how much for a website

How much is web design is how long is a piece of string tbh. Find a website you like, or more importantly your target users/customers like then find out how much that costs. How they make it is their problem.

In my experience smaller websites are not financially viable for Irish developers, companies, it just wouldn't pay you for your time. Especially as many do this for free, to build up experience or as a portfolio, or as a loss leader for future business, which clients take advantage off. Its rarely worth doing work like that. It leads to just more of the same. Most of the web design places I used to know mainly worked for UK Clients or larger Irish companies, who are willing to pay more to get better quality, design, and professionalism.

You'd need to interview the client to see if they certain things in place before you start the work, so theres no messing around. Do they have a budget. Do they have content. Do they have people resources in place to look after the content, and the website. Do they have a definitive time scale, and payment schedule. What are the objectives, and how till they know they have been achieved. If they don't they are not serious about it.
 
No Flax, I don't. I just want to highlight the unseen costs to setting up a website, one that is set up properly, by professionals.

I did state at the end of my post, that if you cannot afford this, do it yourself; via scriptlance, elance, guru tons of other script monkey sites.
 
Did you manage to get the site built?

Have a contact who builds websites, including forums, shopping carts etc for a reasonable price.

He works completely on email basis so automatically cuts down costs for meetings etc. Think his prices range from €1000 to €1500.

Although he compiles a live demo product for you to review before any money changes hands, which isn't bad.. No unexpected surprises.

Let me know if you need his contact details and I'll pass on..

Cheers
 
As someone who has experience both running a web development company and running my own website I can tell you you need to think more about this.


1. Websites these days have a lot of functionality built in. These functions need to adapt and change according to your needs. Buying a script means that it's not easy to change according to your customer requirements. You will need to pay someone to change the script. Doing it yourself is a waste of time usually and not possible for regular folk. The kind of website that you can alter yourself for 300 euro is just like wallpaper, it doesnt really have any functionality and will be useless very quickly if you are truly planning to run an online business. There are many big companies competing in this business and I have observed that successful websites cost more and more money to setup and run (running costs are very high, advertising especially), they are pushing out the smaller guys, you need to step up to the plate to compete.

2. Your website needs to compete against other websites in its space. If it looks old, messy or not functional enough it influences your business.

3. You need to evolve your website over time to grow and compete. It is better to find a company or reliable developer to do that. Many programmers cannot reliably take over the work of other programmers, they will often end up breaking the scripts and often have to start from scratch. More money, headaches and time wasted.

You'd be looking at spending 2000 euro MINIMUM for a decent website with a content management system (updatable by yourself), nice integrated design, database, customer registration, online shop etc. For this you can ask for at least 1 year free maintenance contract and ongoing business relations. Actually it should be more than that. I have charged up to 4000 euro in a lower cost country for the work that you are asking to do in high cost Ireland. Off shoring the work has issues with communication and design. Most Indian website's designs are shocking. The same for Chinese and East Europeans. The quality of their work can also be low as they further outsource it down the line and you don't know who is doing the work ultimately.

Finally as other people in the biz have said above, everybody thinks they need a 'bog standard' website, I don't want to spend too much. The fact is if you want to run it as a business this is not true and actually websites are fluid things, pretty much everybody is learning as they go along on their first website, by the time you are half-way through the project you will figure often figure out major flaws in your original idea and want to change the function or design. The design and thinking work is very important, it's the hardest part.

The best way might be to do a quick cheap job first to test the idea but later you will have to put the money in, I don't believe there is any cheap way to do it properly, honestly.
 
A website IMO is more like a service, that your business provides, with on going costs to keep running. Its not a fire and forget product that you buy once. Well a decent website isn't.
 
All valid points above, but as I've done the whole "I want a cheap yet functional website", money is a huge concern when wanting to buy your first website. Not only are you unsure if the website idea will work as planned and draw in some sought of revenue, but you don't want to be spending a whole pile of money in something that could be a potential disaster and another costly mistake.

I would highly recommend using one of the many Irish based developers out there who can edit an existing template to your standards. Yes, its using a template, but everything can be reworked on it, and done to your specifications.

In my personal experience, I went this way, was a cheap alternative to a complete custom designed website, but it did the job, and I was able to determine if the website itself was worth investing large sums of revenue.

The website updates can be done easily yourself, just make sure you have a developer who is willing to give you a quick document on "what to do", and ofcourse offer email support with a quick turn around for the first year or so until you get yourself comfortable.

But you also have the option to ask them to maintain the site for a small fee...

Again, can pass on the guys details who done mine. Reasonable prices and makes sure your happy with every aspect of the design before rolling out.

Cheers
 
On this point, I've been quoted €4250+vat for a 5-6 page e-commerce brochure site. Bearing in mind this company would also be doing my company identity and printing (at extra cost), does anyone know whether this is a reasonable price or not. It just seems a bit steep to me.
 
GregnGra said:
On this point, I've been quoted €4250+vat for a 5-6 page e-commerce brochure site. Bearing in mind this company would also be doing my company identity and printing (at extra cost), does anyone know whether this is a reasonable price or not. It just seems a bit steep to me.
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That sounds very expensive. There are free off the shelf e-commerce modules with joomla, xoops , oscommerce. They may be using one of those modules themselves.
If you just starting out get someone to customize one of these modules for you and then if the business is growing and you need specific functionality then put the money in.
I dont know about "identity and printing " but shop around for that.
 
doesn't seem wildly more than what mainasia said previously.

mainasia said:
As someone who has experience both running a web development company and running my own website I can tell you you need to think more about this.....

You'd be looking at spending 2000 euro MINIMUM for a decent website with a content management system (updatable by yourself), nice integrated design, database, customer registration, online shop etc. For this you can ask for at least 1 year free maintenance contract and ongoing business relations. Actually it should be more than that. I have charged up to 4000 euro in a lower cost country for the work that you are asking to do in high cost Ireland. .....
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I have a website which cost € 199.00 to get done according to the details I sent to the guy. For domain registration (.ie) and a years hosting another €90.00.
Its 4 pages and includes minor alterations for the year, he sent me an proof before submitting it and billed after I was satisfied. Took him a week, to have set up and able to find searching on search panel not browser. Site waa up on google wihin 3 weeks.
If an ie domain is not important to you get a copy of computer active and look at the ads there. You can get everything although templated for about £5.00 sterling per month.
Put what you want to have as a publisher or word doc and then ask the guys if they can change that to a web site thats what I did.
Spending thousands wouldn't dream until I had dipped my foot in the water. First thing to ask is why do you need a website? To advertise or give customers information.
If advertise its going to cost you extra to get up on the search engine sites eg googlead.
If customer information - what information do they need? Bearing in mind that you have in all likelihood had contact with them already and told them a bit about yourself and your company/product/service.
 
GregnGra said:
On this point, I've been quoted €4250+vat for a 5-6 page e-commerce brochure site. Bearing in mind this company would also be doing my company identity and printing (at extra cost), does anyone know whether this is a reasonable price or not. It just seems a bit steep to me.
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Bit steep in my eyes, you say they are looking after your company identity and printing at an extra cost?! I think best to keep this, and your website creation seperate.

Drop my mate a mail, webmaster@findmeatrade.ie just give him a run down of what you need, and a few screen captures of similar sites you want your site to look like. Just ask for a fixed quote, he wont astray from this.

Cheers
 
mainasia said:
You'd be looking at spending 2000 euro MINIMUM for a decent website with a content management system (updatable by yourself), nice integrated design, database, customer registration, online shop etc.
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Only if you use an Irish company though. As I have stated in previous posts, there are non-Irish companies who cost a tenth of that - simply because they have lower wages.
 
Dont get too caught up on your logo design. It wont do too much for you starting up. Yes it will look nice and priofessional but you would be better pumping that cash into your business. Thats advice I got from a very good business consultant.
 
Flax said:
Only if you use an Irish company though. As I have stated in previous posts, there are non-Irish companies who cost a tenth of that - simply because they have lower wages.
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Thats true, but take into consideration its alot easier to make contact with an Irish company if your not happy with the end result. Alot easier for the overseas companies to ignore your mails.
 
letin said:
Thats true, but take into consideration its alot easier to make contact with an Irish company if your not happy with the end result. Alot easier for the overseas companies to ignore your mails.
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Yep, I agree completely, but if budget is an issue, and with careful planning, I think outsourcing makes sense.
 
And what's wrong with what Anjest has written above ?
Or are we back with the ingrained strands of righteous selfpreservation such as are released elsewhere in these threads when one dares to highlight the crazy priced differentiation in dental services that exist North and South ?
 
1John said:
And what's wrong with what Anjest has written above ?
Or are we back with the ingrained strands of righteous selfpreservation such as are released elsewhere in these threads when one dares to highlight the crazy priced differentiation in dental services that exist North and South ?
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Thats not a good analogy. You can get cheap and cheerful sites in the south if you want. Indeed many people will put together a free site, using templates and using free off the shelf software.

However some people might find value in paying more for a bespoke websites with a professional service to support it. Some will be happy to outsource that, others might prefer to have local people do it for a variety of reasons.

Some websites are little more than ad in the golden pages. Others however are critical to a business, and problems or downtime are very expensive and costly.
 
go to digital point forums (google it) and look at the buy/sell/trade section and post what your looking for.
 
Flax said:
Only if you use an Irish company though. As I have stated in previous posts, there are non-Irish companies who cost a tenth of that - simply because they have lower wages.
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Eh no, I am based in Asia in a country with 1/3 wages of Ireland, that's the correct pricing I quoted, starting at 2000 Euro and easily going up to 4000-500 EURO for the php/asp database website with content management system and online shop and guaranteed maintenance for a year (very important to iron out bugs and do little adjustments later, the cheapo guys might refuse to help you or charge you a bunch of money everytime for this). I also looked into outsourcing with Chinese/Indian developers. I found out most of them take the cases and try to make the commission by passing to other cheapo programmers. I once had a case develop badly through a friend's recommended programmers and when I checked who was really doing the work it was a 4th year IT student! The other issue is that Indian website companies really suck at web design in Irish eyes (it may be that in India that web design is great, it's a cultural preference thing!). In the end I hired a combination of both western and Asian contractors to the clients could be satisfied with their cultural preferences.


It depends what you want the website to do, if it is simply a information display you can get it done cheap 1000-2000 euro. If it's a very important part of your business and needs functionality like an online shop or membership you will need to pay (you can try doing it yourself but it's a waste of time and you will mess it up as it's too complex except for professionals). Also if you want it to stand out design wise you will also have to pay more money. Same for everything in life. YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR (seems some people think that doesn't apply to websites for some strange reason). I gave up on doing websites because the income wasn't equal to the time and effort and most clients continually changed their specifications as they learned through the process of designing and launching the new website (imagine asking an architect to add on a second floor to a bungalow half way through building it but not be willing to pay more and you get the picture). You need to sit down and plan out page-by-page the flow of the entire website, the functional requirements and the design of every page. Otherwise later the designer will charge more if you haven't got it in the original spec. It also helps you to think through the website fully. Another way to do it as I mentioned above is to do a cheapo off the shelf one first (they ALWAYS have limitations and usually start to accumulate bugs if you try to do modifications) and later you will be more clear on what you want from you website and you can think about spening the money to do a custom one especially for your needs.

I am willing to work as a consultant on website design and specification requirements of course :). I have operated an online jobsite for a couple of years.

It's not worth outsourcing complex websites to foreign countries, won't work. For simple text display websites for temporary use that is fine.
 
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