[Preemo]

Hello,

I run RHP Hosting. We’re a new UK based Web hosting company. We currently have downloaded a free template, but we’re running into loads of problems with it.

We’re looking at getting a design together for the site to hopefully attract more customers. We’re mainly looking at a simple, clean, and unique design – however we want it to be attractive at the same time. Unfortunately, we aren’t the most creative people, which doesn’t really go in our favour. I’d want the site to have some sort of blue in it, as when I opened RHP Hosting up, I always imagined the site being blue.

We also have a few more things. We’re currently using WHMCS, and we’d also want WordPress integrated into the design.

We have 3 packages (starter, home, business). So we’d also need a page dedicated to our hosting prices and features. I think all together, we’d need about 10-15 pages (we’d also supply the content).

As well as all this, we’d need a Logo.

How much roughly do you think you could do this for? We’re on a bit of a tight budget, and we've been quoted ridiculous prices at around £1,000.

Thank you,
Ryan

[neilp]

Preemo, on 04 September 2011 - 12:28 PM, said:

We have 3 packages (starter, home, business). So we’d also need a page dedicated to our hosting prices and features. I think all together, we’d need about 10-15 pages (we’d also supply the content).

As well as all this, we’d need a Logo.

How much roughly do you think you could do this for? We’re on a bit of a tight budget, and we've been quoted ridiculous prices at around £1,000.

Thank you,
Ryan

I would quote you around £1,200 for this...

Without sounding disrespectful, you cannot expect a web designer to design you a logo, 15 pages and integrate Wordpress - all for under £1,000? It would take any decent designer over two weeks to get this done probably charging you £20 an hour minimum. Anyone who says otherwise is not doing the job properly and isn't worth taking on. You really do get what you pay for in this industry and the bigger your budget, the more time we can spend on developing you a decent, professional and successful website!

How much would it cost to put in a full page ad in your local paper or in the yellow pages for a year? Think about that for a minute?

This post has been edited by neilp: 04 September 2011 - 01:19 PM

[oakleaves]

Hi Ryan. PM sent

[web-itec]

Preemo, on 04 September 2011 - 12:28 PM, said:

and we've been quoted ridiculous realistic prices at around £1,000.

[MikeChipshop]

Sorry mate, have to agree with the others here. There's nothing ridiculous about £1000.

Let's look at it like this... Your website is your businesses home right? Your business branding, POS and your business retail premises?

I used to run a shop in London where the monthly rent was over £1000. Minus the hosting charges, which as a hosting company you should already have factored in to your costs, your site will clock in a less than £84 per month and that's if you were in business for only a year. If you didn't plan on any major re-branding and building work for a few years that would work out a lot cheaper.

Basically if your want your business to succeed then don 't be all cheap about it. You say the template has all sorts of problems yet your only offering a cheap budget for a custom site. You only spend a cheap budget on this and you'll end with as many problems as you were trying to avoid in the first place.

Get your business head in gear, get sensible and allocate a PROPER budget without all the sneaky "tight budget" wording. If i was you I'd snap up that £1000 budget. Be weary. If any one from here or anyone else offers you it cheaper as a sensible budget should be stuck to and accepting any cheap offers will inevitably end in a cheap website which will in the long run reflect to your customers that you are offering a cheap service and not 'cheap' in a good way.

As they say in the den, "I'm out" as I could only at the very best match the so called 'ridiculous' offer you've already had.

Of course once your site is up and running, feel free t nbip back here and we'd offer constructive critique on what may need approving etc.0

Edit: Reading this back, it may seem a little harsh. I wrote this in good faith as i want to share, with a new business, my experience with what happens to new companies who don't allocate a decent budget to what will be their major public facing resource. Hopefully you take it as such. All the best.

This post has been edited by MikeChipshop: 04 September 2011 - 02:44 PM

[Garyw24]

Basically your whole business will revolve around your website and you think a quote of around £1000 is ridiculous, for all the work you want done? I worked with a very successful hosting business last year and their budget for the website was £30K plus £2K a month in SEO services.

Getting hosting business is all about trust, and if you're web site isn't up to it, you won't get the business, simple as that.

[Glowbridge]

To clarify, what does and does not fall into this project?

I was under the impression it was the basic site on top you wanted done, not WHMCS, with no integration?

If you are looking for a site that fully ties in with WHMCS front and back then I agree with the other posters here, £1000 is more than reasonable. However if it's just a kind of 'dumb' front end that links to WHMCS pages that do all the heavy lifting and wouldn't be touched. Well that's a different proposal.

I'm confused.

This post has been edited by Glowbridge: 04 September 2011 - 02:54 PM

[Garyw24]

Talking of trust, you've got absolutely no contact details on your web site other than being able to contact you via an online email form. Exactly the kind of company that most people avoid these days.

Are you at all familiar with Distance Selling Regulations or E Commerce Regulations?

You've chosen to use PrivacyProtect.org to completely hide your identity. What are you trying to hide and why? If you're an honest business with good product to sell, why hide?

There's been a lot of issues of fraudulent companies using this kind of service; I've seen it used by unscrupulous email marketing companies who send out spam and junk mail.

People these days don't just jump with any hosting service, they like to do a bit of research and ask around. Since there's absolutely no identity here, I can't imagine anyone using your hosting service.

Just a final point; if you're selling in UK currency, your terms of service is quoting in dollars.

You're missing a lot of very basic points here which need to be addressed.

[Ash Scott]

Sorry, why did you send me an email, asking the same question as is here, with a budget of £800??

[oakleaves]

Glowbridge, on 04 September 2011 - 02:54 PM, said:

I was under the impression it was the basic site on top you wanted done, not WHMCS, with no integration?

If it's just a kind of 'dumb' front end that links to WHMCS pages that do all the heavy lifting and wouldn't be touched. Well that's a different proposal.

I'm confused.

The impression I got was exactly that - a simple front-end job coupled with wordpress, any extra development would need costing on top. I think this needs clarifying..

[MancunianCreative]

Have to agree with the others, probably at least double that budget and certainly not think it ridiculous.

[rallport]

Garyw24, on 04 September 2011 - 03:05 PM, said:

Talking of trust, you've got absolutely no contact details on your web site other than being able to contact you via an online email form. Exactly the kind of company that most people avoid these days.

They just look like another typical reseller, middleman if you like - their whole site, the fact they don't want to spend money screams a one man band heart internet reseller to me. Sorry

To the people even contemplating taking this job on - RHP hosting have been very vague with their requirements on purpose imo. If anyone is silly enough to work for that amount make sure you get a list of very specific things of what is inlcuded in the project. E.g. don't let them throw in at the end of the project that they want extra SEO or some further integration work (wordpress integration is scarily vague and gets thrown around way too much).

[rallport]

MancunianCreative, on 04 September 2011 - 03:35 PM, said:

Have to agree with the others, probably at least double that budget and certainly not think it ridiculous.

Let be brutally honest here, the OP is only saying it's ridiculous because they don't want to pay. They are hoping to find someone desperate and thankful for the job.

[oakleaves]

rallport, on 04 September 2011 - 04:05 PM, said:

They just look like another typical reseller, middleman if you like - their whole site, the fact they don't want to spend money screams a one man band heart internet reseller to me. Sorry

Speaking of which, do you know of anyone who has successfully set up a Heart Internet reseller hosting site?

I'm with Heart Internet, but I cannot be bothered with the whole Hostpay thing.

[Preemo]

Maybe I mis-understood the value of a Web Designer, I think I'm better of coming up with an attractive template myself, then invest in a unique design when I get the money to, as when I do this - I want to get it all done together.

I didn't realise I'd be questioned on nearly everything.

When we registered our domain - we were offered a free WHOIS privacy protector, I funnily enough, don't think a small business (our target audience) would go on PrivacyProtect.org and look us up. I'm aiming at small businesses in my local area at the moment to build a few testimonials, then hopefully that'll be enough for potential customers.

I don't know whether you've noticed, but we don't plan to start our "official launch" for a little while, hence why we have actually got the contact details set up on our site.

I'm not having a rant, I'm just not very familiar in this field (as you can tell), so I was hoping for a little bit more nicer explanations, not presuming I'm looking for a "desperate web designer".
I started this thread also to research how much web designers charge.

Thanks anyway.

This post has been edited by Preemo: 04 September 2011 - 04:51 PM

[oakleaves]

Preemo, on 04 September 2011 - 04:35 PM, said:

Maybe I understood the value of a Web Designer, I think I'm better of coming up with an attractive template myself, then invest in a unique design when I get the money to, as when I do this - I want to get it all done together.

I didn't realise I'd be questioned on nearly everything.

When we registered our domain - we were offered a free WHOIS privacy protector, I funnily enough, don't think a small business (our target audience) would go on PrivacyProtect.org and look us up. I'm aiming at small businesses in my local area at the moment to build a few testimonials, then hopefully that'll be enough for potential customers.

I don't know whether you've noticed, but we don't plan to start our "official launch" for a little while, hence why we have actually got the contact details set up on our site.

I'm not having a rant, I'm just not very familiar in this field (as you can tell), so I was hoping for a little bit more nicer explanations, not presuming I'm looking for a "desperate web designer".
I started this thread also to research how much web designers charge.

Thanks anyway.

To be honest I think you may have got the brunt of a lot of peoples annoyance at people coming on here and expecting the world for nothing. I'm not sure a lot of that was entirely fair in your case (some of it was) but it might have helped clarifying the project spec. A simple front-end job is obviously going to be a lot cheaper than a site requiring major development.

All the best with your project, post it in the reviews section when it's done.

[Preemo]

Yeah, I understand that. I mean, for now I'll probably try and get help from the community building my own site.

I can't knock anyone here, and I understand for a web designer to see someone coming on the forum expecting a design done cheap would be tongue biting, so I do apologise in that case.

Anyway, I guess I'll give building a site of my own a go!

[neilp]

Preemo, on 04 September 2011 - 04:51 PM, said:

Yeah, I understand that. I mean, for now I'll probably try and get help from the community building my own site.

I can't knock anyone here, and I understand for a web designer to see someone coming on the forum expecting a design done cheap would be tongue biting, so I do apologise in that case.

Anyway, I guess I'll give building a site of my own a go!

That's cool.....and like some people have already said - post your mock design or completed site on here for review and you will certainly get some very good advice!

[Garyw24]

I think most businesses with a bit of intelligence will check out any prospective service, particularly a web host. Since you have absolutely no contact details, the first thing people do is a WHOIS search, they don't have to go on PrivacyProtector. Why would you want to hide your details, why don't you have any contact details on your web site? I don't know anyone who would do business with anything as anonymous as this. First thing people want to know is where you're based and an address. AND it's the law, you are required by law to have your contact details clearly stated on your web site.

I think we know now that maybe it's not, but the whole thing just seems like another online scam.

It doesn't matter that you've not had an official launch, your site is up and running now and it's live.

It's really worth learning a few basics about running a business online, especially dealing with legal issues.