[Ventures]

An Introduction

Why am I writing this article? It seems to me there are some misconceptions floating around about what the price is for a professionally created website.

A lot of terrible price quotes are being thrown around. I've had people ask me if I could design and code a business website for only $20. No.

Let me make this clear: You will NOT, under any circumstance, receive a 100% unique, custom, professionally coded, industry standard, fully functional website for less than $500.

Spoiler (Click to View)
If you've noticed the threads I've posted, you'll see that I offer a "unique PPD website creation service". Yes, I offer dirt cheap prices, but I use the same framework & already have a huge reserve of stock images. Creating those sites take no more than an hour most of the time.

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So what IS the price of a website?

Right now, you're probably thinking to yourself, "Well shit. bitcube just mentioned that anyone who's offering a full website design for less than $500 is probably ripping you off."

Well, it's not necessarily 100% true. You can have your website creation outsourced to less-privileged countries for a price ten times less than that of a freelancer or professional company. But, I'll explain why outsourcing your website creation to an offshore employee is a bad idea later on in the thread.

Carrying on. Put simply, a professionally created website cost can range anywhere from $1,000 - $30,000.

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Why does a website cost that much?

There are a few things that go into business website creation (est. prices):

• Domain - $15/year
  • Most domains will cost anywhere from $9 - $15. Some special domains like .io will go anywhere from $30 - $80.
• Hosting - $150/year
  • Professional hosting will cost at least $150 a year. Taken monthly, it's not really that bad. But still pricey.
• Design - $35/hour (median)
  • The design is one of the hardest parts of website creation. You're looking at 30+ hours of pushing out new designs and changing things. You wanted a unique website, right?
• Development - $30/hour (median)
  • The developer who's coding your project is going to be dealing with the following, so be nice to him:
    • Desktop site
    • Mobile site
    • Content Management System
    • Graphics & Logo Design
    • Content Creation
    • Social Media Integration
    • Search Engine Optimization
    • Crossbrowser Testing (making sure it works in IE, Chrome, Safari, Opera, Firefox, Netscape, etc)
    • e-Commerce Plugins
    • Branding/Identity Development
• Maintenance - $300/month OR charge per update
  • If the client doesn't know anything about website creation, this might be crucial for the success of the website in the long term.

So all in all, you're looking at somewhere in the thousands for a website.

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Outsourcing vs Freelancer vs Company

So you don't actually have $10,000 to drop on a professional website. I've made a little pricing chart w/ features on it for your convenience.

Remember, your website is your first impression on the audience. If you feel comfortable leaving your future in the hands of a most likely impoverished, underpaid employee in another country, more power to you.



Now, this table doesn't apply to ALL outsourced employees, freelancers, and companies. But it does apply to most.

Example of outsourced/offshore company: http://www.agentsofvalue.com/

Example of company: http://www.nightowlinteractive.com/

Notice the difference? There's a big one.

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Who should I choose?

This honestly depends on your budget & project. If you're looking for a quick solution to a PPD site, thank you site, or single page landing site, you might want to go with an offshore employee just because it's cheap and easy.

If you're looking to create a small business or build an online portfolio, a freelancer will bring you the best price and options.

If you're looking to compete with Best Buy, Samsung, Apple, consult a website creation firm and have a couple grand on your hands to drop on a phenomenal website.

Hope this article helps with understanding what you're getting for what you're paying. To all those freelancers on HF who are designing & developing websites, I challenge you to show me a site you've done for less than $100, has more than 5 pages, and is up to industrial standards on every level. And if you are really charging less than $100 for a product like that, may God have mercy on your soul when you're in the real world getting mobbed by thousands of clients wanting the same prices for 50-hour work quality.

[Mr‎‎]

Really nice thread! Explains alot about how it all works!

- Mr.Main

[brewery]

I would like everyone to see this post. I've worked with bitcube for quite some time, and as the developer in our team, it really is sometimes a daunting task to complete everything a client orders. This is in part due to the fact that 1) customers expect unreasonably short time frames, and I mean, have a working CMS or add-on buy system done for this framework in 48 hours, or 2) they come up with all sorts of shenanigans to be done upon their page in, again, unreasonably short time frames.
Also, concerning the work that bitcube, or any designer in fact does: that is difficult OK? How long do you think it takes to make however many page designs, which are of course unique in color, layout, responsiveness, all of course in ridiculous time frames?
Now yes, there are times when we, or other personal teams, will reuse their own frameworks, so you may receive cheaper prices, but remember that those are still custom tailored toward you in any case. Unlike those web-dev giants like aforementioned.
So in all, please keep in mind that, what you as a client may ask for is quite time consuming and thought depleting. So next time don't complain about "ridiculous pricing" if you don't know what goes into a custom tailored website and instead consult yourself with the nearest web-dev giant and get yourself a cheap, static, boring, maintenance free website and save a couple bucks, and the eyes of anyone wanting to see your overdone site.

[Alex™]

Isnt it cheaper to lean to code yourself?

[Assault]

Isnt it cheaper to lean to code yourself?

ALOT, but too many people feel coding is useless.

[Alex™]

ALOT, but too many people feel coding is useless.

The world runs on scripts and programs. Your electricity, computers, websites, cars, tv, you name anything electrical and I can guarantee it's not analog.

[xhflhkeuhwguu34]

I've billed clients $400 for building a WP site on top of a $50 theme.

Those prices are fairly accurate, although my min for custom work is around $1k.

[Programming]

I can vouch for bitcube, I've seen his work, worth WAY more than 500!

[J. McCarthy]

don't listen to him!
dey r free only weebly!

but in all seriousness great thread, thanks

[Ventures]

Isnt it cheaper to lean to code yourself?

Yes, it would be cheaper. But who's really going to spend a year of their life studying coding languages when they could spend a year of their life starting a business who can pay for a someone who has?

The only reason why people hire coders is because they think it's more worth it to pursue their own dream. They think it's worth it to pay a coder a tiny fraction of the amount that they'll earn back from it. Most of the time, they fail to make money from their ideas.

Thus is the life of a coder. A coder has seen it all: dreams, hopes, ideas, and theories. A coder knows that chasing these dreams will most likely fail, so he doesn't chase them like the fools who chase them endlessly.

[m4dh4ck3r]

Great thread,I've been asked by many users to make websites for 50$. They don't reply when I say the minimum I work for is 500$.

[Assault]

Thus is the life of a coder. A coder has seen it all: dreams, hopes, ideas, and theories. A coder knows that chasing these dreams will most likely fail, so he doesn't chase them like the fools who chase them endlessly.

This is something to live by ^
Said perfectly [:

[Ventures]

This is something to live by ^
Said perfectly [:

It's such a sad day when the majority of the doers (website creators) know that the majority of the ideas generated will fail.

[Damdomy]

It's such a sad day when the majority of the doers (website creators) know that the majority of the ideas generated will fail.

I second that. I just don't have courage to tell the client :(

[Bag]

Thank you so much for posting this!

I'm a meanstack dev (aka mongo, express, angular, node)
and this is pretty spot on about everything.

sometimes I'll do project for cheap on here because I'm bored but honestly I'm glad someone else understand the time, work, and fair pricing that goes into things!