What it costs with me
Every price is the whole job: built, written and live on your own domain.
- £350 for a one-page website. It counts in full towards the full website if you upgrade within 12 months.
- £650 for the website, built and live on your own domain.
- £900 for the website plus a year of changes: up to five a month for 12 months after it goes live.
- £150 for each extra page, words included.
- £50 for up to five changes sent together, back within two working days.
- £29 a month for optional monthly care, which you can stop any time.
- About £10 a year for the domain, paid to the registrar in your name, not to me.
Nothing is payable until you have seen it and said yes. Then 25% is due to go ahead, and the balance within 7 days of going live. No VAT is charged and there is no minimum term. Every figure is on the prices page, and the order of events is on how it works.
What makes any website cost more
I am not going to quote other people’s prices, because they vary too much to be useful. What I can tell you is what moves a price up, so you can read any quote properly.
- Pages. Every page has to be written and built, so more pages cost more.
- What it has to do. Online booking, taking payments, a shop with stock, or listings that change every week take longer to build, and often bring a monthly fee for the service behind them.
- Who writes the words. If you write them yourself the quote may be lower, but it costs you the evenings. With me the words are part of the price.
- Photographs. A photographer costs money. Your own phone photos of real work often do a better job than stock pictures anyway.
- Who you are buying from. An agency has staff, an office and account managers to pay for. One person building it has none of those.
A bigger job, such as a site built around stock, property listings or a catalogue, is a different piece of work. I price those on their own once I know the scale. A care home group with a page and a vacancy line for each home is a good example: see websites for care homes.
The running costs to ask about
The build is one payment. These are the ones that keep coming, and they are where quotes are hardest to compare.
- The domain: a yearly fee to the registrar. Ask whose name it is registered in.
- Hosting: some charge monthly. A site of plain files, like the ones I build, runs on hosting that costs nothing.
- Email on your domain: optional, paid to whichever email provider you choose.
- Changes: per change, per batch, or a monthly plan. Ask what one change costs and how quickly it is done.
- Subscriptions: website builders charge a monthly plan, and some other sites rely on paid themes or plugins that renew every year.
- The security certificate: on most hosts it is included and renews itself.
Then ask about the contract: is there a minimum term, and how much notice do you have to give?
Questions to ask about any quote
- Is this the whole price, with the words written?
- What do I pay each month or each year once it is live, and to whom?
- Whose name will the domain be registered in?
- Who owns the website once it is paid for, and can I move it to another host?
- What does a change cost after it goes live, and how long does it take?
- Is there a contract or a minimum term?
- How much do I pay before I see anything?
- Does the price include VAT?
A good web designer answers every one of these in writing, before you pay. My answers are on the prices page and in the terms.
Why my prices are fixed
No office, no account manager, no meetings and no salesman taking a cut. No WordPress, no theme and no platform fees behind it, so there is nothing to pay for and nothing to keep patched. And because the website is built before you pay, you are paying for something you have already seen, not for a promise.
