How Much Should A Web Site Cost? Can’t I just do it myself?

Try to do a price comparison for website design and you might as well try to catch the wind. The only way to compare prices for your web project is to fill out forms over and over again. Explaining what you want without knowing what you want. You can spend all day trying to decide if the company has enough integrity and if you have enough money. Many factors go into to the price of a website such as:

databases (MS SQL Server or MySQL)
Interactivity with web site visitor
Flash
Custom Graphics
Copywriting
Do I have a logo
Hosting
Design depth and graphics development time
Web site Maintenance
Website Promotion

In your search of web design pricing you will see plenty of do it yourself websites where you can build your own website for just pennies on the dollar, and sometimes for free. So you look and try to decide what the best price is. You can pay as little as $1.99 for a domain name and a free cookie cutter site with a $10 per month hosting charge. But what will it look like when I am done. The reason it is free is that they will be posting ads, which they get paid for, all over the sides of your page. However, you can pay more to have no ads, and even more to design the sight differently.

Anyone can learn how to do anything themselves. For example you can learn to do plumbing, roofing, paving, auto mechanics, etc. Then you won’t have to hire a plumber, roofer, etc. but, you always have the problems. You may not have the right tools, so you have to spend money on those, and then you may mess up anyway and have to call a professional to fix your mess. Website design is no different.

It will cost you alot of money even if you build your website yourself.

Do yourself a favor, hire a professional.
Websites can cost as much as you want to pay and some of the time you will get what you paid for, but sometimes you will get taken advantage of. So do your homework, know how much stuff costs, realize there will be some mark up and go from there. Don’t pay $300 for a domain name that can cost as little as $6.99 from Go Daddy, know who you are dealing with and find someone you can trust, go local if possible, and meet them. Face to face liars are hard to find, cyber liars are everywhere.

Sure you can do it yourself.

It may take you eight hours to learn how, and you may need to buy Dream Weaver for $200. Then you may find that you have some rank looking photos because you don’t know how to adjust them, so you take a few more hours to learn how to do that. Now you need a copy of Adobe Photoshop which will cost you another $699. Okay so you did it yourself. You designed a three page site all by yourself and it only cost you: $200 + 20hours x $10.00fd + $699 that is $1,000.00 and your site still looks like a kid created it.

There is a great range in website pricing.
It all depends on how big and how complicated your site needs to be and what features you want to offer. A professionally designed website can cost several hundred or many thousands dollars. However you can always start small and grow your site because everyone should own a Web site to advertise their services and products online.