Websites can vary from a one-page 'business card' online to a vast site with online shopping, chat-rooms and message boards. The price of a website depends not only on its size, but the number and source of the images, the number of forms and other interactive components, if text has to be written or if it is already prepared, and how long the design and testing phases take.
Having said that, a rough rule of thumb is that a a web page costs, overall, about £100, so a 10 to 12 page website will cost about £1000. The cost goes up if I have to charge for the time it takes to write content from scratch or if I have to re-type content, and costs can be reduced if I am supplied with web-ready text in digital form (i.e. emailed to me or on disk).
In addition to these costs, you need to buy a domain name, if you don't have one already. Domain names are actually 'rented' for one to ten years, the normal period being two years, and they have to be renewed in good time. Domain names vary from £30.00 to £50.00, depending on whether they are a .com ('dot com') or a .co.uk ('dot co dot uk'). If you need one, I will help you get one as part of the design and build costs.
If you already have your domain name, it may have come with free web space of anywhere from 5 Mb (which is plenty of room for a standard website) up to 30 Gb or more. This means that there is a home for your website ready and waiting.
If you have no web hosting space, you will need to rent space on a server owned by a third party. These are called Internet Service Providers (ISP). Businesses are often led to believe that they have to spend £400 or more a year to rent hosting space, but in fact most business websites fit comfortably in a space of less than 30Mb, which costs on average about £50-£80 a year. Smaller websites can be accommodated for about £30 a year.
advice and consultancy costs
I charge £50.00 an hour for consultation, with a sliding scale for charities. If I travel outside London, I also charge travel expenses.
maintaining and running websites
Websites need on-going care, and I offer a range of packages.
The cheapest is £50.00 a year, which guarantees that I will check your website once a month to do an 'M.O.T.' and make any small repairs or changes (such as updating a failed link). £50.00 a month gives you an hour of time, sufficient for adding some new content, adding or changing images, and other small changes.If you have no work for me to do one month, but more than two hours the next, the monthly fee remains the same, as I let credit roll from one month to the next. I believe in sensible working relationships.
I also offer a one day per month package, where I will had new content, add new pages, source and add images, make design changes, and generally updating your site. This costs £300.00, and again I roll over unused time, to a limit of three hours, if work from you varies from month to month.
I can also give you time every week, for a price that we would agree.
Daily running of a website can be time-consuming and therefore expensive, and the price and time alloted for this would also have to be agreed. If your website needs a considerable amount of daily work, you might want to consider hiring your own web manager in-house, and I am happy to advise you on this.