Real Estate Web Site

[Jacquelyn Swint]

How much does is cost for a functional buyers website including autoresponders, squeeze page, unlimited photos, forms, etc? I have a quote for about $400

[Max Drizin]

Originally posted by Jeffery Bigsby:

People will charge what they can get away with. I know a web designer who charges over $2,000 for websites while I also know a guy that charges $250 for the same work. Most of them use templates anyway

Prices vary a lot, but look at the service you are getting. I'm still active in the site development, and my quotes for a site can easily come in at 10x what some people would charge. But really, you do get what you pay for.

Yes, I'll use a CMS to build your site, I'm not going to code it fully custom. Yes, I'll use a template to design a good amount of your site, it won't be totally custom either.

However, I will do an extensive amount of customization on top of the template. I will sit on the phone for you for hours, send pictures of design mock-ups, go through an endless number of emails, make sure that the product is the one you want, make edits for a while without charging you hourly, and make sure you know how to do everything you want to.

Making a web site should never be a churn-and-burn process, which I guarantee what the $250 designer does. You don't want to give someone a static site and say good luck, leaving them with an hourly rate at something ridiculous afterwards.

I give people a contract, an honest assessment of what I do, and a lot of consultation before a check ever comes in my mail. I've told more people that they can get their work done cheaper with someone else, or that I'm not qualified to do their work, or that their work is unrealistic given any range of quotes, more than I've accepted jobs.

If you'd like, go to somewhere like http://odesk.com, where developers bid on your jobs, and see the kind of people you'll get. I guarantee you will get ten or so bids from companies in Asia and the subcontinent, at about $8 an hour, looking for your work. Then, you will do your own research on people, and choose three or four qualified individuals from North America, Europe, and Asia who will give you bids much more expensive than that.

Are they worth it? Yes. If you want a full-featured web site, that looks good, is extensible, and has a trusted designer behind it, they have a portfolio and a cost that goes to four figures. There is a product lifecycle for software, you should stay in contact with your developer, and they should never disappear off the face of the earth once your site is hosted.