Feb 07 2008
How Much Should A Website Cost?
If you are one of the people or businesses out there who think you are better off without a website or having an online presence…you are sadly mistaken. If you also think that website development and marketing is a minimum wage job and that you should be paying $100 for a website…you once again are sadly mistaken. I don’t know how many inquiry’s we get for website development and marketing and we come back with a VERY reasonable proposal and people respond, “I can’t afford that.”
If you can’t afford what it costs to get a decent website up and running, then you are not ready to dive into the web. If people and businesses only realized what a good website and website marketing plan could do for their business, they would be amazed. Basically, by NOT having a website up and running, you are shutting yourself out from a majority of the population as most people prefer to look online before they do any purchasing of any sort. Most people then prefer to buy online after their initial “shopping around” period is completed.
It’s no longer the day of brick and mortar and people have to get over this. If you are not willing to change your business style and move to the web, you will eventually sink in this huge Internet pool.
For those who think they can get a nice website up and running for under $500, well…you can definitely get a website up and running for that. That’s your good news. Will it be good? Probably not! Will it do everything that you need? Probably not! Will you run into problems down the road with it? Yes, you will. The old saying goes, “you get what you pay for” and this could not be more true for a website and also firms that say they can build you a great site for under $500 or so.
So, you’re probably wondering what is realistic for website pricing. It really all depends on what you need the website to do. What kind of functionality do you need? Do you need a database driven website or just a static website to hold information? Do you need an e-commerce website? What else do you want with your website? Do you want website analytics? Do you want a web marketing plan with search engine optimization? Do you want pay per click services? It just depends on your business needs and wants. Here is a very general pricing guideline on what you will pay for a website. These are VERY ballpark figures and they will definitely fluctuate depending on your project specifications.
- Static Website up to 10 pages - $500 - $2,500 (more depending on # pages)
- Database Driven Website - $1,500 (basic) - $25K and up (complex)
- E-commerce Website - $2,500 (very basic with 10 products or so) - $$,$$$ (as high as you can imaging depending on complexity)
Remember, these are very ballpark. Each firm will have different pricing structures. Just don’t expect to get any $100 proposals back for a 30 page website. If you do, it’s got SCAM written all over it or it’s just a junk site someone is duck-taping together for you that will eventually fall apart and give you more headaches than revenue.
Good luck with your business ventures and please remember to be realistic when pricing out web services. It’s better to do it right the first time around, instead of getting a poor website and having to re-do everything.
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