We see a lot of web design companies out there offering website packages, often at very low prices. While this seems to be a good way to get a website cheap, there’s a lot of considerations that you need to make, and a lot of things that you need to look out for.
But it’s cheap!
Yes it is cheap. There’s not a lot of ways that you can get a custom-designed website set up and running for $500 and under, but there’s a lot of places around that offer just that.
The problem that we have is economy. Think about your own business and what your time is worth. If you’re any sort of professional, your rates could start as low as $60 per hour or go up to $100’s per hour. If you’re thinking of getting a “professional” website, working at the lowest end of the scale gives you a total of 8 hours of time to build, test and set up a website (8 hours @ $60 per hour = $480). This has to include all consultation time, design time, development time, testing, staging, go-live, etc. That’s a working day to do all of that. That also doesn’t include a domain name or hosting, so if you’re seeing those on the list as well, you’re getting even less time.
What do you actually get?
With every cut-price website package that we’ve seen before, the client has come away with a very basic 2-3 page website based on a free WordPress theme with little or no customisation. If they write content for you, it’s done at the lowest quality that they can get way with to make sure that costs are kept down.
We’ve seen a lot of clients come to us with sites that are half finished with the excuse of “Sorry, time has run out, can’t do more unless you pay us more”. Of course variations and additions happen in every job, but having a website that’s not even complete does leave a very sour taste.
What are the alternatives?
There are some alternatives. Some are good, some are not-so-good, but most all depend on your budget.
If you’re on a very restrictive budget, we’d recommend looking at some of the website builder services out there, like WordPress.com or Wix. These let you set up your own site without too much hassle, and without a huge amount of expense. They take care of the code, the hosting, security and more. The downside to these services is that they have your data, and you can’t move your site off their platform.
If you can stretch the budget a bit more, we really suggest talking to a real web design company (like us!) to get a proper custom website built. This will give you a lot of advantages, like:
- You own the site and can change or move it anywhere that you want to at any time.
- You know what you will get and how it will work.
- Your site will be your own, with its own design, its own functionality and will help you to stand out from the page-builder crowd.
When you’re ready to move your website to the next level, let us know and see what we can offer that fits within your budget and your business needs.