Web Designers, What Hosting Companies Do You Use And How Much Do You Charge For A Basic 5 Page Website?
Dec.09, 2009 in
Web Hosting Service
I am thinking of starting a web design company but I am not sure what to charge and whether hosting/domain names should be included in the price. There are so many designers out there with different packages that I’m not sure what the “going” rate is.
Do you have maintanance contracts with your clients and if so, how much do you charge? Sorry for all the questions, I’m just trying to get all the info possible.
Thanks
December 9th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
I have used a lot of hosts (godaddy, cphosting, nomonthlyfees, bluehost). My favorite right now is bluehost- it costs more than the others but offers great support, and best of all, free addon domains, so I can host 3 of my sites with one host. Cphosting was pretty good- almost as cheap as godaddy, good service, and offers password protected directories, which godaddy does not. (I frequently do the “proofing” test site as a pass protected area before making a site public) Godaddy is good for something inexpensive.
, some sites require more customization of graphics and content than others.
You may want to offer a choice to the customer- a basic package (eg. a 5 page site with some template-y layout but customized banner and colors) for a set price, or a custom per-hour rate for a more advanced and customized site.
I’d say look at some of the following links, determine how much you NEED to make to pay your bills, and then tack on extra if you think your skills merit it. Also, bear in mind that you can always change your rate- mine gets upped every January.
Some people like to charge per page, but I prefer to charge per hour. I usually ask for as many details as possible (this should not be an inconvenience for the client since they will have to do this at some stage in the process regardless). Then based on that I’ll state a range of hours I expect it to take, eg. 15-20 hours, so it has a cushion.
I prefer the hourly approach because all pages are not created equal
I don’t include the hosting/domain in the price, since not all clients want to use the same companies, thus there are price differences. However, if you plan to handle the hosting and domain name registration for them (if they’ll provide the sensitive credit card/personal info) then you may prefer to just include it for simplicity’s sake.
My maintenance works the same… hourly, since the amount of maintenance can vary, that way they aren’t paying for work I don’t do, or underpaying for work I do do.
If you do agree to maintenance (it can be a pain with some clients, I should warn you), or even if you don’t, it’s good to use contracts to protect both yourself and the client. These are easily found online by the way- just customize them a little. (Personally I prefer to work on the honor system, but if I worked with a lot of strangers I’d go the contract route for sure.)
Here are some interesting sites that can help you determine your rates:
Rate calculator-http://www.sitepoint.com/article/freelan…
According to this page (someone got the info from dice.com though) http://answers.google.com/answers/thread…
its average of $43 for under one year, and $51 for one year.http://forums.freelanceswitch.com/commen…
(this next one is more for salary than freelance)http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=…
Good luck!
Let us know if you have more questions, like registering a business name, handling taxes, getting health insurance, etc.
December 10th, 2009 at 12:02 am
I don’t think it is that expensive. But hosting is only one part of the process. Sometimes companies quote a low price and then nothing is included and they limit the bandwith to your site or it’s down all the time. Reliability and being able to get live help on the phone is important to me and I use Integrated Technical Solutions. I have been really happy with them, you can check out their site and give them a call to ask about what you are looking for specifically.
December 10th, 2009 at 2:41 am
Hi,
I would recommend using a web hoster that is reputable, award winning, cheap and with plenty of advanced web features. The hoster that I recommend in this instance and personally used is named ‘Dataflame’. The link to the web-host is given below.http://www.dataflame.co.uk/
To add another important bonus to my recommended web-hoster is that their support team has been top notch so far in regards to responsiveness and quality.
Also you can purchase domain names from the same hoster, even as part as the full package.
They have aplenty of packages at competitive prices, and payment periods/installments are very flexible!
Hope you take a look at it!
Say
December 10th, 2009 at 4:25 am
You can register at freelance website like http://getafreelnacer.com/ and bid for all web designing project , you can also get an idea how much to charge for a particular project based on the average bid for it.
You can buy web hosting from website like http://aplis.net/