Website Build Quote Excessive?

zackary71

Hi
Following on from the distance selling query, I hope fellow MSE'rs can help on website build quotation. I basically need website with integrated webshop and sagepay. I'd be updating a couple of images weekly and I'm not technically minded !
Been quoted either £900 using coffeecup software or £700 using EKM Powershop which would also incur £25 monthly hosting. I've looked at both options and EKM looks preferable but in effect, I'd be paying £700 to bring my ideas to life.In theory, I could build it myself using EKM but don't have the necessary skills.Do the quoted prices sound right?

chalkie99

zackary71 wrote: »

In theory, I could build it myself using EKM but don't have the necessary skills.

That's life isn't it?

In theory I could service my own car, rewire my house, etc, etc, ..... but if you don't have the skills you have to pay someone else and they need to make a living wage just the same as you do.

I don't think either of the solutions you mention are necessarily the best but the cost would obviously depend on the set up time which, in turn, will relate to the number of products and options and variations required (sizes, colours, etc.).

I don't think anyone can guesstimate a realistic quote without much more detail.

InsideInsurance

For a quote you obviously need to give details which are missing from your post that said I disagree on what Chalkie says is required.

To use an off the shelf solution with a customised (but with the standard back end/ workflows etc) look and feel I would expect a reasonable organisation to charge in the region of £750-£1000

A system should be able to take unlimited numbers of products and should allow the business owner to enter these themselves once the system is up and running with a few products in it to test functionality. Now if a person is rich enough to pay developer rates for data entry or wants an SEO/ Marketing person to create copy for product descriptions then it would be considerably more.

zackary71

chalkie99 wrote: »

I don't think either of the solutions you mention are necessarily the best but the cost would obviously depend on the set up time which, in turn, will relate to the number of products and options and variations required (sizes, colours, etc.).

In terms of what the site would do,it would be a simple 5/6 page setup with "about us,t&c,privacy policy" etc. Initially. It would 10 landscape images available in 3 sizes,with a couple of images added each week. So not many products or variations.
What solutions would you recommend as alternative?
thanks again

chalkie99

InsideInsurance wrote: »

For a quote you obviously need to give details which are missing from your post that said I disagree on what Chalkie says is required.

er... what did I say was required apart from more details?

Snakeeyes21

I would recommend cs-cart, www.cs-cart.com its a very good piece of cart software, integrated with all the major payment gateways, it costs around £145 for a licence from a reseller like martfox.com.

The included templates are quite good, but you can get a 3rd part to design a skin
for a few hundred quid. or you can buy ready made skins from various places.

Once its all setup its very easy to add products and manage order etc.

theres a demo you can try below or you can download a 30 day trial and upload it you your webspace.

www.cs-cart.com/trial

storefront
demo.cs-cart.com/professional

admin panel

http://demo.cs-cart.com/professional/admin.php

rdchick

What you're paying for is the security of the website ie: SSL certificates which secure card payments and peoples details. That will be your main cost and it's a must if you're selling on your website SSL certs can be between £99.99 to £499.99 so might want to check which one they are supplying you...

Snakeeyes21

rdchick wrote: »

What you're paying for is the security of the website ie: SSL certificates which secure card payments and peoples details. That will be your main cost and it's a must if you're selling on your website SSL certs can be between £99.99 to £499.99 so might want to check which one they are supplying you...

This is not the case, a decent ssl certificate can be picked up for about £10 http://www.positivessl.com/ these are issued by comodo a very trusted brand in ssl security.
you can even get the EV ssl as a free upgrade

steve1980

SSL Certificate can be purchased for £69.99. There are also plenty of open source shopping carts that can do the job properly.

Unlimited hosting can be purchased for £42.99 a year, domain name comes in at £6.98 for 2 years (.co.uk)

Total so far = £119.96

Design of said website can be around the £400.00 mark depending on what you want.

TOTAL COST = £519.96

Almost £400.00 saving instantly.

Coffeecup, don't do it. Along with all the other web based builders such as Mr Site, Moonfruit, Weebly etc.

chalkie99

Our hosting costs £30 per year from Vidahost.com who are a Bath based company with exceptional service. They have several cart options which are installed with a couple of clicks including Zen Cart, Magento and OpenCart, all of which will provide you with more than you need.

Our SSL costs £30 per year.

You can probably teach yourself enough to set up a small site.

Idiophreak

Neither seem particularly excessive to me. I was thinking about making some money on the side by sellings simple, cookie-cutter CMS sites to small businesses...and really, when I thought about it, by the time you take out taxes, hosting, hardwear, certificates, etc and deal with a certain amount of specification and support, I really wouldn't bother starting a side at all for less than £500 - and that would be a completely static "here's who we are, here's our phone number" page. I'd have thought that something with secure payment etc would be another £250 or £500, so £1000 for the lot sounds about right to me, without knowing much about the particular details.

Of course, I could sit down and write the thing in a day, but actually writing the site's a fraction of the total work involved - and for 3 or 4 days' work, you're not going to make your millions if you're charging £400 as steve suggests...