Hi guys. I really need to make an educated decision.
I have minimal WordPress experience. I have never designed a website but I was in charge of keeping our website maintained with small changes, content updates, stocking our online cart and such. I changed the looks a few times.
I am now looking to build a website for my new business, offering my photo/video/graphic design/content management services.
I reached out to a local web designer and I do think he offered me a good deal. For $2,500 i we be delivered a 5 page website showcasing my work with an integrated contact form.
His company offers ‘financing’ which essentially signs me up for his ‘monthly care package’ that includes hosting, all the regular backend web stuff, and small general maintenance.
The deal is $500 down, and sign up for 2 years of his monthly care, which in turn lets me finance the rest of the website over the two year period.
The monthly financing is a nice perk.
His monthly care plan is $125/mo.
The deal sounds great, but I have found some word press themes out there that I would be happy with as my own website. Im sure I can handle my regular website maintenance, and probably save some money if I figure out the hosting/back end services on my own.
What do you think?
Great deal and jump on it?
Or can I manage myself?
I can do it for $10/hr
USD? Because that’s a lot for 5 pages. It depends though. If you want a site that has fancy video, lightboxes, sliders, animations that follow the cursor, they will shape the copy, put solid SEO in place, have excellent hosting, provide email, give you an original site (not an out-of-the-box-theme)… and it fondles your happy place while you browse… $2,500 is ok.
If you want a good looking but nothing too flashy website – that puts your content out there and you can build on slowly when you have time… you can maybe DIY or hybrid. But there is some art to a site… presenting the right things in the right order to get a browser interested… seo, copy, good images, good typography, responsiveness.
Any good host has a WP installer – so you can get WP up in a few clicks. Add Astra / Kadence / Bricksy / Neve or similar, and you can use one of their template sites to start – then build from that. You can populate your own store, which saves a lot…
So
You could look for someone who can give you a solid foundation for around $1,000. You buy hosting, let them build the essentials, then put it on your hosting and you’re good.
Or
If you feel confident (hell, you can try it and give up 😉 ) – build your own basics – and hire the dev to make it more fancy.
Pick the bit you feel most capable of, and do that.
However… if you really feel you can make money in your new business… then not having to mess about and maintain the site might be worth a lot. Every hour on your website is one hour less getting client work.
If you have e-commerce on the site I could see it costing around that. Otherwise, that’s quite a bit for $2500.
I think the monthly care plan is probably overkill. It is not difficult to backup and update on your own. A lot of it can be automated.
That’s a fine price, imo. I’m sure you could find people to do it for less as well.
Building your own site can be pretty easy these days. The built-in WordPress page builder has come a long way in the last few years, but there are other page builder options – I’ve mostly used Themify when I do sites for clients. If you’re willing to just work with what’s given by the page builder and aren’t trying to force a certain design, you could probably handle it, but you may also run into the numerous glitches/bugs/issues that pop up from time to time and take hours to resolve.
Really, I’d say it just depends on how much your time is worth to you. You’re easily looking at over 25, if not 50 hours of work depending how much customization you’re doing. If you just pick a theme and a skin and replace the text & pics with yours and delete any extraneous content, you may be able to cut that time down.
My 5c.
How do you know if someone of the trades is good and can fix your plumbing, for example, w/o making a mess that would cost you some pretty coin to fix afterwards? It’s the same kind of thinking here. You can’t really know what something really costs w/o some hands-on experience yourself, or at least an ally that would give you good advise along the way.
For a simple 5-page site and some technical background you say to posses already, I’d suggest to try doing it yourself first. That way you’d get a better understanding what you really want, what you can do yourself with WP and what cannot and need help — learning more about your own time vs. costs threshold while doing it.
Extreme price.
Everyone saying 2500 is a lot here, which seems strange to me. If a site is going through PM, Design, Mock, build stages, as any professional build should, 2500, is dirt cheap.
Never do your own site if you value your business. You may be saving money in the short term but long term you will be hurting your business.
Would you hire a plumber to do your electric?
Web agencies separate graphic designers, web developers, UX designers, system admins, etc, for the same reason a home builder contracts out plumbers, electricians, painters, etc.
A well built website should produce leads. SEO, local SEO, CSS & JS optimizations, PageSpeed, image optimizations JPG to WebP, lazy loading and a plethora of tweaks to produce a website that converts.
$2500 is a bit too much for 5 pages. The average for web design and development is $5000 for a complete site with about 20 pages, on-site SEO, optimizations and unlimited blog posts.
Web hosting is extremely important. Don’t go without the GoDaddy or BlueHost. They are considered the ghetto of the hosting community. Go with a reputable hosting company that specializes in WordPress hosting.
Good luck and don’t be cheap because you will get what you pay for.
Sounds a pretty reasonable deal depending on what kind of theme etc he uses – https://bloginbox.com/how-much-does-a-wordpress-website-cost/
Hello, I’m a freelance developer (US) and here are my thoughts on the matter:
If this is a freelancer, $2500 for a 5 page website with contact form seems on the high end. The $125/mo care package is also expensive; assuming you don’t need frequent updates or specialized maintenence, it should be about half that.
Assuming you have an existing website with enough content to use, and it’s not an overly complicated design, **I would likely quote you around $1000-1500 and aim for a 2 week turnaround** on the job. I do custom work, not themes though.
If you were to take the DIY approach and use a theme, expect around ~40 to 60 hours of work depending on how familiar you are with wordpress, and what you want. Just be aware that the theme you choose will limit the layouts/styles you can use so research it well.
If the person you contacted is an agency, the price is on the low end though— when I worked at an agency they billed me out at $100/hr, and the minumum price on their websites was $6500.
**If you’d like I could do your website for you at an extremely discounted price— or free, if you bring me other clients or jobs**. I currently get all my clients through word of mouth and am looking some extra work next month to fill a gap between projects.
Feel free to message me if you’re interested, and good luck with the website 🙂