how is the price of a website calculated?

Question

I want to know how the cost of a website is calculated. Are there formulas or standards?

i was commissioned to create a dynamic website, with just minimal features and it's freelance so i don't know how to put a price tag on my work.. :(

all im being commissioned for is the design, the backend (i.e. domains, servers, dbms, etc) is their problem :D

the company will not be paying me by the day but on the outcome. from what i gather, a 30-page site could range from $1,750 - $3,500. i think it's too much, right? i what to know how they come up with these figures...

Answer 1

I have done quite a bit of freelance web design and the basic formula that I used was as follows:
$25/Hour for simple HTML/CSS work and simple JavaScript
$50/Hour for PHP programming and SQL programming.

So if the client wants a price up front, you estimate how much work it's going to take (usually pad it a little bit.. trust me on this one!) and multiply your number out.

Some clients I would charge more for (if I knew they were going to change requirements half-way through!) and others I would charge less for (I had a $30 flat rate for all web development for a long term sub-contracting situation).

In general you need to consider that you are going to spend some time that you aren't actually developing but learning. I don't charge for learning since that's on me. Also consider that you are going to have to spend some time writing up a contract, setting up your environment, testing the web site and tweaking things to their liking. You can pad your estimates either in dollars or hours but make sure you can afford to do the work.

No matter how careful you are though, there will be times when you over or under-estimate. Some jobs I ended up working for $10/hour on... others I made more. That is true especially if you are first starting out because you won't be able to put good estimates on things.

Consider borrowing a concept from Agile development in which you deliver parts of the site at a time. Tell them "hey.. I can do these 5 pages for $x.xx and have them done by next week... if you are happy with that lets go on. This will give them a chance to come back and say "well... we really would like things to work this way or that way" so all of your future bids will be more accurate. I have started doing more work this way and my clients like it almost as much as I do!

Answer 2

A 30-page site that costs within the range you specified is NOT too much. In fact, if there are other features, like forms, enewsletter functionality, search, etc, those can cost extra.

Firms calculate prices either on a per-page basis, plus additional functions or custom programming packages (as I mentioned above) or they bill by the hour. Considering that web firms charge about $100/hr at the least means that a site that costs $3000 isn't a bad deal. I say this because a site with 30 pages will take more than 30 hours of work. (Design time alone could be 12 hrs.)

If you're in charge of designing a site, you might want to consider a per-hour basis. It's hard to quote your work on a "package" price because the design scope of each project will be different from the other. Don't sell yourself short. Designers are charging top dollar because this is a specialized field. Sure, if you're hired as a contractor, a firm may not be able to pay you $100/hr because that will kill their profit margin, so do some fair negotiation. And when you're hired directly by a business to do the site, that's when you should charge your full rate.

Answer 3

As a website designer, I change my prices to fit the area I service. I used to live in Chicago and could afford to charge 30 - 40 an hr. I now live 40 min away from Chicago (in Indiana) and am trying to service my local businesses. Since they are not used to Chicago prices, I had to adapt. I now charge 50$ a month for basic websites.

You should do research on the business to find out why they charge what they charge. I used to charge 35 an hr because I could just service one client for at least a yr and make a decent living. In Northwest Indiana, businesses want things cheap and simple. So now I charge 50$ a month for a yr for fast, cheap sites per client.

Answer 4

The size that your web site requires on the web hosts server, as well as other factors like Domain Name, as well as Software furnished to develop the site. We must not forget the addition of E-Mail domain addresses.
So as you see there are several things that can come into the mix on fiquring the cost, Everyone is a little different.
2 things I have found is None are completly free
And to date for the money Yahoo's Geocities is the best for the money.
http://geocities.yahoo.com/home/
Don

Answer 5

well different companies works in different ways, some charge hourly rate to maintain an site or build a site while others get the project as a whole and charge for that. Different companies have different charging rates some even charge for a site in millions :)

Answer 6

Basing delivery on fee isn't a sturdy idea, because the fee of your products in money in line with pound varies a lot. What takes position in case you settle on to make some $seventy 5 rings - you may not cost $15 delivery on them. Your product database needs to includes some type of delivery fee indicator; both the actually delivery & packaging cost, or the delivery weight, or some type of delivery code so you might use to calculate delivery. the most lifelike thanks to calculate delivery, so that you conceal your expenditures without overcharging your consumers, may be to apply a weight-depending delivery cost plus a in line with-order packaging cost.

Answer 7

the price ranges from free to $1000 a year, it depends on what server you use.