A website can be designed with templates or through hiring a website designer. The cost of a website depends on factors such as complexity of the site, number of pages and the type of the website; whether it is a static, dynamic or an ecommerce site.
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How Much Does It Cost?
● If you have some technical skills on web design softwares like Dreamweaver, Joomla or WordPress, you can design your website for free using thousands of different templates available online. Joomla24.com has more than 4,000 free Joomla templates that you can download and customize. FWPThemes.com also has thousands of WordPress themes that you can use.
● Hiring a designer or firm to customize the templates for you costs around $200. You may look for a website designer in your area from CraigsList
● A simple website with its own custom made design, graphics, logo, navigation images etc, costs from $500 to $1,500. If you want to pay your designer on hourly basis, plan to spend beginning from $10 per hour for an offshore or local Freelancer to $300 per hour for an expert web designer.
● A readymade ecommerce website that uses store front template costs $25-$250+ per month. Yahoo offers a store front that you can customize and use.
● A small ecommerce website with its own custom made design and store front costs $2,000 to $5,000.
● A basic web hosting begins from as little as $4 per month while basic merchant plans go up to $25 to $40 per month. A dedicated hosting by which the hosting company manages a server dedicated to your use costs from $125 and can run up to $1,000. Godaddy.com and SiteGround.com are dependable hosting firms.
What Should Be Included?
● A fully functional website will be hosted with a domain name you preferred. A copy of the website, including HTML files, web ready photos/videos, logos, banners etc. will be given for you with a CD, DVD or a removable device.
● Most companies or designers offer three months to one year free maintenance and support in case banners, logos, navigation buttons etc disappear from the site or other related problems happen.
● Most designers do basic on site Search Engine Optimization so that the Website ranks better on the Search Engines.
Extra Costs May Include
● If you don’t know what exactly you want from your website, your designer needs to make changes now and then, which is time consuming and could be an extra cost.
● Generating content, such as blog articles for your website is an extra cost which ranges from $5 to $50 per article.
● Search Engine Optimization is an extra cost.
● Additional complexities, such as, more artwork, database, complex shopping carts are extra costs.
● Hosting can be an extra cost with some companies.
How Can You Save Money?
● The best way to save money from your website is designing it yourself with free templates available online. In this case, you only need to pay for hosting.
● Websites designed using templates are much cheaper than the custom made ones.
● Going for offshore designers saves you significant amount of money. Look for them on websites such as upwork.com or freelancer.com
Some Tips To Know
● Know exactly what you want from your website. This saves time, energy and money.
● Compare at least three website designers or firms before deciding on one.
● Don’t forget to take all your website documents and files from your designer.
● Check previous works and client testimonies of your design company.
● If you plan to get your website traffic from search engines, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is very important. Therefore, budget for SEO.