sometimes a particular third party CMS app or third party e-commerce solution uses templates to start with. I then customize the look of that template. However, just to get those templates to stop looking like templates can take quite a bit of work. If I don't have to use them, I start from scratch...the project can go a lot quicker that way.

Now, the $70 - $75 per hour figure is really not that high in my opinion. I routinely get that. Even more for specialized work. Heck, there was a time, not too long ago when my animation work (3D for visualization and television graphics) was getting me around $125 per hour (in the early 2000's).

Look at it this way: In the U.S. at least, where I'm from, we use professionals like doctors and lawyers who routinely charge a heck of a lot more per hour. And, we may not like it, but we all routinely agree to pay those prices (insurance usually pays the doctor's bills). Trust me, those folks aren't better at what they do than we are at what we do.

As website designers, we have all put in a great deal of time, effort, money and emotion to learn our craft. That's a heck of an investment on our part. We have a specialized skill set that is needed in the marketplace. There is no reason we need to feel we should not earn a fair amount for what we can do.

If a certain client cannot pay for your services, then let that client find a way to come up with the money, just like with anything else they might need (see how far they get bellyaching about their lawyer's invoice...do you think that lawyer will lower his price just because the client doesn't want or can pay the price?). It sounds harsh but we are not in the charity business. We are professionals.

Also, just do the math: figure out how much you've spent in hardware, software, education, marketing and all the costs of running your business. It adds up. Suddenly that $70-$75 range doesn't sound that hot, no?

And, the more we undersell our wares, the worse it is for the industry in general. That $70-$75 figure is just a minimum, folks.

[Blind Knight]

Just for the record, here in Brazil, we are underselling this service a lot. I charged around $25/h for a big website and got a lot of complaints. I even lost some jobs when I was trying to offer this small fee.

Thank god I'm a Veterinary and do the coding just for the fun of it... maybe this could be the problem here. To many people coding!