How much does a website cost?

03-Jan-2010 This article tries to explain the different types of websites, software, methods of building and hosting associated with building a website. 

Here is a great article on "Your Web Design Bill Demystified" from Smart Company which explains what goes into building a website.

Here are some things to consider about pricing.

Off shore vs Australian built

A lot of web companies outsource their website design and development to countries like India, Indonesia and Eastern Europe as the cost per hour could be anything from $10 to $50. They can then charge the client their hourly rate and take the profit.  The major danger with this, in my experience, is the work produced by these off-shore companies is sub standard and does not meet the brief, in fact you often wonder if they even read the brief, so after numerous changes of which you are charged, the job blows out financially.  The end result could be that the website may not be what you wanted and may not work in all browsers or not be Web Standards compliant, and this is important if you want your website to work in future version of web browsers.

This alone can affect the price of the website as the cost of labor in these countries is so cheap that the local web company can offer a cheaper product but that is also exactly what you get, a cheaper product.

All costs below are what you would expect to pay if your web person is in Australia and doing the work themselves.

Hosted VS Subscription

A hosted site is usually when you purchase your hosting and then get someone to build your site and you usually have to deal with the hosting company and the designer to get your website live.

Hosting prices are detailed below depending on your website type, Static Brochure style or CMS website

A subscription service is when the features of your website are hosted on the internet and run from an existing website portal.  Just like Google Docs or GMail let you keep all your emails or Word, Excel and Power Point files online so to is your website hosted online with another website.  This makes it easier to manage and easier to maintain.

Subscription prices

Per Month	$29	$47
	Free Trial	Free Trial
Fully fledged content management system	Yes	Yes
Built in Customer Database	Yes	Yes
eCommerce Functionality	No	Yes
Email Marketing Functionality	No	10,000 newsletters/mo
Users	1	1
Email Addresses	10	10
Disk Space	1GB	1GB
Bandwidth/month	1TB/mo	1TB/mo

Design

Website design is critical. Designing a website is very different to building it.  When thinking about the design of your website you need to consider how important your brand is to your business.
Professional Website design - This is a custom made design unique to your brand - $900 - $1800 for one concept $1,500 - $3,000 for three concepts.

Template Design - Using a pre-designed template for your look and feel this will not be unique and may not align with your brand $200 - $800.

A note on design, in my opinion it is more important to spend time and money on content for your website than spend your entire budget on design, don't get me wrong, design is very important and you don't want a DIY look but a well designed website will attract a once off viewing whereas a website with content your users find useful will engage the user like no design can.

Types of websites

Passive / Static websites

These are brochure style sites that have all the images and text hard coded into each page, web designers often build these types of sites as they are easy to build however there are often things in the background that designers don't include.  They are the cheapest and easiest type of websites.

Cost
5 page website - $750 - $2,000

Pros

• Cheap and easy to get a website
• Flexibility as there is no restriction on design
• Quick development time
• A designer can build these sites

Cons

• Changes can only be made by a web person costing you each time you change the site
• Limited functionality, you can only have pages displaying information like a brochure

Summary
This type of site is suitable if you only change the site every 6 - 12 months and have only a few pages of information

Hosting
Static website hosting could costs anywhere between $200 - $1,000 per year depending on the hosting company and the level of service and reliability you are paying for.  It is worth paying about $500 - $800 for decent hosting as you don't want your site to be slow or worst still be offline for long periods of time.

Self Managed / Content Management System (CMS) websites

A CMS is a piece of software that runs your website and enables a client with little technical skill to update their website.  The CMS software lives on the hosting computer and processes your data and any extra functionality like forms, blogs, e-commerce, e-marketing (Newsletters), polls, banner advertisements etc. 

The main problems with CMS's is that there are thousands of them out there, some large, some small, some good, some bad.  The free or open source ones are used the most because they are free, however this is often not the case, they are often sold to you by your web person and end up costing you more in the long run.

Free / Open Source CMS

The reason many website are built using an open source solution is price. An open source CMS will be cheaper than a commercial CMS. As with many open source programs, because the code is "open," the opportunities for added functionality is greater as there is a community of volunteer developers building add-ons for the CMS.  This is also one of the reason it is risky.

Cost
Simple content only based CMS - $2,000 - $4,000
CMS with Blogs or newsletter - $3,000 - $5,000
CMS with E-commerce - $6,000 - $14,000 not including Bank Feeds, gateway or SSL costs

Pros

• Free software, however this might mean the web person can keep all the profit and charge the client for the software
• Cheaper development but potentially longer development time
• Cheaper hosting

Cons

• Once the site is build they are usually not maintained or upgraded and potentially pose a security risk
• Often difficult or inconsistent to use as it has been developed by potentially thousands of volunteer developers that all have their own style and level of quality control when they develop software
• More prone to bugs and errors as there are varying degrees of quality or testing
• Limited documentation to support the CMS
• Some offer limited design options EG you are forced to work within a specified template
• If there is a bug in the software you will need to rely on a community of developers to release a software patch instead of a dedicated team to solve the problem for you
• As this software is created and supported by a team of volunteers, your site is not their first priority so expect to wait if you have a problem

Summary
This type of site is good for someone who wants to test the internet water and plans to redevelop their site in one to two years.

Hosting
The language which your site is programmed in is what primarily dictates the type of hosting you need.  Often these types of site use UNIX or LINUX hosting costing anywhere between $100 per year to $1,000 per year depending on the service level, stability and reliability.

Proprietary / Commercial Self Managed / Content Management System (CMS) websites

Most people believe that Commercial Software will cost more.  However the fact that it has ongoing maintenance and support at no extra cost will enable you to have one CMS for the life of your website and indeed your business.
You can refresh your site with a new design and have piece of mind that the software behind the website is the latest version as if you just rebuilt your site brand new.

Cost
Simple content only based CMS - $3,500- $6,000
CMS with Blogs or newsletter - $6,000 - $8,000
CMS with E-commerce - $8,000 - $18,000 not including Bank Feeds, gateway or SSL costs

Pros

• Solid robust and future proof solution that invovled updates and maintenance just like Windows Updates on your PC
• Quick development time with dedicated development team
• Piece of mind and security knowing you have a robust CMS with support and service level agreements
• Easier to use as the CMS as each module or added functionality is not an tacked on to the site but is integrated into the CMS as a whole
• Consitent programming and high level of quality control as the development team needs to support the CMS

Cons

• More expensive initially than open source
• Hosting requires higher level of performance and suport to ensure the site works at it's optimal level

Summary
This type of CMS is for people who want to add things later on and be able to change them through the one login and integrate them with the existing pages.  EG if you want to add a blog later you can automatically have it applied to all current news articles with no extra coding, total integration.  Or you plan to add a newsletter but want to manage it within the existing login area of your website.

Hosting
The language which your site is programmed in is what primarily dictates the type of hosting you need.  Often these types of sites use Windows hosting costing anywhere between $800 per year to $1,800 per year depending on the service level, stability and reliability.

Questions to determine what you need

• Did you engage the services of a Graphic Designer to develop your logo and business stationary? This will determine whether you need a custom design or a pre built website that can be customised.
• How much time to you have to dedicate to updating the site?
• How many sales enquiries do you expect to get from your website?
• Do you have products you can sell via your website?
• Do you have a newsletter you currently post to your customers offline?
• Do you have an existing list of your customers email addresses?
• Do you contact your customers with special offers?
• Would your customers benefit from a member only login area?
• How often do you plan to change the site?
• How many pages will you have on the site?
• What percentage of your existing customers currently visit your site?

If you are unsure about any of the above I would start by asking your existing customers what they would like see on your website and what would the ultimate website for your business be.  You may be surprised that they want something totally different to what you think you need.