Free website creation or should I pay for it?

macman

I wasn't suggesting that one person alone should necessarily build it (not that we really know the scope of this project). But collectively, the amount quoted would buy an awful lot of hours from the individual(s) working on it.

[Deleted User]

macman wrote: »

I wasn't suggesting that one person alone should necessarily build it (not that we really know the scope of this project). But collectively, the amount quoted would buy an awful lot of hours from the individual(s) working on it.

In my IT firm (not web design, but we'd do it if someone really wanted it), that would buy you 3 people working full time for 3 to 4 weeks. Pick an 'expensive' firm and you get expensive rates.

Heck,we'd charge you a couple of days time for just establishing and documenting the scope.

Back when I was young, I could probably put together a decent looking site (but not pro-looking) in a month or so, and charge under £3k for it. I never used templates, was happy writing my own php and designing MySQL databases. I'm sure you could find a 20something with a few years experience who can do it part time for a low price.

Just be firm in documenting your scope / out of scope. Document your workflows, proof designs before they are built ect..

debitcardmayhem

mehera wrote: »

Most web designers charge for the amount of pages you have in fact!

If you want a proper site that is a proper business proposition then you have to pay for it!

I am sure you can find someone who will charge less though. Look for small, local designers who do in house SEO. This will be cheaper than a big company!

mehera wrote: »

People seem to think they can dash out and do anything these days - which is a commendable spirit I must say!

However, there is a very good reason WHY there are professional plumbers, web designers, publishers and so on . . . .

Never think you can just shoot out there and compete with guys who have years of training, experience and thousands of pounds worth of money invested!

This is a 'something for nothing' culture we are living in!

You have to invest the proper time, energy and money into whatever you are doing.

And if you want to knock up a template website for a laugh then go for it - just do not think it will be any good for a SERIOUS business . . ..

@mehera Who designed/implemented your website and did it cost much ? Your points are valid, but I am just interested and if you want a basic critique then I will happily tell you...if not then fine but I will tell you anyhow, there are issues at first glance, and I am not trolling but check your link to Home at the bottom of your pages they point to home.html rather than index.html (the real home page) home.html throws a 404 page not found, OH and professional is spelt as I have typed it.

mehera

I actually designed the website myself - using dreamweaver and photoshop!

It took years to get good at designing however.

You cannot do it without some knowledge of programming - all the artwork on my site was designed by scratch . . . .

But I am not too good at spelling thou!!!

Again I have met small/one man band designers who seemed to know what they were talking about and did not cost the earth.

Big companies are extremely hit and miss and there are plenty of scammers offering you 'the first page on google' . . ..

Designing the site is one thing however SEO is another. There is a good arguments for having SEO over many years even and so this can cost a bit!

It really depends on how much competition you have . . ..

harrythebee

40k is way over the top and someone is trying to take you for a ride. Free websites may be a good way to get the ball rolling but you will lake control over its functionality and design and as others have said it may look cheap, which could reflect badly on your business.

InsideInsurance

harrythebee wrote: »

40k is way over the top and someone is trying to take you for a ride.

We have absolutely no idea what the OP's site does other than its "big"

If it were a clone of Confused.com for example, they should snap their hand off at that price. You'd need to add a couple of zeros to the end to get to a reasonable price to be able to hook into the webservices of 50 insurers sites plus screenscrape another few dozen etc


If it is a purely a brochureware, other than maybe a contact us form, or if its a standard ecommerce site then it is very expensive.

It is easier to talk about man days than cost to estimate if something is reasonable or not. We all know that a developer in India will be cheaper than a developer in London but in theory they should both take a day to do the same thing (assuming level of documentation etc is also the same).


As with getting any custom work done, shop around and compare prices, references etc. Chose the option that then represents the best value to you.

harrythebee

Confused.com didn't start in its current form though, it has evolved over time and I am pretty sure the original website did not cost 40k to make. Even so, that is a very large expenditure to make before the OP has even got their business off the ground. It would probably be wiser to get the basics running and then add additional things once the business starts performing. You could also try doing a course to learn how to do make a website yourself, so that you have full control over its design. Might be a lot cheaper in the long run but will require some effort.

paddyrg

Pretty sure you'll find most major sites like confused.com started out with some real money being spent, not just a static page on Wordpress! The infrastructure behind scaleable sites has got a lot cheaper and easier to develop for, but for a 'large' site with a 'large' userbase, it will cost 'large' money.

Yes, you can get some fresh graduate to rush off like an excited puppy and make something superficially functional, however before you know it you'll either find it's vulnerable to XSS, SQL Injection, or similar and scale fine for upto 10 users, then turn to chalk. If you need to handle big amounts of data for big amounts of users, you almost certainly need to design some kind of redundancy, resource leveling, asynchronously distributed system with the failure modes managed properly and a whole sales funnel designing into the tool. Plus hardware, plus support etc. For that, £40k is good value. And spend at least the same again on promotion!!

chunter

not-news. not enough information to say anything. OP must elaborate or entire thread is pointless.

mehera

harrythebee wrote: »

Confused.com didn't start in its current form though, it has evolved over time and I am pretty sure the original website did not cost 40k to make. Even so, that is a very large expenditure to make before the OP has even got their business off the ground. It would probably be wiser to get the basics running and then add additional things once the business starts performing. You could also try doing a course to learn how to do make a website yourself, so that you have full control over its design. Might be a lot cheaper in the long run but will require some effort.

It sure as heck wasn't built on a cheap and nasty template site either . . .

There is a saying in the building trade:

"Pay peanuts - get monkeys!"

You get what you pay for in web design as well!!!