I read somewhere that people might think that a website is a product that they buy. They look to fInd a company that gives it to them for the least amount. But it’s not like that. Website Design is a service that takes many hours of work. If you are receiving quotes, it can range anywhere from $1500 to $30,000. Answering the question, “How much does a website cost” is getting more difficult every year. If you search for prices online, you will see ads from companies such as Go Daddy that provide one for “free”. The software might be free, but you also have to build it. Not so easy.
Websites built with WordPress start off with free software. WordPress is open source. Many, many people have built careers on that fact. All web software requires a host company such as Bluehost or GoDaddy that will rent you space on a hard drive somewhere in the cloud for as little as $5 per month. That’s great. You also have to buy the domain that represents the IP address for your server space. That can cost roughly $15 per year. Also great. So, for as little as $75 per year, you can run your website.
People find out by trying to making a site themselves that it can be complex. I built a website for a restaurant in Boston over four years ago that was recently bought by a hotelier in Oregon. The message I first got from the rep of the new company was that they would not need my services anymore. He was going to build one. The next message said the plan had changed and he wanted to continue the website with my help. My guess is that he realized pretty quickly that making a website involves a lot of experience and a long learning curve.
Your goals and requirements for the website will make a difference in the price. Fewer hours, obviously, will result in a lower price. A base price for even a few pages may take more time than you think. Consider that several meetings at 1 to 2 hours each add up to 4 hours minimum. Researching and sizing photographs, another 2. Building a home page with design styling, 4 to 6; Editing text, organizing the information, establishing a flow, and populating each page; Building forms, adjusting code settings for added functionality; setting up search engine optimization and sizing for mobile; trouble shooting, client training. Whew! Thirty hours +… For larger sites, multiply it 3 or 4 times. You also receive the designer’s artistic craft and the developer’s code craft, which is taken from years of experience.
But in the end, you own a unique website. Know that the ever changing internet demands that your site needs to be updated, watched over, backed up, improved, etc. Consider your website as a refection of your business, your brand, which grows and changes as you do. Also, that your webmaster is intimate with the workings of your website and that they will continue to offer you their services to keep that site viable and useful.
The article “How Much Does a Website Cost?” in Forbes by Ilya Pozin was used in researching this topic.