ed
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Registered: 10th Sep 03
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Someones just queried something with me and I feel like they might be having the wool pulled over their eyes?
For a small website of less than 10 pages, all text and content provided bar the stock images they have been quoted £1800+vat. This is for designing theme for simple cms (?) and then installing the software and theme onto their own server which they have already setup completely with databases and domain names. The designer is a freelancer from what I can tell and apparently most of the cost comes from installing the cms as it's complicated to do?
This seems strange to me and expensive. Am I just being naive as to how much the pros charge or are my best guesses of how many hours they're billing for a bit excessive?
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ed
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Registered: 10th Sep 03
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They want to charge an extra £10 for each stock image too.
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JonnyJ
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Registered: 23rd Sep 05
Location: Scotchland
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If thats the going rate i need to get into web design 
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Neil
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Registered: 2nd Nov 03
Location: Newcastle Drives: E46 MSport Coupe
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I wouldn't charge even half of that with a custom written cms. If the guy takes so long to install an out of the box CMS system, I'd question his web design credentials tbh..
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deano87
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Registered: 21st Oct 06
Location: Bedfordshire Drives: Ford Fiesta
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Having our company website redeveloped fom the ground up, we were quoted anything between £3.5k to £25k.
For 10 pages your mate could do it for free using GooglePages or something.
£1800 @ £50/hour is 36 man hours. So 4 days work. Quite a bit for 10 pages.
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ed
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Registered: 10th Sep 03
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Yeah, but who charges £50 an hour to do design work? That's expensive even for development work.
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James
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Registered: 1st Jun 02
Location: Surrey
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I would expect that kind of price is he is writing a CMS from scratch or using one that he has written (to try and recoup costs for the original dev effort), but not if he's just using an off the shelf package.
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Dom
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Registered: 13th Sep 03
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quote:
Originally posted by ed
Yeah, but who charges £50 an hour to do design work? That's expensive even for development work.
Agencies will happily charge double that and infact depending on the job dev work can be silly amounts as well. But i agree that the quote seems a bit OTT for what is being offered, half that would still be a tad expensive (basing this on a few designers i use being around the £200-250 p/d, content writers being a little less and installation and setup of WP being a few hours on top).
Either way i'd be wanting to know the break down and what CMS they'd be using.
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Rob_Quads
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Registered: 29th Mar 01
Location: southampton
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quote:
Originally posted by ed
which they have already setup completely with databases and domain names.
They might have already set it up but it still cost them time and money which they have to recoupe.
I would say the cost is a little high but it does depend. If he is writing a completely custom CMS system for you and creating lots of custom graphics for you then its feasible it could cost that much.
If your happy with an off the shelf template look website you could pay a lot less but then it will look a lot more off the shelf.
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Neil
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Registered: 2nd Nov 03
Location: Newcastle Drives: E46 MSport Coupe
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quote:
Originally posted by Rob_Quads
quote:
Originally posted by ed
which they have already setup completely with databases and domain names.
They might have already set it up but it still cost them time and money which they have to recoupe.
I would say the cost is a little high but it does depend. If he is writing a completely custom CMS system for you and creating lots of custom graphics for you then its feasible it could cost that much.
If your happy with an off the shelf template look website you could pay a lot less but then it will look a lot more off the shelf.
He's using "Simple CMS", an off the shelf cms system, and wants to charge an extra £10 for use of stock images.
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ed
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Registered: 10th Sep 03
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It's CMS Made Simple, my bad: http://www.cmsmadesimple.org/
Looking at previous implementations of this software done by the company, it all seems a little bit 
Either way, I think I might be getting the job now and when I said 'they have already setup' I meant I have already setup the server, database and domain name as it's one that I administer.
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Nismo
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Registered: 12th Sep 02
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That is a shocking price, I do the odd sites, not really CMS stuff but 6 or 7 pages is about £200 and the CMS ones ive done have been about £400, i either need to up my prices or he needs to lower his
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Sam
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Registered: 24th Dec 99
Location: West Midlands
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Working on the assumption that this is a company that quoted him rather than a freelancer, it's not that expensive TBH as they would have to pay for staff, office costs, usual company costs etc. etc. especially if the developers get a proper wage and not some bollocks wage like £15k/year or something
Freelancers would obviously do the job much cheaper but that's because they have fuck all overheads.
[Edited on 11-08-2011 by Sam]
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Paul_J
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Registered: 6th Jun 02
Location: London
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To be honest, we know it's over priced and ultimately we could do it cheaper / for free with the know how.
But if that's what the person quoted you, that's what they are prepared to do it for. Don't feel offended, either accept the offer or find it cheaper somewhere else.
The person may be used to doing decent sized projects, which are maybe 2 weeks -> month or so. Therefore, doesn't really want to spend time on little things that may only take a day or two. As such, he'll do it - but it'll cost you.
Not to mention, he's probably managing his own supply and demand. If he knows he's got plenty of work and knows other people will pay that sort of money, then why bother charging in reality what it will cost him? 
If it's not a freelancer and it's an actual company, well then it's even more likely that they basically have a minimum amount of 'work' to make it worthwhile.
For example, they're going to have spend consultation time to find out exactly what the customer wants. Then do the work. Then tests it all works and deliver it.
Once complete, it's likely they may have to go back and forth a few times to get it 'just right' and then potentially any on going support that crops up. For all that, it's not worth the 'effort' charging less.
- For example, we charge £850 + vat per day for development (ok .net apps and not just pissing about with cms / themes) but I personally hate it when some work comes in that's just a couple of days (£1700 + vat) - always ends up taking far more time in the long run than the quoted 'work' and it takes me off larger projects £50k+
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