The cost of a webpage

Have you ever wondered why software companies place a price list for their products so rarely? Is it a marketing gimmick forcing customers to make a phone call or write an email to find out about the price list?

Well, none of those things. The case is more complicated and it is not about hiding the real price from the customer so as not to scare him off at the first contact. The point is that most companies treat each client individually and, so to speak, you buy, dear reader, a tailor-made website, customized to your business, often to your existing brand on the market.

Marketers are outstripping each other in newer and newer techniques of promotion and encouraging customers to buy. But even the best sellers cannot say in advance how much a website will cost. There are some exceptions to this rule, but I'll tell you more about them later.

What factors affect costs?

Depending on the complexity of the project and the adopted business model, we can distinguish several factors influencing the final price:

• creation costs, i.e. specialists' fees - this is the lion's share of costs. Depending on what will be done for you, you can distinguish: the price of preparing a graphic design, rebranding your brand (logo, business cards, marketing gadgets), the price of preparing a website management system (CMS), all integrations, e.g. with social networks or other applications, additional language versions, preparation of the website content and finally other custom solutions,
• maintenance costs - often customers ask for the so-called maintenance package, which means that they do not really have time to update their website, software updates, etc. They prefer to outsource it to a specialist, especially when it comes to building content.
• costs in subscriptions - this element mainly applies to websites built in various ready to use systems, e.g. wix.com,
• domain and server maintenance costs - these are fixed costs, usually paid annually. These costs are not directly related to the construction and creation of the website, but nevertheless, they should be kept in mind.

Contractors have a crucial influence on the price.

In general, every service business, a significant part of the price for a given service is spent on human labour. None of us wants to work for little money, that is obvious and not up for discussion. It is the same with the contractors who work on the website, they are usually people who are among the best paid on the market. However, among these performers, we can distinguish certain groups that I will try to briefly describe.

Interactive agencies

It is probably the most common form of activity related to the production of websites and advertisements.

They are characterized by a relatively high price, but they provide interesting designs and good quality in a very short time.

Software house - a company dealing with software

Another form that you can come across in your search is a software house, which is a company strictly dealing with custom software development.

They are characterized by a moderate price. They provide as interesting projects as agencies and very good quality within a very reasonable time.

Freelancer - a master of his profession

As you can guess, it is a single person (company) who has good programming skills and experience, since it can survive in the IT market. They are characterized by a competitive price. They provide fairly template designs. The big downside, however, will be the waiting time.

Order on the offer portal

What is an offer portal? Well, this is a list of advertisements where we can find a contractor for a given service or commission a service and contractors will submit price offers themselves. One of the popular portals is oferia.pl (it was still available at the time of writing this article;))

They are characterized by a very low price. Quality can be very poor, waiting times very long. There may also be problems with obtaining after-sales support.

Website builder

There are several large companies and web portals that deal strictly with creating websites. Knowing the basic HTML and CSS tags, and often even without knowledge of these technologies, we can "click" the page ourselves from ready components. One of the recently popular ones is wix.com. It is characterized by a relatively cheap subscription system. The platform provides us with a safe background that allows us to create the website ourselves. The downside is that we have to commit our time to prepare your website. We must also take into account the fact that most of these platforms are closed projects, so further development of our website and integration with other portals may be problematic to carry out.

Is it possible to make a website for the proverbial 250 $?

In business, being competitive means being or not being. The same can be seen when creating websites. However, is being so competitive, i.e. offering a website for 250 $ not too far-reaching pathology?

It seems to me that since there are such offers on the market, it means that there is a demand for it. However, I invite the readers to read the article to the end so that you can form your own view on this topic.

Companies that create websites for such a low price must do it very schematically, almost like on a production line in a factory. I assume they don't spend more than 3-4 days producing this website. By comparison, interactive agencies need 3-6 weeks.

Of course, I don't want to negate such cheap solutions. I believe that it depends on the individual preferences of the client and the size of his wallet. As you can see in practice, such websites are created.

Let's try to realistically look at such solutions. I tracked several such companies. It turns out that the pages produced by them are decent, but they have a fairly repetitive template. They do not impress with the design but they work efficiently on all devices.

Summing up, as you can see, such solutions exist and I must admit that they are not pathology. However, I would not expect a high-quality product. I think that it is the same as with cars, you can drive a Fiat and you can drive a Mercedes, each of them will take us wherever we want, but the driving experience will be different.

Sample and indicative price ranges.

It is very difficult to give any specific values. But as I wrote at the very beginning, it results from the individual needs of the client. But let's try to dress it with some values. Let's assume that graphic designs are prepared individually for each client:

• simple business card website - 1200 - 1650 $
• standard page with several thematically divided subpages - 1650 - 2500 $
• a more advanced website such as a blog or a portal - 2500 $ - and above

The above prices guarantee solid code quality as well as data security as well as the preparation of an efficient website in accordance with good practices.

Why do websites cost so much?

Preparing an individual page to adapt to the client's requirements is not a fully repeated process, as is the case with the template pages I wrote about above.

So if it is not a fully repeatable process, we must each time, commit a certain amount of human's time to produce it. It is the time that the graphic designer, developers and the person responsible for contact with the client have to spend each time.

If a company cares about the quality of its products, it employs very good specialists who know their value on the market. Let's adopt a professional model of approach to creating websites, which assumes certain activities. This example checklist must be performed to create a very good quality product:

• we need to get to know the client's needs and keep in touch with the client on an ongoing basis to create a project that meets his expectations - the project manager is responsible,
• the above expectations must be transferred into specific tasks that leave no illusions so that developers know what to do - the project manager is responsible for this,
• make a graphic design showing exactly how the website will look and introduce any corrections and suggestions that the client proposes - the manager and graphic designer are responsible for this (the graphic designer should also be involved in the first talks with the client to adjust the graphic design to his needs),
• creating the website in accordance with the approved graphic design - the developer is responsible for this
• checking the website in accordance with the client's requirements and the graphic design - the project manager is responsible for this,
• performance, security and SEO audit - the developer (preferably the most experienced) is responsible for this,
• introducing the website content - the project manager or content manager is responsible for this,
• uploading (deploy) a website to the server - the developer is responsible for this.

As all the time that several people have to spend will be added up, I think it is not difficult to imagine and realize why professionally made websites do not cost 250 $ but much more.

Summary.

There are many factors that influence the cost of a website. It is also a quite individual subject each time, and the price depends on the customer's requirements. In fact, it is the market that verifies the final price. 

On the Internet, you can come across some extremes, on the one hand, costs in the range of 250 $ and on the other 6000 $. I don't want to endorse either side, I can only honestly say that in both cases we will get the website. They will not be the same products, nor of the same quality. I would also not like to cause an unnecessary storm, but I think that the example prices that I have shown you are as real and centred as possible.