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The
cost of professional web page
designers can range from hundreds
to tens of thousands of dollars.
Here, as in many other business
purchasing decisions, you can
expect to get what you pay for.
If your web site is going to fulfill
essential business processes—allowing
customers to place orders or manage
accounts—and you base your
decision solely on price, you
may be setting yourself up for
problems down the road.
At
the low end of the scale are web
site "packages."
If you choose a web site development
firm that offers a 3 to 6-page
web site for $400, you'll probably
get a template-based web site
with very little customization
and no extra functionality. But,
if your site just needs to inform
people of your services, your
hours and location, then that's
going to be enough. Full-service
web site development firms can
probably offer you such a package,
as well.
The
same basic type of site package
with a customized design will
usually come to around $800 to
$1,500. Additional Flash animation
may cost $30 to $75 per hour.
In most cases, the packages are
just a starting point; good web
page designers will provide a
detailed proposal that itemizes
various costs like additional
pages or extra image work.
Higher-end
web site projects are usually
priced on an hourly basis, because
the amount of work it will take
to complete them is harder for
web page designers to judge. This
can range from $40/hour for basic
HTML production to $140/hour for
high-end development work. It's
a huge range, but the fees are
reflective of web page designers
expertise and specialties. However,
a medium-sized web site with a
completely customized design,
content management tool, and robust
features and interactivity can
easily cost $5,000 to $10,000,
and up to $50,000 for large or
very complex applications.
e-Commerce
is usually priced separately.
Initial development costs for
an e-commerce enabled web site
start at around $1,000 for the
bare minimum. You can also expect
to pay an ongoing monthly fee
of $15 to $50 for a typical online
store, depending upon how many
products you have and how many
options are involved in the ordering
process.
Hosting
is another separate cost, but
a fairly small one. Basic site
hosting—shared services,
where your site is run on the
same computer with many others—can
be as low as $10/month; $15 to
$50 monthly hosting fees are common.
Dedicated hosting, in which an
independent computer is used to
run your site alone, is more like
$150/month, and may be necessary
if your site requires higher bandwidth.
These costs are directly related
to the size and visitor activity
on your site—online popularity
can increase your monthly cost.
There
are other occasional expenses
you should expect: You will want
to own a domain name—"yourcompany.com"—and
it will cost you anywhere from
$10 to $40, dependent upon the
number of years you wish to own
it and from what service it is
purchased. To conduct e-commerce
on your site you'll need an SSL
certificate, which guarantees
the security of your customers'
credit card numbers and other
sensitive information, and it
will cost $125 per year.
None
of these charges should come as
a surprise - make sure they're
spelled out in your contract.
Professional web site design can
vary quite a bit in cost - so
make sure you know what you're
getting.
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