[Designer Karly]

I always wonder, what is the going rate for a Web Designer? There's always that fear of undercutting yourself and on the other hand overcharging, how do you set your rates? Is there a national pricing structure to go by?

[BenG]

It varies. My dad's mate, who is also a web designer charges £79 an hour. He isnt good either :s

I charge by the project, but usually get about £50+

[Thomas Thomassen]

I think I've undercharged...


What kind of webdesign is that? How large projects do you usually work on? Backend, frontend?

[Designer Karly]

Normally front end, I design the website and then code it in CSS/XHTML. I don't get my hands to dirty with coding I would probably outsource that requirement, I rarely pitch for or land jobs that require alot of coding, so I would class myself as a Front End Designer that can turn it into a fully funtional webpage.

[Mitch Bryson]

I used to freelance about 4 years ago before just concentrating on a full time job. Then it used to be £35 / hr or i'd charge per project. but i've noticed now i have to be a lot more competitive with my pricing, especially just getting back into it (not much of a portfolio having worked on the same few websites for the last 4 yrs!).

[Thomas Thomassen]

Mitch Bryson, on Aug 22 2007, 07:47 PM, said:

I used to freelance about 4 years ago before just concentrating on a full time job. Then it used to be £35 / hr or i'd charge per project. but i've noticed now i have to be a lot more competitive with my pricing, especially just getting back into it (not much of a portfolio having worked on the same few websites for the last 4 yrs!).

But with per project pay you estimate a certain hours at an certain hourly rate, yes? (Then the mandatory haggle with the client )

[SEOLover]

Have you considered, just putting some designs together Mitch? So they don't have to be "real" clients but they showcase your skills and give your portfolio a boost aswell.

[Mitch Bryson]

SEOLover, on Aug 22 2007, 08:50 PM, said:

Have you considered, just putting some designs together Mitch? So they don't have to be "real" clients but they showcase your skills and give your portfolio a boost aswell.

yeh im working on those now whilst i've no client work, just some generic template style designs, real estate etc.
cheers though!

[MolotovRuss]

Hmm, maybe you guys can help me out then. When I leave school I've a job lined up at a big insurance company Allianz (allianz.co.uk) in their New Media (web & graphic design) department - and I've been told to get back to them with my expected hourly rate.

I did a little freelance work there before (my dad is the big man in their PR department you see) where I was just taking some short word documents, putting them into html and uploading them onto their intranet. For that I charged £8/hr.

Now I'm going to be doing web design & graphic design full-time - so - what to charge?

[Expat629]

I would say you can charge significantly more than that and their expectations should be at that level since they're a big company.

Does your dad have any insights into what the going rate for web designers is there?

[headcoat]

Mines currently around 10% of the legal minimum wage...(but then I'm learning on the job and doing it part time so is some extra cash).

Long run I'd say £25 an hour is fair, in fact that's what I charge for maintenance / post launch support and updates.

[php_penguin]

I charge £20 an hour ... seems kinda cheap considering some peoples posts on here.

I have been thinking about raising it up a bit, especially when I get to uni... but ... too much of a raise will piss people off.

[Scott S]

I charge anywhere between £30 and £80, depending on the client, the site and the type of work involved.

[BlueDreamer]

It's great charging £100/hour but if you get a big project which involves a lot of hours the price can start getting riduiculous. I usually work on the basis that the longer a project takes the lower my average hourly rate is.

[Scott S]

Aye, I tend to work on a sort of "sliding scale". Makes life simpler

[MolotovRuss]

See it's strange you guys charge by the hour, I personally have a calculator which does it for me. I charge x per individual page, +x for small use of flash, javascript etc, mock-ups...

My dad doesn't have any knowledge (and can't get ahold of) how much the other workers in the department get, do I start at say £25 and see what they say? Because they could say "£25 is very steep, sorry" and tell me I can't have the job *scared* !

[Rob]

MolotovRuss, on Apr 17 2008, 22:19, said:

See it's strange you guys charge by the hour, I personally have a calculator which does it for me. I charge x per individual page, +x for small use of flash, javascript etc, mock-ups...

My dad doesn't have any knowledge (and can't get ahold of) how much the other workers in the department get, do I start at say £25 and see what they say? Because they could say "£25 is very steep, sorry" and tell me I can't have the job *scared* !

It's not strange at all really, as every single project is different and requires unique features and skills. It's like a mechanic charging £50 per car, whatever the problem was — It's fine for the "average" job, but they would soon lose out when a car comes in that is practically falling apart.

Charging by the hour is very common in all industries, it's only full-time employment that isn't looked at in a "per hour" light.

My advice is to charge what you feel comfortable with. A client will quickly work out if you feel uncomfortable with the price/quote you are giving them, and it will more than likely make them try and barter you down, or they'll just go elsewhere. If you are confident with your price, then the client will feel more confident in choosing you. If a client turns around and says "£xx is too high...", then that is a client that you don't want to be doing business with — you wouldn't walk into HMV and say, "This DVD is too expensive, I'm only going to pay half", they'd laugh you out the door!

[ElanMan]

I agree with Rob.
Don't be ashamed of your pricing.
The bottom line is to feel comfortable with what you're charging.
Generally, if you think you're charging too much, you probably are.
When asked for an hourly rate, state it nice and loud as if you don't care what they think, that's what you're worth.
But only if you feel comfortable with the price.
An interesting read at Sitepoint

[notbanksy]

I'm sure I don't charge enough for my time, sounds like I'm not alone... Check out the Editors Perspective. Click me

[MolotovRuss]

So I did a lot of research on the hourly rate that I should personally charge (e-mailed LOTS of recruitment agencies) and most have said between £10 and £15/ho. Fine with me, I'll ask for £16/ho and see where we end up

[J.P]

I charge £20 an hour. But for small business's and people not earning large ammounts i will do a quote rather than an hourly rate.

[MG1878]

This is interesting indeed!

I have been working on my companies website, obviously not for free as it took up 70% of my weekend last week.

So if I charged say £7-10 being as its my 1st site, this should be fair then?

[Jem]

I work in a company so don't have to worry about this, but I do feel like screaming when I see people charging little more than minimum wage!

It is easier to start high and lower your prices than start low and raise them. I think those of you who're unsure should bear that in mind.

[ErisDS]

£10-£15 is very low and is the least you want to end up with. Start with £20 at least and let them haggle you down. If you start at £16 it will be £5 before you've blinked!

[MolotovRuss]

Start at £20? Okay I'll do that. Gosh this is a tough business.

[lazytycoon]

how did you get on?

[Mesa]

Working in a medium sized creative agency as a contractor/freelancer I went in with £1000 an hour (bearing in mind at the time I had no professional experience) knowing I'd end up lower. Ended up at £200 per hour.

I know a few people who invoice £1000 an hour.

[lazytycoon]

for £1000ph they better not be using tables

[Boyles Web Design]

I usually get anywhere from 50$/hr to 120$/hr depending on the project.

[11Sale]

It depends from place to place, we do it at just $10 per hour... while I know, several companies charging 15-20 per hour...

[Mesa]

It's not how good you are, it's the reputation of the company/individual.

(How much did they pay for the Olympics logo again)

[Luke Terry Design]

Mesa, on Oct 22 2008, 23:26, said:

(How much did they pay for the Olympics logo again)

Logo??

[Gibbs]

It really depends what part of the country (UK) or your country you are in... The wage where I live is poor and I charge £15 an hour when doing freelance work inhouse. Otherwise I charge per project.

I've found the best way to price things for big/long projects is to figure out the minimum amount of hours, times that by the minimum wage and double it. That's the minimum you want.

[CassandraBryan]

I charge $40-60 or by project.

[Mesa]

Just my personal opinion here, but there's a hell of a lot of you under charging massively.

[lazytycoon]

na

[rhysdavies]

I tend to quote for complete start to finish jobs, based on what I think I can get away with! I can usually get away with it, so then I am upset that I didn't try to get away with more! I always make sure that I have a full brief, and really drill into the customer that there is an additional charge on any work not specified on the quote.

I do some work for a PR company that was let down by their designer - all on DW templates and Iframes. One site has templates, but also 40-50 pages that have not been attached to the template. It's a ballache - If they want to add one page, takes me about 3 hours to code the new menus into every page. I have thought once or twice about quoting them to overhaul the whole site and attaching all the pages to the templates, but I am hanging on in the hope that they will go for a new CMS site sooner or later! For this kind of thing, I charge out at £35. It's going up in the new year!

[AJReading]

Mesa, on Oct 23 2008, 22:20, said:

Just my personal opinion here, but there's a hell of a lot of you under charging massively.

I agree. I think many freelancers and new webdesigners are afraid to charge decent rates when starting out. But anyone getting a website from an established company can expect to pay a lot more than most of the prices mentioned in this thread.

[traxor]

I only started trading officially in September, so I'm undercutting myself by a significant amount by charging £20 per hour. I'm going to increase my costs after christmas though, because my portfolio is doing really quite well, and I think it's strong enough now to start making some serious money. All I'll say is don't be stupid about it, you're only going to make the money if you have a really strong portfolio, and to have this you'll need to start with lower prices first, and small companies/sole traders will hire you to design websites for them due to the low cost, then if your portfolio starts to get larger, you can start to charge more, and hopefully larger companies will begin to notice you and use you.

I also just use my discretion when giving somebody a quotation, for example if I know that they can't afford £400 for a design, then I'll do a cost/benefit analysis of the opportunity I'm getting, the experience I'm getting and also how it'll look in my portfolio, then I'll charge them significantly less. However, that job will be the lowest priority (but not forgotten), and should always require very fast payment, ie 30% advance, 40% upon design completion then 30% when content is added.

[lazytycoon]

This is all pretty interesting, have any of you worked out what your "true" cost per hour is? as in the exact amount of work you put into your business per week say and then divide it by how much money you make per week?