How much to charge to build a website?

I’ve been asked to build a website for a small business based on WordPress. I’ve done a few of these, but mainly for friends and family etc. Someone recommended me to a a small boutique hotel who want me to build them a site. So what to charge?

A quick chat to them reveals they want a standard hotel site with loads of ‘big slider’ photos etc, and reservation functions etc etc. Nothing that a hacked WordPress them can’t do. Any ideas? I’ve looked around, but prices generally refer to bespoke design, rather than setting up/customising etc. I’ll also be arranging their hosting/domain etc (they’re not very tech-savvy, and rather busy)

What is your time worth? Think of an hourly rate, work out how long it will take you and do the maths. Remember all the support too.

Thanks, makes sense.

I guess I’d like to know ‘the going rate’. To see if it tallies with what I think my time is worth. 🙂

Normal hourly rate for programming excluding the very best in the industry is between £20-£25 if that helps dude

Do they already have the photos and copy?

Normal hourly rate for programming excluding the very best in the industry is between £20-£25 if that helps dude

Thanks 🙂

Do they already have the photos and copy?

Yes, I believe so.

When i was saving for my wedding i did similar on the side, I used to charge £35 an hour for similar sites. Once the site was uploaded £50 for amends. It’s important if dealing with a friend of a friend your brief is as accurate as possible and all colours/fonts/content/etc is finalised early on to limit changes as these things can run on and on. sometimes everyone will want to have their say on how it looks and it can get a bit tiresome when your up against someone’s nephew who has been doing graphics for his mock GCSE and you have just got home from work after heading a £2m branding relaunch of a household name.

Who is going to content manage the site after you have built it?

^my rate was based on friends in the industry doing similar

Make sure you get them to sign it off when they’re happy with it, otherwise you’ll be forever doing ‘a quick change’ which should be charged as an amendment.

Also – worth asking about whether they might want to add features like online booking etc.

I’d charge about £800.
Covers all your meetings, graphics editing, buying a theme (about £35), editing it etc, maybe taking photos.

richmars – Member 
Make sure you get them to sign it off when they’re happy with it, otherwise you’ll be forever doing ‘a quick change’ which should be charged as an amendment.

Yes, definitely keep an eye out for sneaky requests, they’ll pile up! Hopefully you won’t get any typical vague requests, such as “can you make it more magical?” 🙄

Looking recently it seems to work out at £100 to £150 per page

It does depend on your experience and the market you are going for. You are never going to compete on price with some kid in a bedroom with no overheads and doesn’t pay tax. Equally – some business don’t have the budget or need for something complex – you just have to scale back to what they actually need and can afford.

I would expect to pay a freelancer £25 – £35 p/h as an agency. If you are billing straight out to the client £50 – £60 isn’t unreasonable. We bill out higher than that p/h.

If you are just starting out then I suspect you’ll be at the bottom end of that range. If you don’t value your skills neither will the client so don’t go in to cheap! It usually the clients that argue over every penny and ask for money off that are the most demanding/pita clients!

I’d avoid costing per page – some page templates are super easy to make and sone will take ages if they require custom code or modules.

Think of an hourly rate you’d like to be paid or can live off nicely, estimate how long it will take, and charge that.

Then they say they want it all in for £50, which you laugh at, and then they later say they went with these guys online from India who did it for £10.

Welcome to my life of not being able to compete with “oh they’re cheaper, I’ll go with them” (even if they’re crap).

Divide the annual salary you’d like by the number of hours you’d like to work each year. Multiply that figure by the time you think it’ll take. That’s your quote.

Then they say they want it all in for £50, which you laugh at, and then they later say they went with these guys online from India who did it for £10.

This made me laugh out loud 😀

But then the grin turned sour as it slowly dawned on me that it’s true…

Here’s one I had from a friend recently…

Him: I need a site built quick that does this, this and this…

Me: Ok, how do you want it to look?

Him:Oh that’s not important, I just need the site live, and quickly. Just make it look cool.

Me: Ok, here’s your site!

Him: I don’t like the way it looks, how do we change it?

I’d charge around £5k minimum as a small business owner.

All these “think of an hourly rate” suggestions are missing the (very) important “… and double it” step at the end. These things always take (at least) twice as long as you think they will

^ very true. That’s always the rule for software estimates. At least double it, maybe more. 😀

A related question, but I’m going to be teaching myself some of this CMS based malarky, is wordpress.org the way to go for a designer than knows how to hand code HTML/CSS and can hack about in small bits of other code (javascript, PHP, extremely limited but keen to learn)

wordpress the best option or is there better elsewhere?

WordPress without a doubt. The massive plugin library alone makes it worth it.

The main bugbear I have is I’m a real stickler for having my sites perfectly mobile optimised so sometimes I have to go through 5 or six plugins to find one that doesn’t spaz up on ios/android/internet explorer.

The thing that bugs me about WordPress is that it can be slow to see changes. Anyone use WAMP or similar to build WordPress sites locally?

jambourgie – Member
Here’s one I had from a friend recently…

Him: I need a site built quick that does this, this and this…

Me: Ok, how do you want it to look?

Him:Oh that’s not important, I just need the site live, and quickly. Just make it look cool.

Me: Ok, here’s your site!

Him: I don’t like the way it looks, how do we change it?

I’ve had blue-chip enterprise level clients do that to me…

I’m in the midst of having our new site built.

It’s slightly more complex and flashier than WordPress would allow, the design is costing £5500 from the graphic designers, I’m doing the content and copy and the hosting and encoding is costing £2000.

As others have said be very clear from the outset what they want – I’ve been a living nightmare for the designers frankly and I knew with almost absolute certainty what we wanted.

Then they say they want it all in for £50, which you laugh at, and then they later say they went with these guys online from India who did it for £10.

… but it’s not what we wanted, can you fix it?

Whatever you decide to charge, two most important things:

Make sure you are BOTH absolutely clear about the scope of what you are providing – mission creep is inevitable! If any functionality requires a plug-in allow loads of time for research – there are thousands of plug-ins, and working out which works best for you takes time. They are almost certain to ask for something outside your experience which needs researching.

If they say they have all the content (text and images) ask them to provide it before you start building. I have had sites which I waited months for content despite assurances. By the time I got any, I’d forgotten what the site was doing.

Best of luck.

WordPress is good and has lots of plugs etc. I’d also look at Perch (http://grabaperch.com) – you have to pay for a licence but you can get support directly from the developer and you won’t have to learn all the quirks of WordPress. It doesn’t mess with your code either. If you go down the wordpress route look at advanced custom fields plugin – can’t imagine building a wp site without it now!

I’ve noticed plenty of people using SquareSpace as a CMS and then building a custom site on top. The cms looks simple and you don’t have to worry about the hosting.

we paid £1200 for a CMS site, alternative quote was £7-800 for a wordpress site.
Anyone tried Squarepace ?

When i researched getting my web site built no one quoted me an hourly rate, all the prices I was given were for a Worpress full CMS type site and ranged from £750 to £2500. That’s standard pricing as well so didn’t matter how many pages etc.

Having read this I’m seriously glad I do Drupal and not WordPress!!

Rachel

If you go down the wordpress route look at advanced custom fields plugin – can’t imagine building a wp site without it now!

Interesting you should say that. I was looking at that recently, but wasn’t entirely sure what it would be useful for. Can you explain how you’ve used it?