[Closed] Web developer costs sense check

sounds on the high side to me. we don't pay hourly, but day rate wise it'll be somewhere in the region of 350-500 (not London)

very high for wordpress dev.

I would expect no more than £400 a day for someone pretty senior and experienced.
It also depends whether by 'Wordpress Developer' you mean someone who can author plugins, write themes to be resold, etc or just someone to create a custom theme for one website.

The latter could be much cheaper.

Cheers all, those are more like the prices I was expecting including custom plugins. I'm guessing that Drupal developers are a bit more pricey but not massively

Anyway, that helps sort things out so thanks again

Depends on what you are buying - are you buying Wordpress development from a business that specialises in Wordpress (so the developer will be backed up by a team of colleagues/managers etc) or a freelancer?

We charge £600 a day for creative, development, management. Only content upload is cheaper (as we use students on placement and pass on the savings to client). They are charged at £150 a day.

It's a business and includes the creative design as well but management costs are even higher. Still looks like it is high though

drupal devs charge a huge premium because it such a pain to work with, few can bother.

In that case it depends on the company you are using - if they are used to working with national/international clients and brand names I think that is fair (I used to work for a big agency and over ten years ago I was charged out at >£100 an hour - but we worked with some very big names such as Coca Cola.

In the business I now own, we charge much less than that as stated above, but still, if a local takeaway came to us asking for a website, we would be way too expensive for them – we all pitch our charges at the markets we are in.

But I wouldn't be concerned with hourly rate, I would be looking at total project costs and whether or not they are fixed prices.

But I wouldn't be concerned with hourly rate, I would be looking at total project costs and whether or not they are fixed prices.

We've been quoted both hours and fixed costs and I'm reasonable comfortable with the hourly numbers. It was just the totals that were hurting.

drupal devs charge a huge premium because it such a pain to work with, few can bother.

Is Wordpress much simpler? I'm used to working in Drupal and find it quite logical and straightforward. I've never had to do more in Wordpress than tweak existing stuff so don't know what it's like to develop in. I know lots of folks love it but when I look at their sites they tend to be relatively simple with a few pages and a blog.

Ah - I didn't realise you were referring to employing an agency.
Whenever I've worked for agencies, they charge my time out at exactly double what I charge them. Then add 15% account management fee.

As you can see, it can be massively variable.

As johndoh says - if it's an agency, I would be looking at an overall budget.

they charge my time out at exactly double what I charge them. Then add 15% account management fee

Sounds like we are getting close to the rates I'm being proposed then. There is an overall budget, I just wanted to see which end of the spectrum the different agencies are at.

thanks again all, this is very helpful

A little high, but location would come in to it.

I work at a digital agency in the midlands, developers are costed at £85 p/h.

drupal devs charge a huge premium because it such a pain to work with, few can bother.

😆

Rachel (Sprinkler of the Drupal Sparkle)

Actually, g5604, I would be interested to hear more about your comment and why you believe that to be the case. I wonder if you are talking about Drupal 7 or Drupal 8? They are *very* different and (although I may be biased!) I'd say D8 is now a *lot* easier to use and to develop for.

Rachel

We inherited a couple of drupal 7 sites. They need endless updates and module patches, until they stop being developed and then it all starts falling apart. To get one tiny function you have to install 5 modules all dependent on each other. Well established modules have known bugs that go unfixed for months.

The back end UI is horrible and hard for clients to learn.

We use craft & modx.

Thanks. It's useful to get feedback like this from outside the core community. (Though many of the things you mention are exactly why certain things have been added to the core of D8)

Rachel

interesting stuff on Drupal - thanks. The updating is the one thing I really don't like in D7 but if its improved in D8 then I'm a very happy man. It's funny because I'm very happy with the back end UI others aren't - maybe I'm wrong on this one.

[i]It's a business and includes the creative design as well but management costs are even higher. Still looks like it is high though [/I]

At the last software house I worked we used a blanket charge of £100 ph plus VAT for all work. I would cut a deal if I could see additional work, but most clients were fine with the charge.

Although we were working on our own products, rather than just developing websites.