Stop waste money! How much is a website?

After reading this article, you will understand why some people pay $20 for a website and some $20.000. The difference is enormous. This article will help you be aware of some critical moments. With this knowledge, I guarantee you will save a lot of time and money.

You will understand why some people pay $20 for a website and some $20.000

Overview:

• Save time just watch the video version
• Factors that make price
• The general question you should answer to get the price
• An approach that decreases the price
• Dividing project approach
• Advantages working with more than one company
• What should be your start point?
• My real experiment of making development cost lower
• My approach to saving money
• Conclusion of the experiment
• Prices: the cheapest website
• Prices: middle price website
• Price: most expensive website
• Final table calculator
• Conclusion

Suppose you have a business and want to develop a website for it. You will be curious to know how much is a website cost? Do I need to pay for the design separately? What is CMS? and How to make it cheaper but with good quality? We are going to discuss all these users’ queries. I will show you critical things you should be aware of to get success. The first thing you should define is the type of the website – is it standard or custom?

The first thing you should define is the type of the website – is it standard or custom

If you don’t have time. Take a look my video

What factors make the price of the website?

The cost of a website does not have any specific value. It varies due to many factors. It depends on answers to the following questions:

• Who will be the developer? You can hire a freelancer it is cheaper but risky. The company is safer but more expensive. Your own development team is flexible and safe but very expensive;
• What stack of technologies are you going to use? Is it a ready-to-use website engine like WordPress? Or is it a website builder like Wix? Or you might develop your own custom one? 

Price depends on: stack of technologies and development team

Web service providers like web programmers can charge a website based on the number of pages or the overall complexity involved. There are several ways you can get your website designed. You can develop it yourself or can hire a freelancer or company. The cost of these websites increases from about $20 – $20,000. All types of websites have their pros and cons. It depends on the requirements what exactly you are looking for.

The first question you should answer!

Is your website standard or custom? The general rule here is: “As more custom as more expensive.”

The general rule here is: “As more custom as more expensive.”

All information about each type I have explained in the separate article. But for now, you can divide them into two categories:

• Standard type:
  • Landing page
  • Business website
  • Online Store
  • Portfolio website
  • Blog
• The custom type is something else. 

It is common practice to have several types on one portal. Another common practice allows to build the standard type, and inside it develop some custom module.

For instance, you can create a regular online store that sells clothes. But besides that, there will be a page where the user will be able to try it on his/her photo virtually. 

In this case, you can develop a separate website and the module separately. 

This is the diagram that can help you choose the correct website type. LINK

What approach can the price of the website lower?

With the help of this approach, I have saved thousands of dollars on development. The main idea here is:

• Divide the project into small pieces;
• Don’t develop everything in one company;
• Make simple parts first complex after;
• Development should be delivered in small portions as Agile, not as a massive piece like a waterfall. More details about the software development life cycle you can read in a separate article;

With the help of this approach, I have saved thousands of dollars

How to divide project into small pieces?

What are the benefits of dividing the project into small pieces?

• Easier to track the progress;
• Track bugs and unexpected behavior of the application is easy;
• It is easier for developers to implement small portions instead of the massive amount of logic and scenarios;
• It is easier to pay with small amounts than the total amount for a huge piece;
• You can launch the project with some core functionality and test it instead of waiting for the full project;
• The testing part is much easier, and quality is higher;

I would recommend you to read an article about SDLC to learn more.

Easier to track the progress

Why should you develop your project in different companies?

It sounds weird but based on my experience. It gives some huge advantages instead of supporting the project with one team:

• If you go with one team, it is a risk that you will decide to leave them after a while. And it will be much more difficult and expensive to find the same team that can support your project, instead of finding somebody else for making just design. 
• It is easier to track bottlenecks. When one team makes for you project planning, design, development, and testing, it is difficult to change some of these parts if something goes wrong. But if you use a separate team for the same steps, it is easy to find somebody else and continue work with others. For instance, when I was working on a project, I have hired separate freelancers for Android, separate freelancers for web, and separate freelancers for iOS. After a couple of tasks, I saw that the web developer makes more mistakes, but Android and iOS are fine. So I have found another web developer but continued working with iOS and Android.
• It will always be cheaper. As more complex task as much you pay. 

It is easier to track bottlenecks. It will always be cheaper.

Make simple things first.

I would recommend starting from simple core functionality. You will get fast results and something for testing and release. After that, you will be able to add some modules on top of the existing solution and track the results. This approach guarantees you avoid mistakes and unexpected behavior since you will focus on new modules only instead of testing the massive functionality of the big application.

I would recommend starting from simple core functionality

One critical thing that you must be aware of regarding the calculation process.

Assume you are buying a car. Even if you are new to that, you understand that a new car is more expensive. Bently is more costly than Volkswagen. If you want to get a better deal besides year and model, you should check if the history of the car includes:

• any accidents and how serious were they;
• was it flooded or not;
• how often the previous owner changed the oil;
• the milage;

The same situation with pricing here, in making websites or any other software application. I will show you the experiment that I did for this article. 

As more details in your development plan, as less you will pay.

Experiment “How to make the development cheaper”.

Goal: In the example of my application, I will show you how I reduced prices by following the principles above. 

Functionality: My application is a QR code generator application that can customize the QR code as you want and share it for printing. 

Process: I have done several projects with the same functionality, complexity, and job description.

Here are two screenshots with all included functionality. The interesting here is the budget. The job description is the same, but the budget is different. 

The job description is the same, but the budget is different.

These are some of the bids I received.

The interesting thing here is as more budget you say, as more offer will be. Please pay attention:

• This guy has read all the descriptions because I asked to put “+” before the message to make sure they read it. So he bid just based on the budget;
• The number of medium-budget bids is lower than higher. I guess it because not all want to work on substantial complex projects. And it is easier to start and quickly finish small and medium. 

As more budget you say, as more offer will be.

My approach of buying a website.

Here is how I followed: I cannot show the third screenshot because, instead of buying a complete list of features, I divided them into small pieces and searched for a developer for each particular component. As a result, only one developer made all features.

I did not spend a lot of time searching for others. 

How did I pay: I was buying each module one by one. It gives me an opportunity to high-quality testing of the current feature before moving to the next one. In the end, you will see how costly it will be. 

I was buying each module one by one

And this is the total price for me

Conclusion of the experiment.

The conclusion is simple if you know what you are buying, you will pay less. To make it happen, you need to:

• Choose the correct type of website you need;
• Find pros and cons of each solution that you will use for that (choose CMS);
• Make a plan of scaling your project. The list of new features you going to implement in the future;
• Divide your project into small pieces;
• Start development from the simplest part; 

How much is the cheapest website?

If you want the cheapest site, you should do it by yourself. I would recommend doing website by yourself if:

• It is a simple “show info” website;
• It is a single landing page with one product or form;
• Portfolio;
• Blog;
• Simple online store without complex filters or a lot of warehouses. Or any offline synchronizations. 

In this case, you should use a website builder. There are a lot of builders that can help you with that. I am using this one for my projects. But in this case, you will have to pay a monthly subscription.

If you want the cheapest site, you should do it by yourself

Approximately price : $20 / month

NOTE: Keep in mind that if you use website builder, you will not be able to edit it as much as you want since it is the ready-to-use solution. Plan your features and research start working on the builder. Otherwise, you risk facing the situation that you will have to cancel your existing website and start from scratch because of the builder restrictions. This is an article about one of the builders I use.

What if you don’t want to do it by yourself but want to save money?

If you don’t want to make a website by yourself and don’t want to pay a monthly subscription, you have a choice. I would follow these steps: 

• Make a plan of the features that my website suppose to have;
• Hire a freelancer to make a simple based on CMS website. I would confirm with him that my CMS will be scalable enough to implement all features I needed; 
• I would show my plan to 3-4 independent developers to make sure that everything is correct;
• Then I would start the development of the core functionality. It will include navigation, implementing of the design and several web pages; 
• It would cost not much, and I would be able to get result soon;
• After that, I would add my features one by one;  

It would cost not much, and I would be able to get result soon

Approximately price with freelancer : $100 – 300

Approximately price with company: $400 – 1500

How much is the custom solution?

Here you need to clarify if we develop a custom module or custom CMS. Custom CMS means we are developing the custom engine for the website. Custom module means we are developing some custom features for the existing portal.

All details regarding custom solutions you could find in a separate article are mainly talking about prices. 

For custom CMS the prices will depend on:

• The team that you hire. The rules are the same. Freelancer is cheaper than the company. Freelancers from Pakistan will ask less than freelancers from the United States. I think you got the main idea;
• Stack of technology is essential. Keep in mind that the same goals you can achieve with different technologies. And other technologies cost different. For instance, I was making some back-end logic for my android application. I have posted the task on a freelance website, and the bids were very different. I have chosen the one I am familiar with. So the stack is critical in any custom application;

Custom CMS price: depends on team and technology.

Approximately price with freelancer : $500+ (depends on complexity)

Approximately price with company: $2000+ (depends on complexity)

For custom module, the price will depend on:

• The team. The same rules as I mentioned above;
• The technology that you use on your portal. Try to imagine that you have a car. And you want to make an upgrade to it. If it is Toyota, it would be easy to find a master that can make it for you. But if it is a Ferrari, you will have to find some specialist who has experience. The same here, if you use WordPress, it is easier, in case you have some complex custom CMS, it will be much more difficult;

Custom Module price: depends on platform and team.

If you want to avoid problems, always try to avoid custom solutions and use widespread.

Approximately price with freelancer : $50+ (depends on complexity)

Approximately price with company: $300+ (depends on complexity)

Total price table calculator:

Conclusion:

• First of all, you need to understand if you are going to make a standard or custom solution;
• Divide the project into small pieces. Make standard separate custom separate;
• You need to keep in details before search for a developer because they will bid depends on what they can provide;
• Compare offers from at least 3-4 different teams. Check what technologies are they going to use;