Been going back and forth on this for a client project and wanted to get some outside perspective from people who've been on either side of this.

We got quotes ranging from around $1,500 to $9,000 for what looks like the same 8-page business site on paper. Rather than assume the higher number is just padding or the lower one is a red flag, I wanted to understand what specifically drives that kind of gap.

From what I've gathered so far, the biggest factors seem to be:

• Custom design work vs. a pre-built theme with light customization

• Number of unique page templates (not total page count)

• How many revision rounds are baked into the quote before extra charges kick in

• Whether content/copywriting is included or billed as a separate line

• What happens after launch maintenance retainer, and who owns the CMS/source files

I came across a fairly detailed breakdown by pricing tier that lines up with most of this, but I'd rather hear it from people who've actually quoted or been quoted for real projects.

For anyone who's run an agency, freelanced, or just been burned by a quote that didn't match what got delivered what's the one thing you'd tell someone to check before signing, besides the total price?

Yep those factors are all bone fide.

I've been freelancing for 20+ years, now semi retired, so in my experience here's a few more:

Private vs business clients can be a thing, I've always offered reduced rates for private customers, businesses usually have bigger budgets.

Complexity can have an effect, even for a "small" site, it's easier to build a news portal than an fully featured ecommerce site.

The platform you build on can be huge factor, if you use something like Wordpress it doesn't take much time to add a theme and a bunch of plugins to get most functionality in place at a lower price (although custom work will be extra). Conversely if you build on a "start from a blank sheet" system like Craft or ExpressionEngine everything is tailored to the clients publishing and managing process so naturally takes longer to build.

Accessibility can take up development time, especially if the site has to adhere to certain minimum guidelines, along with client training if needed.

Performance is another thing that's often overlooked. A good developer will spend time during the build to ensure good performance from the start, if you go to the cheaper end performance is often overlooked so you end up spending extra later "fixing" what shouldn't need to be fixed.

Ask what kind of support is available and how quickly would they respond. Things can happen, even with the best developers.

What is always worth doing is asking for references from the developer, look at the sites they have built, but even more valuable are references from their customers. I had a bunch of customers whom I could put potential clients in touch with directly to vouch for my work and services. Sometimes it can be beneficial to have an experienced 3rd party developer to cast an eye over things to spot any potential issues, it'll cost a few hours of their time but could save you more in the long run.

Edited Thursday at 03:59 PM3 days by BlueDreamer

There is an agency in London charges over £5000 for anything. Businesses pay because they think they are getting a superior service. What they are actually paying for are some expensive offices in the city.

A freelancer could do just a good a job at a fraction of the cost.

As an aside: almost everyone who tells you they do custom work and not use pre-made templates is lying through their teeth. Everyone uses templates. Nobody designs from scratch. The template they use might be coded in-house but everyone uses something on which to build the design. Most of the custom bit is CSS.

7 hours ago, fisicx said:

There is an agency in London charges over £5000 for anything. Businesses pay because they think they are getting a superior service. What they are actually paying for are some expensive offices in the city.

LOL all too true. I've had more than one client over the years who paid an arm and a leg like that only to not get their monies worth and jump ship to us.

Edited Friday at 05:02 PM2 days by BlueDreamer