Manual Charges
The main cost of the website will be the charges for the time spent actually building the website. There is a huge difference between the time spent building a simple one page website and the time spent building a website with hundreds or thousands of pages, an admin system and top class graphics. Expect to pay more the more you want.
But the hourly charges will also vary depending on the size and reputation of the company building the website. Usually a small freelancer will offer a lot lower hourly charge than a large company, who also have the overheads of marketing, admin, legal, accountants and other departments to cover. The bigger the company the more layers of management there are who are not actually building your website, but who you are paying for!
Hosting Charges
Gone are the days when free hosting services were acceptable for websites, especially business sites! But hosting does not need to be that expensive. The basic hosting of a website, with email and sufficient 'bandwith' (the amount of data you are allowed to transfer each month) is probably £60 - £120 per year, depending on your exact requirements.
On top of this, if you are using a Content Management System, including the WordPress blogging system, you will also need an SQL database. This is probably included in the more expensive hosting options, but might be a small add on to cheaper packages.
Domain Name
The domain name does not cost much, but all of the adverts you will see will no doubt under price the cost. That is because a lot of adverts just state their charges and not the actual registrar's fee. For a domain name expect to pay about £8 - £12 for 2 years for a .uk name, but only 1 year for a generic name.
Having said that, I have heard of web designers locally charging £50 per year for a .uk name. This is just pure greedy markup on the price and an indicator to avoid them!
Annual Maintenance
Lastly, you might need to pay for annual maintenance, but most reputable designers will look after the website and make required changes for you for at least the first year. But after the first year expect to pay an annual maintenance charge. It is hard to say what this would be, because the maintenance on a 1 page site is usually far less than the maintenance on a 100 page website. Again, the exact figure will also depend on the size of the company looking after the site for you!
Other Fees
Anything else from here is then optional. You can get listed on the search engines for free, but might want to pay for advertising or extra Search Engine Optimisation on the web site.
Have a look around at a few website designers and do not be bound be geography. Our customers are spread around the UK, Europe and even South Africa and the Caribbean! If you would like us to give you a quote, just visit the janric.co.uk website and drop us an email. If you prefer just to follow our web design blog then pop over to the website.
Article by Keith Lunt, freelance website designer since 2003.
