$20 000 web site for $29 - Am I Getting Ripped !

hi guys ,

i just got a quote from a programmer to make my web site and it was almost $20 000 .... the site basically reviews certain products ,,, therefore i want to add a review , ratings php program sort of like an amazon type of scheme ...... the funny thing is i found a php script online that does the exact same thing for $29 ....

im sort of confused ,,, im i getting ripped of here or what ? Any advice would be helpful ...

 

You aren't getting ripped off if the quote is from a professional company. Does seem quite expensive (imo, shouldn't cost more than $5,000 but depends on features obviously). a 29 USD script may be cheaper as it is probably aimed at people who can't afford a custom jobbie, and is sold more than once...

 

Well, unless you're buying a whole company to go with that, yes you would be paying WAY too much.

What you want to do can be done with just about any free content management system in existence using modules that are freely available.

Your best bet would be to investigate the available content management systems and pick one to base your site off of.

After you've done that, set up the basic framework and then if it doesn't do exactly what you want, THAT would be the time to contact a programmer. In most cases if you already have a site in place, development of a small custom module like a fancy voting/rating system, it shouldn't cost you much more than $500 or so. If you want custom artwork for your site you should be able to hire an artist or template expert to do a great job for under $500 also.

Every content management system I know of has the ability to let users post comments on a page. This means if you have a product page it will be trivial to let users leave their opinions and they only real work will be getting the voting set up the way you want it. Most CMSes have voting and polling modules, so you might be able to get everything done without spending a cent if you're willing to do the work and research and are willing to either settle for a stock theme or have the skills to create logos and graphics yourself.

If it's something you do want to have done for you, you're better off picking the CMS you want to use and finding a consultant that knows how to use that CMS. Building a complex site from scratch is almost always a very stupid idea.

Check these out for your research:

Drupal
Joomla
Mambo
Geeklog
PHP-Nuke
Post-Nuke
phpWCMS
phpWebSite
Xoops
Siteframe

All of these are offered as auto-installs by my ISP, Hostmonster, and many others offer them too (look for companies that have Fantastico in their list of features).

I'm personally a Drupal fanatic.

 

You are asking this question in the coders section of these forums. Most of the people in this section are coders and would tend to think your quote is high because we are capable of rolling our own solution and/or readily tweaking other people's scripts -- including bringing them up to an acceptable level fo security.

The question you need to ask yourself is whether it is worth $20,000 of your cash to have a working solution delivered to you -- or whether you would rather save the money and invest time instead. If you are willing to commit the many, many hours needed to get competent enough to compel an open source script to do your bidding, then go for it.

But, if you believe your time would be better and more profitably spent marketing the site -- both in terms of getting advertisers and users -- then you may want to think harder about hiring programmers to create the site backend and designers to create its front end. In which case, make sure you are certain about who owns the resulting code, style sheets and images.

Personally, I am a crappy marketer but a decent coder. Therefore, I would build a solution using something I had already done and/or getting someone else's project to work for me.

 

I don't think that's too expensive at all - for a professional development firm. I know companies that have charged much more for simpler jobs. It really comes down to how well that company can do it, and the quality of their past work that justifies their cost.

Even if you had 4 different programmers tackle this job, you'd see quite a difference in the interface and how they each implement it. What kind of support/maintenance does the company can provide?

It's the same debate as someone designing you a web site for $500 versus a professional company designing it for $5000, just on a larger scale - most often the professional company that charges $5000 will get you a better product.

 

I believe that they asked you to much money for that task ... did they tell you how they come up with that number ?

Never the less before you continue I recommend
1. Write a detailed a list of all the properties you want your site to include.

2. Based on that list create ( with the selected company's a project manager ) a schedule for the of deliveries and payments:

• This will help you to understand what you are paying for
• You will be able to track the project process.
• If things go wrong you can stop before spending all your money
• Get a working product after the first mile-stone has passed.

3. Make sure to include "support" period for bug fixing.

4. If you want to make sure that the project will be delivered on time ask for discount for each day after the passing the deadline without
delivering the code.

 

thank you guys for all the advice , really appreciate it ...

 

Yup, were all programmers, so we know that we could dev it for cheaper... but when your dealing with a company - you get more than 1 dude working nights to try to squeeze it in a budget. You get much higher quality work, support, guarentees, and well... a piece of mind that the guy didn't just run off with your down-payment. (This happens a lot here... people getting ripped off)

When your paying one freelancer to do it - thats just it, you get 1 opinion, 1 guy going to do the bare minimum for you, and hopefully he has the foresight to test the HELL out of it. The reason the cost is much higher, is because you are paying peoples wages (secretary, boss, etc... essentially entire company) A freelancer can be cheaper because they don't have the "extras" that a company has - but you also don't get the perks that you get with working with a company.

If you trust the person - or got the persons name by "word of mouth" from a reliable source - then I would go with it if you can get a cheaper solution... otherwise you can try to hack together a 30 dollar solution, and pay triple the price when it's all Eff'd to hell and you have to go to a real company to fix it

- Just my 2 cents, take it or leave it.

 

A little late coming in on this one but ...

First things first. I have yet to see an online script (the $29 type) that is worth 2 cents! I have bought an untold amount of sites with these type scripts and it always comes down to redoing the ENTIRE script because the "programming" is SO bad it's not funny.

There are a ton of people out there that call themselves programmers but are in fact nothing more than 3rd rate hacks. These wannabees THINK they know the language but have no concept of application development and worst of all they have NO idea how to develop a database properly.

Now is the quote too high? Maybe. Your specs are a little sketchy to be sure but what I think you are seeing is the difference between some third rate HACK and a professional application development company that stands behind their product 100%.

What a LOT of buyers ignore is how the application will run under a heavy load of users. Most of these "cheapy scripts" are never tested under any load at all so when you do start to get significant traffic the site chokes! I have seen "scripts" that have 20 - 30 SQL calls per page ... fine when one or two people are hitting the site but when you get up to 1000 or more then damn thing turns your site into mud!

So take it from a professional, cheap doesn't always equate to good. Then again expensive doesn't either. You would be better off served by getting 3 or 4 quotes for your job from PROFESSIONAL programming houses before you make a decision ..... and ignore these half assed "cheapy scripts' because 9.9 times out of 10 they are worthless CRAP!!

 

This begs the question of why you did not find this out before asking for a quote. Are you sure it does "the exact same thing"? Are you qualified to make that judgement?

 

What's this script called? URL?

 

You should write complete technical specification about what your Web site should do, and only then it would be possible to quote any price for this work, because the things which are simple for the users are often very complicated for the people who would create them, the Google search engine may serve as example with very simple start page and advanced technology inside.

 

Good point! Without knowing exactly what it is you're wanting, and then communicating that in detail, you can end up pretty frustrated. And certainly, as Artisan says, complexity has nothing to do with how a task looks. And I'm one that's of the opinion that it's often better and easier to build a project from the ground up rather than trying to MAKE existing code work with modifications.

Some things can look as impressive as hell, and take only a few hours to put together, while others can look simple and take weeks. In my signature is another example of this - still busy with it...

 

lol i wouldnt trust it.

 

well, if you have that sort of money.