I have been getting quotes for developing a web page and I wanted to run it by you folks to see how sane they seem. What kind of range would you expect a developer to charge to create a site from scratch that allows users to review products and search those reviews? -----Ballpark figure------ Details are here if anyone is interested: What I am finding is that there are a lot of developers in my area, but they are all pretty expensive......
Do you have to do the design too? If so you're looking at 500$+ I would say. I just glanced at it but they want to do some indepth stuff. Nothing too hard but very time consuming. Plus you have to de-bug it and etc. I wouldn't take the job for anything under 500$ but that's the problem with freelancing. The next guy will come by and do it for 300$ thus blowing you out of the water. You have to think of a good price and then like cut it in half in order to get the job.
I'd probably do it for a few hours at $80 an hour. (though that is not an offer, I don't actually want to do it ) $500 would be reasonable/cheap IMO.
I think $500 would be a bargain - In fact I'd be a little skeptical for anyone that offers to do it for that. If I was doing this through an agency I'd expect they would be charging multiple thousands. As I keep saying - research who you choose carefully, and as always - you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
I'd agree. With just a quick glance over the Request doc, $500 would be cheap. Looks like you are asking for design and development for one price. Design alone could cost $500. And developing a site for "1000s of users" uploading large amounts of data, isn't even close to that ballpark.
Well I was going with the freelance price. Keep in mind that in order to get the job you need a price that the buyer would like to. It's easy to say 1k for it but the buyer would be like nope I'll take the next guy who is going to bid half that. I was going on the basis of you you getting the job and making a decent amount at the same time. 1k is good in theory but if he is only looking to spend 500$ then you missed out on that money too.
As a freelancer, I'd charge considerably more than $500 for that. But then, unfortunately, webdesign is an industry that suffers massively from the fact that pretty much anyone can have a crack at doing it. But if you were building a house, generally you're not going to go with the the guy that charges a quarter of the price of everyone else. And you wouldn't get the son-of-your-bosses-friend to design it for you because 'he spends a lot of time sketching houses'. Someone will always undercut you. But at some point you have to draw a line, rely on your experience and portfolio and charge the kind of money you need to live off. If the buyer wants to go elsewhere, they will. And I stand by the fact that $500 is nowhere near enough money to design and code a complex database driven web community. But hey - that's just my opinion!
I'll give you the freelance price for your quote. The OP stated he was asking developers in his area, which leads me to believe it's brick n mortar shops. I could be wrong. But that would automatically mean higher prices. Still I'll stick to the "it's a low price" even given other contractors would undercut. That doesn't mean I undercut the cost or time to complete a project. Lose the job before you do it at a loss. Unless you are starving.
Yes, I've been working with local brick and mortar shops first and they have been asking for tens of thousands. The database portion is really going to keep the price up.
Tens of thousands is BS. They have to be including some killer markup. I'd have to look over the req doc again, but even with heavy database usage, that price is just wrong. Did you get any quotes with using an existing CMS as the starting point? Designs for drupal or joomla could be found at reasonable prices. Then spend the $$ where it counts, spreading out the load.
That's what I thought too. When the first developer quoted that number I nearly laughed. The second company then quoted the exact same thing. They must all be on the same conference call.
@Eagle747: From your RFP, it's not possible to determine whether an available wiki or cms application would do the job with modifications, or whether the back end must be built from scratch. Either way, there's more than a few hours work involved. Before any 'real' work begins, an awful lot of information needs to be gathered, and a project specification document created. This doc will clearly describe exactly what's to be done, by whom, in what order it's to be done (schedule) and the cost. Once you, the client, and the agency sign off, the agency will prepare a technical specification document. The client must determine that his ISP can fulfill the needs and that his own IT people are OK with the requirements. Besides the principals, IT, copywriters, graphic designers, the eventual webmaster and maintainer(s) should all be involved and buy into the planning. The man-hours are adding up. Have you considered the cost of training? How will maintenance be apportioned? Are you planning to have the agency update content for you? That's a clerical job that you'd be paying skilled rates for. What about moderating the reviewers? The cost of maintenance,, excluding your moderator, will be about 2 hours per year per hour of billable development time. Over all, the time spent on coding, testing and launching is only half the time required for proper development. Planning and specifications will take the other half. I would put this (as described) in the 100 hour area. That doesn't mean you'll have it in 2½ weeks. You and your people will have at least as many hours invested, and both sides will be waiting on the other in order to move to the next step. My experience is that another 50% or more time should be added to allow for client procrastination. Do your part in a timely manner, and you can expect delivery in about 6 weeks. The site you get should be well architected, scalable, easily maintained and accessible, and probably cost $7,500–10,000, not including maintenance. You should be able to find a development house that can work in that range. Of course, it's all speculation, because that critical first phase, information gathering, hasn't been done. How many hours were the two agencies you talked to estimating? cheers, gary
Gary - I think that sounds about right - it really depends who you talk to and what they've done and can do. Shallowink - I was freelancing in an agency a couple of weeks ago, doing a project they didn't have time to do. Whilst I'm not going to say what it was, the site was small to mid sized, about 20-30 pages, I guess, and was plugged into their CMS. It had a gallery, news, downloads, some other bits. The agency is well established with a big impressive portfolio, and has done work for some big (in the UK) named clients. The site I was working on they were charhing £4000 (just shy of $8000) for. I would have done the same site for a quarter of that. But then I don't have offices, a support network, the guarantee I'll be there in a years time etc etc.
The coding and database driven part would be the easy part though. The hard part would be making a design and then splicing into a layout. I've had a lot larger sites done for me for 300$ so it is do-able. It just depends on how much you value your time. Even if it takes you 48 hours total to do the project that's still a little over 10$ an hour. I know 10$ isn't much to most of us but some programmers/designers would love a 10$ an hour job. It shouldn't take anywhere near 48 hours though.
That's the range I was expecting, but I'm getting quotes that are multiples of that. They have seen the same document as you. I'm hearing around 400 hours and 2-4 months to complete. I'm meeting with them next week to discuss the project in detail so we will see how that goes. I doubt the price will go down much though.
They could be simply covering their asses. Your RFP isn't overly specific, so they may be allowing for more than I did. I assumed no more than the minimum your request talked about. And, don't forget that you live in SoCal, not Talahina, OK. Prices are higher in your part of the country. Expect to spend a lot of time, yours and theirs (for which they'll bill you if they get the job) hammering out the details. Once that's done, and if you supply your end on time, the implementation will be pretty quick. Expect to spend some bucks for their DB architect. A database schema and queries can make or break a site. Don't scrimp on that. The DB guy is deservedly the highest billed member of the team. cheers, gary
Sorry, I wouldn't work for $10 an hour, freelance or not. I'd expect to get three times that minimum if I was working through an agency, nevermind for myself. (edit: unless I was working for a friend, a favour, or something I was interested in). The thing is, with something that's meant to be a massive project like this, you really want it to work, and to be scalable. It's worth paying for the proper design up front - I really, really don't think it can be done in a rush.
SPEND THE MOST MONEY FOR THE HIGHEST QUALITY!!!! Sounds like a great idea for a site keep things like this a secret man!! I would spend up to $4,000 just to insure it was a great site I actually do a lot of coding on the side and I can get it done for cheap.. i have a lot of high quality work for low prices I do a lot of landing pages and small site work
That takes me back when I'd do massive work for around $10 one off. Now I even charge my mum $62 an hour